Mark Helprin Quotes

The present basic philosophy is nuclear deterrence.

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

The lesson of history is when a war starts every nation will ultimately use whatever weapon it has available. ... Therefore, we must expect that if another war — a serious war — breaks out, we will use nuclear energy in some form.

Even with the best intentions, you can have a nuclear war, a nuclear holocaust, through miscalculation, through accidents.

If we are to be destroyed we will do it ourselves by warfare with thermonuclear weaponry.

What are the implications of a China that may be on nuclear parity with the United States?

It would be our policy to use nuclear weapons wherever we felt it necessary to protect our forces and achieve our objectives.

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

There is no direct evidence that nuclear weapons prevented a world war. Conversely, it is known that they nearly caused one.

I still believe that any country understands that if they use nuclear weapons, they will be wiped out of existence. They could be irrational in many ways, but I don't think they're irrational to the point that they're ready to annihilate their own country.

We have got thousands of nuclear weapons in order to achieve deterrence.

The notion that our only strategic choice is MAD (mutually assured destruction)—which means nothing less than an unstable pact to commit instant and total mutual suicide in the event of war—is irrational, immoral and unnecessary.

If the [present] deterrent is the mutual annihilation of each other ..., what else do we need and why?

Mutually assured destruction.

With respect to the relationship between nuclear weapons and the advent of détente, one has to consider two things. One, the nature of nuclear weapons in themselves, and secondly, the advent of nuclear parity.

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.

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

The only use for an atomic bomb is to keep somebody else from using one.

Some people believe that the nuclear bomb should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, since it scared the major powers away from war by equating it with doomsday.

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

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

Nuclear weapons continue to occupy a unique place in global security affairs. No other weapons, in my opinion, anyway, match their potential for prompt and long-term damage and their strategic impact.

I feel impelled to speak today in a language that in a sense is new-one which I, who have spent so much of my life in the military profession, would have preferred never to use. That new language is the language of atomic warfare.

My feelings of revulsion and foreboding about nuclear weapons had not changed an iota since 1945, and they have never left me. Since I was 14, the overriding objective of my life has been to prevent the occurrence of nuclear war.

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.