Nuclear Ethics Quotes

There's no way you can possibly intellectually justify, 'Well, it's okay for the Western Judeo-Christian countries to have nuclear weapons, but not for a country like Iran.' That logic goes nowhere fast.

The fact that no limits exist to the destructiveness of this weapon [the 'Super', i.e. the hydrogen bomb] makes its very existence and the knowledge of its construction a danger to humanity as a whole. It is necessarily an evil thing considered in any light. For these reasons, we believe it important for the President of the United States to tell the American public and the world what we think is wrong on fundamental ethical principles to initiate the development of such a weapon.

It is not the scientist's job to determine whether a hydrogen bomb should be constructed, whether it should be used or how it should be used. This responsibility rests with the people and with their ... representatives.

It can even be thought that radium could become very dangerous in criminal hands, and here the question can be raised whether mankind benefits from knowing the secrets of Nature, whether it is ready to profit from it or whether this knowledge will not be harmful for it. The example of the discoveries of Nobel is characteristic, as powerful explosives have enabled man to do wonderful work. They are also a terrible means of destruction in the hands of great criminals who lead the peoples towards war. I am one of those who believe with Nobel that mankind will derive more good than harm from the new discoveries.

A great power imposes the obligation of exercising restraint, and we did not live up to this obligation. I think this affected many of the scientists in a subtle sense, and it diminished their desire to continue to work on the bomb.

For me, Hitler was the personification of evil and the primary justification of the atomic bomb work. Now that the bomb could no longer be used against the Nazis, doubt arose. These doubts, even if they did not appear in official reports, were discussed in private conversations.

Nuclear weapons are intrinsically neither moral nor immoral, though they are more prone to immoral use than most weapons.

Despite the vision and farseeing wisdom of our wartime heads of state, the physicists have felt the peculiarly intimate responsibility for suggesting, for supporting, and in the end, in large measure, for achieving the realization of atomic weapons. Nor can we forget that these weapons as they were in fact used dramatized so mercilessly the inhumanity and evil of modern war. In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.