George F. Kennan Quotes

It is such a supreme folly to believe that nuclear weapons are deadly only if they're used. The fact that they exist at all, their presence in our lives, will wreak more havoc than we can begin to fathom. Nuclear weapons pervade our thinking. Control our behavior. Administer our societies. Inform our dreams. They bury themselves like meat hooks deep in the base of our brains. They are purveyors of madness. They are the ultimate colonizer. Whiter than any white man that ever lived. The very heart of whiteness.

They'll be no learning period with nuclear weapons. Make one mistake and you're going to destroy nations.

Here's why nuclear defense makes sense. And I know something about this. A missile can take an airplane out of the air. A better missile can take a missile out of the air.

With regard to nuclear weapons, it's kind of hard to say. [Donald Trump] is said lots of things. The national security experts are terrified. But they're more terrified by his personality than by his statements.

Nuclear weapons are inherently threatening to all of civilization. If that had been a nuclear weapon at the World Trade Center, even the most primitive kind of the Hiroshima, Nagasaki, you wouldn't have a Manhattan. There wouldn't be a democracy of any kind in America.

Our immediate striving must be aimed at preventing what, in the present situation, is the greatest threat to the very survival of mankind, the nuclear threat.

I would characterize current US nuclear weapons policy as immoral, illegal, militarily unnecessary, and dreadfully dangerous

As long as nuclear weapons exist, the chances of survival of the human species are quite slight.

There's a very simple reason for focusing on the nuclear issue. Many, many issues are of supreme importance in one way or another, but if we blow ourselves up with nuclear weapons, no other issue is really going to matter. Quite possibly there would be no other human beings left to be concerned about anything else.

If in the words which the Secretary of State has just used, the use of a nuclear weapon is to be avoided 'at all costs'. what is the point of having one?

I'd be the last one to use the nuclear weapons, because that's sort of like the end of the ballgame.

You look at Russia's doing with their nuclear capability and the newness of their capability, and look at we're - what we're doing, and nobody wants to do that with respect to nukes because nukes are horrible. But you have countries that are going out of their way to do things that we're not doing. And we have to be very, very careful.

I know that a world in which countries are stockpiling nuclear weapons and using them in the ways that India and Pakistan and America do to oppress others and to deceive their own people is a dangerous world.

It is madness for any country to build its policy with an eye to nuclear war.

There are nine countries in the world that have nuclear weapons. There are about 27,000 nuclear weapons total on the planet. The countries that have nuclear weapons deploy them ready for use and have doctrines saying that they would use them in certain circumstances.

If world is suspicious that Israel may detonate nuclear bomb and if the suspicion is a deterrent - that's good enough.

The whole nuclear thing is a terrible mess and it's hard for me to understand why it is that we, the United States, seem to be the only ones that are really particularly concerned about it and prepared to do something.

Every thinking person fears nuclear war, and every technological nation plans for it.

Dwight Eisenhower… supported the nuclearization of the military and the militarization of nuclear weapons as a cost saving way of deterring the Soviets. Under Eisenhower, custody or nuclear weapons shifted from the civilian Atomic Energy Commission to the military.

I think Donald Trump is very, very cautious about nuclear weapons, and he's seriously concerned. And this might be one of the reasons he wants to deal with Putin carefully, because he's aware of how many nuclear weapons Putin has, and that Russian doctrine is much more open about using nuclear weapons than is American doctrine.

I believe in a reasonable amount of "right to bear arms". But private citizens of the United States are not allowed to own nuclear weapons. I always wanted a nuclear weapon, if I could have gotten one. I'm every other kind of power, but I'm not a nuclear power.

What is the only provocation that could bring about the use of nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. What is the priority target for nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. What is the only established defense against nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. How do we prevent the use of nuclear weapons? By threatening to use nuclear weapons. And we can't get rid of nuclear weapons, because of nuclear weapons. The intransigence, it seems, is a function of the weapons themselves.

The existence of nuclear weapons presents a clear and present danger to life on Earth.

The truth emerging from this scattered picture of nuclear proliferation is simple: there is a stronger chance of a nuclear bomb being used now than at almost any point in the Cold War.

Donald Trump believes that the world will be safer if more nations have nuclear weapons. And he's said Saudi Arabia should get them, Japan should get them, Korea should get them. And when he was confronted with this, and told, wait a minute, terrorists could get those, proliferation could lead to nuclear war, here's what Donald Trump said, and I quote: "Go ahead, folks, enjoy yourselves."