Dave Barry Quotes

When I was in the White House, I was confronted with the challenge of the Cold War. Both the Soviet Union and I had 30,000 nuclear weapons that could destroy the entire earth and I had to maintain the peace.

North Korea has taught a great lesson to all the countries in the world, especially the rogue countries of dictatorships or whatever: if you don't want to be invaded by America, get some nuclear weapons.

The other countries did not share the same concern the United States had in the early '90's - that North Korea actually had an ongoing nuclear weapons program.

The nuclear threat is a direct product of the cult of force that has dominated the world for centuries.

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.

When the President of Iran talks about removing Israel from the face of the Earth and is building nuclear bombs with a range of 3000km, you have to be worried.

There is a Western world. There is America. There is Great Britain and Germany and France and Russia and China and other nations. I doubt that there is one country amongst those I mentioned which has a desire to see Iran, with its fundamentalist, Islamic, extremist government, possessing nuclear weapons.

It's Russia some people would like to get rid of. They are still afraid of our nuclear deterrent. We have our own foreign policy whether they like it or not.

The world should be very clear about making sure that Iran does not get nuclear weapons, period.

During the Cold War, we were interested because we were scared that Russia and the United States were going to go to war. We were scared that Russia was going to take over the world. Every country became a battleground.

The decision to use the atom bomb on Japanese cities, and the consequent buildup of enormous nuclear arsenals, was made by governments, on the basis of political and military perceptions.

Nuclear deterrence doesn't work outside of the Russian - U.S. context; Saddam Hussein showed that.

The United States and Russia probably do not have common aims and dreams, but they have common worries: Both Washington and Moscow are concerned about the rise of China and are threatened by the rise of radical Islam.

If we had made it clear from the very beginning that we were not going to tolerate another nuclear power on the face of the earth, and had done it in Korea, where we could have accomplished it militarily, if necessary, I would put a stop to it and would have put a stop to it there.

The misconception that a victory can be worth its price, has in the nuclear age become a total illusion.

Other than being crazy enough to press a button, there is nothing that Putin can do militarily to fundamentally alter American interests.

This is a very important relationship we have with Russia, the relationship over the nuclear arsenal that they have obviously is important. They're a very powerful country.

It's a near miracle that nuclear war has so far been avoided.

We still need to be conscious of the fact that Russia has intercontinental ballistic missiles.

We've already seen proliferation. We started it with Britain, then France. Then we benignly let the Israelis do it. The Pakistanis and the Indians have recently done it. The Chinese have nuclear weapons.

Many in China find it perplexing that the U.S. and Russian perceptions are still so heavily influenced by the Cold War.

There is only one thing worse than one nation having the atomic bomb -- that's two nations having it.

The atomic issue was a natural path into political issues.

If India builds the bomb we will eat grass or leaves, we will go hungry. But we will get one of our own.

We ought to nuke North Korea right about now just to give the world a warning.