T o build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day."

-Sir Winston Churchill

T hat man can destroy life is just as miraculous a feat as that he can create it, for life is the miracle, the inexplicable. In the act of destruction, man sets himself above life; he transcends himself as a creature. Thus, the ultimate choice for a man, inasmuch as he is driven to transcend himself, is to create or to destroy, to love or to hate.

-Erich Fromm, The Sane Society

I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." N.B.: This is a paraphrase from the ancient Hindu text, the Bhagavad Gita.

-J. Robert Oppenheimer On the invention of the atom bomb

M ankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind."

-John Fitzgerald Kennedy

I do not know with what weapons World War 3 will be fought, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones.

A. Einstein

T Through the release of atomic energy, our generation has brought into the world the most revolutionary force since prehistoric man's discovery of fire. This basic force of the universe cannot be fitted into the outmoded concept of narrow nationalisms. For there is no secret and there is no defense; there is no possibility of control except through the aroused understanding and insistence of the peoples of the world. We scientists recognise our inescapable responsibility to carry to our fellow citizens an understanding of atomic energy and its implication for society. In this lies our only security and our only hope - we believe that an informed citizenry will act for life and not for death.

A. Einstein, Jan 22, 1947




"It is for the people of the world, through their representatives, to make their choice between life and death." (London, England, June 19, 1946) On June 19, 1946, British Prime Minister Clement Attlee appeared before the United Nations General Assembly to urge support for the Baruch Plan, which would place atomic energy under international control. The U.N. had first met on January 10 of that year, and its first resolution, adopted on January 24, called for the peaceful use of atomic energy and the elimination of weapons of mass destruction. The U.N. Atomic Energy Commission was established, and Bernard M. Baruch, the American representative to the commission, proposed a plan. Under the terms of his proposal, the United States-the sole nation in possession of atomic weaponry-would destroy its store of atomic bombs on the condition that the U.N. imposed controls on atomic development, prohibiting anything but the peaceful use of atomic energy. The plan passed the commission but was vetoed by the Soviet Union in the U.N.'s Security Council. As the Cold War progressed, the Atomic Energy Commission steadily lost influence, and on August 29, 1949, the U.S.S.R. successfully detonated an atomic warhead, setting off the nuclear arms race

Clement Attlee, Brittish Prime Minister" "The people's decision"



On January 20, 1961, on the steps of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., John F. Kennedy was inaugurated as the thirty-fifth president of the United States. Two months before, in one of the closest presidential elections in U.S. history, Kennedy, a Democratic senator from Massachusetts, won 49.7 percent of the popular vote, surpassing by a fraction the 49.6 percent received by Vice President Richard M. Nixon, a Republican. During his famous inauguration address, Kennedy, the youngest candidate ever elected to the presidency, and also the country's first Catholic president, declared that "the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans." The energetic Kennedy and his glamorous wife Jackie proved fitting representatives of the positive and youthful spirit of America during the early 1960s, and the Kennedy White House was idealized by admirers as a modern-day Camelot. In foreign policy, Kennedy displayed firmness and restraint, exercising an unyielding opposition to the placement of Soviet missiles in Cuba, but also demonstrating a level-headedness during negotiations for their removal. On the domestic front, he introduced his "New Frontier" social legislation, calling for a rigorous federal desegregation policy and a radical new civil rights bill. On November 22, 1963, Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, while riding in an open-car motorcade with his wife.

John F. Kennedy "Man now holds..."



John F. Kennedy, thirty-fifth U.S. president Announces the resumption of U.S. nuclear tests "In the absence of any major shift in Soviet policies, no American president responsible for the freedom and the safety of so many people could in good faith make any other decision." (March 2, 1962) On March 2, 1962, in a national address, President John F. Kennedy announced that he had authorized the Atomic Energy Commission and the Department of Defense to conduct the first U.S. nuclear tests in three years. In 1958, the U.S., the U.S.S.R., and Great Britain had agreed to suspend nuclear testing for one year. After the year passed, a voluntary moratorium continued until it was broken by the Soviets in September 1961. On April 25, 1962, the U.S. resumed nuclear testing in the atmosphere with the explosion of a hydrogen bomb near Christmas Island in the Pacific. A series of additional tests followed during that summer. The next year, the superpowers signed the Moscow Agreement, which banned testing in the atmosphere, in space, and underwater. In later decades, the superpowers agreed to limit and then reduce their massive stockpiles of nuclear weapons with the SALT and START agreements.

John F. Kennedy Defends resuming nuclear testing



Ronald Reagan, fortieth U.S. president On his authorization of neutron bomb production "The neutron warhead is a defensive weapon designed to offset the great superiority that the Soviet Union has on the western front against the NATO nations." (August 13, 1981) On August 10, 1980, President Ronald Reagan authorized production of the controversial neutron bomb as a warhead for missiles and artillery. The neutron bomb, a small type of thermonuclear weapon, was theorized to produce only a minimal explosion while releasing large amounts of neutron and gamma radiation that could penetrate armor and several feet of earth. The radiation would be extremely destructive to living tissue, but population centers only a few miles away from the explosion site would not be exposed. Thus the neutron bomb would be ideal for battlefield use. Critics of the weapon warned that the bomb would blur the line between conventional and nuclear warfare, encouraging the use of nuclear weapons and making obsolete the concept of a nuclear deterrent. In 1978, President Jimmy Carter postponed development of the neutron bomb, but in 1981, President Reagan reversed this policy and authorized production. On August 13, 1981, Reagan was heard reacting to criticism surrounding his decision.

Ronald Reagan: Defends neutron bomb testing


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