John F. Kennedy Quotes

I do not know how the Third World War will be fought, but I can tell you what they will use in the Fourth—rocks!

Science has produced such powerful weapons that in a war between great powers there would be neither victor nor vanquished. Both would be overwhelmed in destruction.

And I have lived since - as you have - in a period of cold war, during which we have ensured by our achievements in the science and technology of destruction that a third act in this tragedy of war will result in the peace of extinction.

Limiting nuclear war is like limiting the mission of a match thrown in a keg of gunpowder.

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.

Blow them [the Russians] off the face of the earth, quick, before they do the same to us. We haven't much time.

If the Third World War is fought with nuclear weapons, the fourth will be fought with bows and arrows.

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.

To have the ability to destroy all and not to do it was one of the hard tests humanity passed - but only just - in the middle of the twentieth century.

Kennedy said that if we had nuclear war we'd kill 300 million people in the first hour. McNamara, who is a good businessman and likes to save, says it would be only 200 million.

I remember fear and I remember the potential of nuclear war.

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, decisions made by President John F. Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev could have plunged both countries into thermonuclear war.

I'm still bothered by the threat of nuclear war.

If men can develop weapons that are so terrifying as to make the thought of global war include almost a sentence for suicide, you would think that man's intelligence and his comprehension... would include also his ability to find a peaceful solution.

Where is the indignation about the fact that the US and USSR have thirty thousand pounds of destructive force for every human being in the world?

I would like to see invented a substance or a machine with such terrible power of mass destruction that war would thereby be made impossible forever.

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

In the real world of real political leaders a decision that would bring even one hydrogen bomb on one city of one's own country would be recognized as a catastrophic blunder.

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

He who is calmly convinced of the probability of a great European war can come to no other conclusion than the following: The next European war will be such a desperate gamble as the world has never seen. In all probability it will be the last war.

Even if hostilities do not begin, the world is menaced by economic collapse. Mistrust and suspicion reign everywhere. Beneath our very eyes the camps are forming, armies are gathering and a fearful struggle is being prepared in Europe. Is our continent to commit suicide in a terrifying war at the end of which no nation could call itself victor or vanquished, but in which the spiritual and material values created by centuries of civilization would founder?

The Cold War is over. The world has become much more complicated.

For decades, we and the Soviets have lived under the threat of mutual assured destruction; if either resorted to the use of nuclear weapons, the other could retaliate and destroy the one who had started it. Is there either logic or morality in believing that if one side threatens to kill tens of millions of our people, our only recourse is to threaten killing tens of millions of theirs?

In another war the bombs will be plentiful and they will be comparatively cheap. Unless there is a determination not to use them that is stronger than can be noted today among American political and military leaders, and on the part of the public itself, atomic warfare will be hard to avoid....

A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.