Hubert Humphrey Quotes

What we need is Star Peace and not Star Wars.

Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind.

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.

Yesterday, we fought wars which destroyed cities. Today, we are concerned with avoiding a war which will destroy the earth. We can adapt atomic energy to produce electricity and move ships, but can we control its use in anger?

Even a fool could see that one didn't need a war, nuclear or otherwise, to destroy oneself; the rising cost of weaponry could do that quite nicely.

The choice, however, is as clear now for nations as it was once for the individual: peace or extinction.

I suspect that war will become obsolete only when something worse supercedes it.

Among pacifists it was above all the English who always insisted on the importance of disarmament. They said that the man in the street would not understand the kind of pacifism that neglected to demand immediate restriction of armaments.

My first wish is to see this plague of mankind, war, banished from the earth.

One cannot abolish only a single weapon, but only war as a whole.

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.

If peace should break out, what are we going to do with all these weapons.

Unless now the world adopts nonviolence, it will spell certain suicide for mankind.

We still have to deal as an organization of labor with the number one problem facing the people of this nation and every nation: that of war or peace; an armament race or disarmament; higher or lower living standards for all the world’s people;

In the age when the atom has been split, the moon encircled, diseases conquered, is disarmament so difficult a matter that it must remain a distant dream? To answer, yes, is to despair for the future of mankind.

I give you my word that there will be no great armaments

Our purpose [is] to invite the present-day civilization to cast aside the staggering burden of armament.

We want a rocket-free country. That’s what we want.

Disarmament can only become a lasting institution, a source of economic prosperity and an instrument of peace, when it is general, not one-sided. When it is only an individual affair it does nothing but excite the predatory and belligerent passions of the strong.

We believe in peace in the settlement of all disputes through peaceful means, in the abolition of war, and, more particularly, nuclear war.

What might save us, me and you, is if the Russians love their children too.

And now, as in no other age, we seek it [peace] because we have been warned, by the power of modern weapons, that peace may be the only climate possible for human life itself.

Moreover, war has become a thing potentially so terrible and destructive that it should have been the common aim of statesmen to put an end to it forever.

Let us assume that the ideal were reached; let us imagine a state of international life in which the danger of war no longer exists. Then no one would dare to demand a penny for obviously completely superfluous armaments.

The burden for achieving disarmament cannot be borne by peace groups alone. Everybody, regardless of age, income, profession, gender or nationality, has a stake in this quest.