George C. Wilson Quotes

We have never practiced the policy of competitive armaments.

We can cut the Defense Department budget because we’ve got bombs running out of our ears.

Disarmament has become the urgent imperative of our time. I do not say this because I equate the absence of arms to peace, or because I believe that bringing an end to the nuclear arms race automatically guarantees the peace, or because the elimination of nuclear warheads from the arsenals of the world will bring in its wake that change in attitude requisite to the peaceful settlement of disputes between nations. Disarmament is vital today, quite simply, because of the immense destructive capacity of which men dispose.

Limitation of armaments in itself is economically and financially important quite apart from security.

We have to admit that, notwithstanding all the efforts in which governments and peoples have participated, no corresponding change has been wrought in the aspect of the world's armaments.

Armaments; extremely useful for fighting wars, a deadweight in any civil economy.

The best reduction, the most final reduction, is to destroy the warheads.

The Pentagon talks about our power to 'overkill' Russia ten times, twenty times, perhaps forty-eight times. For my tax money, it is sufficient to overkill them once.

Advances in weaponry go much faster than arms control.

There is no better constraint on the leader of a developing country than telling him that he has to pay cash for his weapons.

… war is a matter not so much of arms as of money

Peace is not just a matter of the absence of violence. It is also necessarily about removing the potential for violence – namely the uncontrolled possession of weapons. It would be naive to believe that anybody can be at ease when it is known that a potential opponent is stockpiling arms, even if the latter swears on whatever he or she believes, that the weapons will not be used. Weapons are meant to be used and pretexts will eventually be found for their use at some point or the other.

We demand a strict and sweeping reduction of armaments by land and sea so that there shall be no competitive military program or naval building. Until agreements to this end have been made we advocate an army and navy adequate for our national safety.

Disarment ... is a continuing imperative.

I'm not an expert on the arms race.

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

Disarmament or limitation of armaments, which depends on the progress made on security, also contributes to the maintenance of peace.

I know of no more important subject to the peace of Europe and the world than the reasonable reduction of armaments, especially in Europe, and of naval armaments throughout the world.

Weapons are like money; no one knows the meaning of enough.

The Cold War's end pushed disarmament down most leaders' agendas. It's a sophisticated issue, which I think is one reason why it is not so hands-on to many people. It's not visceral. It's not like a starving child.

Nuclear weapons are infinitely less important in our foreign policy than they were in the days of the Cold War. I don't think we need nuclear weapons any longer.

It has become impossible to give up the enterprise of disarmament without abandoning the whole great adventure of building up a collective peace system.

The Cold War went on for so long that it bred a kind of worldwide military establishment. Even when budgets went down in the early and mid-nineties, it didn't really affect it.

We need to stop spending money on those weapons systems that do not advance national security.

I'm not concerned about weapons of mass destruction.