John Hersey Quotes

In the first weeks after Hiroshima, extravagant statements by President Truman and other official spokesmen for the U.S. government transformed the inception of the atomic age into the most mythologized event in American history.

The atomic bomb means the end of world war.

A nuclear weapon is not just a football that you can use at will.

The first use of the nuclear weapon gives a great advantage to the user.

The danger today resides in the Disaster Lobby—those crepe-hangers who, for personal gain or out of sheer ignorance, are undermining the American system and threatening the lives and fortunes of the American people. Some people have let the gloom-mongers scare them beyond rational response with talk about atomic annihilation. ... Since World War II over one billion human beings who worried about A- bombs and H-bombs died of other causes. They worried for nothing

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

The papers are full of the atomic bomb [Hiroshima] which is going to revolutionize everything and blow us all to buggery. Not a bad idea.

Don’t you realize that the Federal Government has the atomic bomb.

In Los Alamos we were motivated by the desire to develop the atomic bomb before the Germans could do it. That was our main motivation …. The Germans surrendered before the bomb was ready and so it was obvious to use it against our remaining enemy [Japan].

I think there are many times when it would be most efficient to use nuclear weapons. However, the public opinion in this country and throughout the world throw up their hands in horror when you mention nuclear weapons, just because of the propaganda that's been fed to them.

We were fortunate to have the Russians as our childhood enemies. We practiced hiding under our desks in case they had the temerity to drop a nuclear weapon.

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.

The atom bomb is a paper tiger which the United States reactionaries use to scare people. It looks terrible, but in fact it isn't.

This means that the only function of nuclear weapons, while they exist, is to deter a nuclear attack.

Japan is the only country in the world which suffered from the scourge of nuclear weapons.

I am not sure why, but I have been obsessed by the Atom Bomb ever since it first happened.

Nut With A Nuke

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

The most terrible bomb in the history of the world.

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

This diffusion of nuclear weapons is terrible…terrible. Imagine a world with a large number of states with nuclear bombs.

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

I say in all sincerity that the nuclear arms race has no military purpose. Wars cannot be fought with nuclear weapons; their existence only adds to our perils because of the illusions which they have generated.

The lethal possibility of such atomic action in the future is frightening, and while we are the first to have it in our possession, there is a certainty that it will in the future be developed by potential enemies and that it will probably be used against us.

Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident, miscalculation or madness.