
“One has to look out for engineers-they begin with sewing machines and end up with the atomic bomb.”
Source: City (1952), Chapter 7, “Aesop” (p. 210)
“One has to look out for engineers-they begin with sewing machines and end up with the atomic bomb.”
1960s, Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence (1967)
Context: War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and, through their misguided passions, urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not engage in a negative anticommunism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity, and injustice, which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.
Lecture on Srimad Bhagavatam, Canto 6, Chapter 1, verse 6; Sydney; February 17, 1973
Quotes from other Sources, Quotes from other Sources: False Prophecies
"Talk with the American Correspondent Anna Louise Strong"(August 1946)
“I can think of no more stirring symbol of man’s humanity to man than a fire engine.”
Source: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 10 “An Age of Miracles” (p. 242)
Responding to President George W. Bush remarks on Iran, November 21, 2007 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-chavez-bush/chavez-says-bush-belongs-in-asylum-for-ww3-comment-idUSL2062324220071120
2007
To Leon Goldensohn, July 14, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004.
Quoted in "A-bombs were 'God's gifts' to Japanese regime", Taipei Times (August 7, 2005).
Acceptance Speech, Army-Navy "Excellence" Award (16 November 1945)
Context: It is with appreciation and gratefulness that I accept from you this scroll for the Los Alamos Laboratory, and for the men and women whose work and whose hearts have made it. It is our hope that in years to come we may look at the scroll and all that it signifies, with pride. Today that pride must be tempered by a profound concern. If atomic bombs are to be added as new weapons to the arsenals of a warring world, or to the arsenals of the nations preparing for war, then the time will come when mankind will curse the names of Los Alamos and Hiroshima. The people of this world must unite or they will perish. This war that has ravaged so much of the earth, has written these words. The atomic bomb has spelled them out for all men to understand. Other men have spoken them in other times, and of other wars, of other weapons. They have not prevailed. There are some misled by a false sense of human history, who hold that they will not prevail today. It is not for us to believe that. By our minds we are committed, committed to a world united, before the common peril, in law and in humanity.