James D. Watkins Quotes

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.

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.

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

The way to win an atomic war is to make sure it never starts.

I most sincerely wish that the world in which we live be free from the threat of a nuclear holocaust and from the ruinous arms race. It is my cherished desire that peace be not separated from freedom which is the right of every nation. This I desire and for this I pray.

Libya is a good example of a country that has come to a realization that weapons of mass destruction threaten more than assure, and I hope that will be followed by others.

Peace and stability cannot be achieved by means of nuclear weapons.

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

We do not believe that a nuclear war should be fought and we do not believe that a nuclear war can be won.

Nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary a choice of either a humiliating defeat or a nuclear war.

The atomic clock ticks faster and faster. We may anticipate a state of affairs in which the Great Powers will each be in a position to put an end to the civilization and life of the other, though not without risking its own. We may be likened to two scorpions in a bottle, each capable of killing the other but only at risk of his own life.

You probably don't need more weapons than what's required to destroy every city on earth. There's only 2,300 cities. So, the United States, by that criteria, only needs 2,300 nuclear weapons - well, we've got more than 25,000!

By God, war is not an option for two nuclear countries.

So, we need to delegitimize the nuclear weapon, and by de-legitimizing... meaning trying to develop a different system of security that does not depend on nuclear deterrence.

So I ask the nuclear powers to abandon the out-of-date thinking of the Cold War period and take a fresh look. Above all, I appeal to them to bear in mind the long-term threat that nuclear weapons pose to humankind and to begin action towards their elimination.

In a world which is armed to its teeth with nuclear weapons, every quarrel or difference of opinion may lead to violence of a kind quite different from what is possible today.

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

The chief task was to stop the arms race before it brought utter disaster. However, after the collapse of communism and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, any rationale for having nuclear weapons disappeared.

All nations must come to the decision to renounce force as a final resort of policy. If they are not prepared to do this, they will cease to exist.

Arms control has to have a future, or none of us does.

We must not force an adversary into a choice between humiliating defeat and nuclear war.

The moral high ground in taking the first hit before attacking has been made obsolete by weapons of mass destruction….You cannot wait for a catastrophic event.

The urgent moral priority of our time is to dismantle the warfare state, disarm the nukes, roll back the empire from every corner of the globe. We want to live in a country even a crazy man can head and not have it be dangerous for us or the world.

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?

I think we have to get rid of nuclear weapons. The idea that somehow by having nuclear weapons you make the world a safer place is essentially insane.