Norman Cousins Quotes

Nuclear arms is pretty scary because that could end the world. I'm more interested in that stuff than I am Bill Clinton. I mean, I think Bill Clinton is a good president.

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

It is the ultimate end of absurdity for the arms race to go on.

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

Although September 11 was horrible, it didn't threaten the survival of the human race, like nuclear weapons do.

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.

The thing that makes countries want to pursue some kind of nuclear deterrent is precisely the fact that they feel threatened.

The misconception that a victory can be worth its price, has in the nuclear age become a total illusion.

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.

It's a near miracle that nuclear war has so far been avoided.

We still live with this unbelievable threat over our heads of nuclear war. I mean, are we stupid? Do we think that the nuclear threat has gone, that the nuclear destruction of the planet is not imminent? It's a delusion to think it's gone away.

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.

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.

We don't want to start a nuclear war unless we really have to, now do we Jack?

In a nuclear age, each of us is threatened when peace is not secured everywhere.

I remember very vividly, as a child growing up in England, living through the Cuban Missile Crisis. For a few days, the entire biosphere seemed to be on the verge of destruction. And the same weapons are still here, and they're still armed. If we avoid that trap, others are waiting for us.

It is impossible to work out a reduction in nuclear threat as long as one side is going all out to demonize the other.

Nuclear weapons offer us nothing but a balance of terror, and a balance of terror is still terror.

I have to bring to your notice a terrifying reality: with the development of nuclear weapons Man has acquired, for the first time in history, the technical means to destroy the whole of civilization in a single act.

I'm not an expert on the arms race.

The real abhorrent consequence of the invention of atomic bombs is the fact that we still have them and they're spreading.

My feelings of revulsion and foreboding about nuclear weapons had not changed an iota since 1945, and they have never left me. Since I was 14, the overriding objective of my life has been to prevent the occurrence of nuclear war.

One nuclear war is going to be the last nuclear - the last war, frankly, if it really gets out of hand. And I just don't think we ought to be prepared to accept that sort of thing.

So long as nuclear weapons continue to exist, so will the temptation to threaten others with overwhelming military force.

The weapons were conceived and created by a small band of physicists and chemists; they remain a cataclysmic threat to the whole of human society and the natural environment.