Nuclear Standoff Quotes

Nuclear weapons are only good for deterring. It is insane that two men, sitting on opposite ends of the world, should be able to decide to bring an end to civilization.

The contrafactual history is what it would have been the other way. Think of the Kennedy triumph in the missiles crisis. Worked out fine. Khrushchev blinked and so forth. The other road, you don't want to think too hard about. You could have had nuclear missiles wiping out a tenth of the globe.

The days are gone forever when our enemies could blackmail us with nuclear bombs.

This is sort of the Cuban Missile Crisis on steroids, what we are doing to Russia right now, and I don't think this is a good idea.

The most terrifying moment in my life was October 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I did not know all the facts - we have learned only recently how close we were to war - but I knew enough to make me tremble.

The professed function of the nuclear weapons on each side is to prevent the other side from using their nuclear weapons. If that's all it is, then we've gotta as: how many nuclear weapons do you need to do that?

President Kennedy didn't negotiate out of the Cuban missile crisis simply because he and Khrushchev got along well. Khrushchev didn't have the cards.

We have got thousands of nuclear weapons in order to achieve deterrence.

The events of October 1962 are widely hailed as Kennedy's finest hour.

The world's deteriorating ecology poses as great a danger to mankind today as did the nuclear standoff between the superpowers at the height of the Cold War.

The two most powerful nations of the world had been squared off against each other, each with its finger on the button. You'd have thought that war was inevitable. But both sides showed that if the desire to avoid war is strong enough, even the most pressing dispute can be solved by compromise. And a compromise over Cuba was indeed found.

In the Cuban missile crisis [1962] we had 5,000 nuclear strategic weapons and the Russians had only 300.... Even though we had a 17 to 1 advantage, we were deterred. Even if only ten percent of their missiles got through, tens of millions of Americans would have died. We could not use our nuclear superiority.

I remember fear and I remember the potential of nuclear war.

When I used to theorize about a nuclear standoff, I didn't really have to understand what was happening inside the Soviet Union. It is a lot harder now to build a theory that can encompass all the complications of today's conflicts.

A nuclear exchange confined to military targets seems more possible, not less, when both sides have a sure second strike capability. Then you might have a more stable balance of terror.

What we achieved was a nuclear pause, not a nuclear halt.

Of course, nobody does [want another Cuban Missile Crisis].

Mr. President, the only thing that stops a bad guy with a nuke is a good guy with a nuke.

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

There is no direct evidence that nuclear weapons prevented a world war. Conversely, it is known that they nearly caused one.

In the end, for all of Obama's grand rhetoric on ridding the world of nuclear weapons, history has doomed him to preside over the emergence of two rogue nuclear regimes (North Korea and Iran).

Like the assassination of JFK, everybody alive then can remember where they were that Doomsday Week of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. That Saturday, 27 October, was, and remains, the closest the world has come to nuclear holocaust - the blackest day of a horrendous week.