Nobel Peace prize acceptance speech (1985)
Context: I am convinced that today is a great and exciting day not only for the members of our international movement but also for all physicians on our planet, irrespective of their political and religious beliefs. For the first time in history, their selfless service for the cause of maintaining life on Earth is marked by the high Nobel Prize. True to the Hippocratic Oath, we cannot keep silent knowing what final epidemic-nuclear war — can bring to humankind. The bell of Hiroshima rings in our hearts not as a funeral knell, but as an alarm bell calling out to actions to protect life on our planet.
We were among the first to demolish the nuclear illusions that existed and to unveil the true face of nuclear weapons — the weapons of genocide. We warned the peoples and governments that medicine would be helpless to offer even minimal relief to the hundreds of millions of victims of nuclear war.
However, our contacts with patients inspire our faith in the human reason. Peoples are heedful of the voice of physicians who warn them of the danger and recommend the means of prevention.
“To repeat the error by exhibiting, through the construction of nuclear reactors, the same disrespect for human life is the worst possible betrayal of the memory of Hiroshima’s victims.”
“History Repeats,” The New Yorker, March 28, 2011
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Kenzaburō Ōe 43
Japanese author 1935Related quotes
“The worst constructed play is a Bach fugue when compared to life.”
Source: On Reflection (1968), Ch. 14
Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (1979)
in Hendricks, V: “500CC Computer Citations”, King’s College Publications, London,2005.
[The Puritan Age and Rule in the Colony of the Massachusetts Bay, 1629-1685, https://books.google.com/books?id=toM-AAAAYAAJ&pg=PA31, 31, 1888, Houghton, Mifflin, 978-0-7222-0646-1]