Walter F. Mondale Quotes

I have to bring to your notice a terrifying reality: with the development of nuclear weapons Man has acquired, for the first time in history, the technical means to destroy the whole of civilization in a single act.

Although September 11 was horrible, it didn't threaten the survival of the human race, like nuclear weapons do.

Nuclear weapons exist. They probably always will. And they work, with horrible efficiency. They threaten the very future of our species. We have no choice but to manage that risk. Never again can we put the task out of our minds; nor trivialize it; nor make it routine.

If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is make the rubble bounce.

I can't understand why anyone would want nuclear warheads. If you shoot them off, it's not like you can take over that country-all you do is kill millions of people.

We still live with this unbelievable threat over our heads of nuclear war. I mean, are we stupid? Do we think that the nuclear threat has gone, that the nuclear destruction of the planet is not imminent? It's a delusion to think it's gone away.

To me, nuclear weapons are the secret crisis of our time. Frankly, everyone needs to reread John Hersey's 'Hiroshima.'

I remember very vividly, as a child growing up in England, living through the Cuban Missile Crisis. For a few days, the entire biosphere seemed to be on the verge of destruction. And the same weapons are still here, and they're still armed. If we avoid that trap, others are waiting for us.

The truth is, as long as nuclear weapons exist, we are not safe.

The real abhorrent consequence of the invention of atomic bombs is the fact that we still have them and they're spreading.

The consequence of a world full of nuclear powers to me is so incomprehensible in terms of the dangers that that implies.

Firing off 1,000 or 500 or 2,000 nuclear warheads on a few minutes' consideration has always struck me as an absurd way to go to war.

One nuclear war is going to be the last nuclear - the last war, frankly, if it really gets out of hand. And I just don't think we ought to be prepared to accept that sort of thing.

There are nuclear weapons in China, Iran, Korea and Pakistan. It wouldn't take much to send a couple of warheads off on this planet somewhere that would cause a lot of environmental damage, then if you have got someone who wants to retaliate you have real problems.

Nuclear war is such an emotional subject that many people see the weapons themselves as the common enemy of humanity.

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

I worry about 10, 15, 20, 25 years down the road. Where are we going to be in this age of nuclear weapons, where there is no margin for error?

This diffusion of nuclear weapons is terrible…terrible. Imagine a world with a large number of states with nuclear bombs.

I would not recommend the use of any atomic weapon, no matter how small, when both sides have the power to destroy the world.

The combination of human fallibility and nuclear weapons can destroy nations.

The atomic bomb was the turn of the screw. It has made the prospect of future war unendurable.

If atomic bombs are to be added as new weapons to the arsenals of a warring world, or to the arsenals of nations preparing for war, then the time will come when mankind will curse the names of Los Alamos and of Hiroshima.

For me, one of the big things I really worried about a lot was nuclear war growing up.

This is the reality of nuclear weapons: they may trigger a world war; a war which, unlike previous ones, destroys all of civilization.

If we have isolated individuals able to inflict enormous harm, imagine what a single lunatic can do with a nuclear weapon. I think the whole base of civil society is at risk.