Quotes about bombing (674 quotes, page 5)

“Negro-Americans will have to fight, but not with bombs, and planes, and guns, but with intelligence, self-confidence, and determination, efficiency, and high moral principles.”

Richard R. Wright Jr. (1878–1967)

Wright Jr. 87 Years Behind the Black Curtain: An Autobiography. 1965

Confidence , Intelligence , Fight , Self-confidence

“Most of the fascist functionaries live as unguarded as I do. I could slip a knife between Max Rafferty's ribs. The Agnews and Du Ponts, the Rockefellers and Morgans, all of the Getty, Hunt, and Hughes types who sneak around in armored cars and jets are just as reachable. Anyone who will come out of his bomb shelter can be had. Imagine what Nixon's armored car would look like if I stepped out of the alley and hit it with the anti-tank rocket launcher under my coat—a ball of fire. Hell will be their reward.”

Jonathan P. Jackson (1953–1970) American kidnapper

Source: From Blood in My Eye (1971), p. 46

Cars , Imagination , Hell

“In spite of all that happened at Hamburg, bombing proved a relatively humane method.”

Arthur Travers Harris (1892–1984) Royal Air Force air marshal

Statement on the July 1943 bombings of Hamburg, as quoted in The Valour and the Horror : The Untold Story of Canadians in the Second World War (1991)by Merrily Weisbord and ‎Merilyn Simonds Mohr, p. 107

“Whether they are armed with bombs or bacteria, stopping weaponized individuals from harming others ─ intentionally or unintentionally ─ falls perfectly within the purview of the “night-watchman state of classical-liberal theory”.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“The Swine Are Loose,” http://takimag.com/article/the_swine_are_loose#axzz3461cvrNm Taki’s Magazine, May 2, 2009.
2000s, 2009

Night

“All That You Can't Leave Behind and How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb are both really mad long titles. As I've just said them, I've just realised how ridiculous the titles are.”

Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2

CNN Interview, after the 2006 Grammys http://www.cnn.com/video/player/player.html?url=/video/showbiz/2006/02/09/u2.wins.five.grammys.cnn&wm=10 (9 February 2006)

Madness

“I drove to a hospital for Afghan civilians with a group of nurses – we brought presents for the children. Toys, candy, cookies. I had about five teddy bears. We arrived at the hospital, a long barracks. No one has more than a blanket for bedding. A young Afghan woman approached me, holding a child in her arms. She wanted to say something – over the last ten years almost everyone here has learned to speak a little Russian – and I handed the child a toy, which he took with his teeth. "Why his teeth?" I asked in surprise. She pulled the blanket off his tiny body – the little boy was missing both arms. "It was when your Russians bombed."”

Svetlana Alexievich (1948) Belarusian investigative journalist and non-fiction prose writer

Someone held me up as I began to fall.
Nobel Lecture (2015)

Children , Boy , Learning

“Oklahoma City bombing was done on purpose. Did you know the Federal Government blew up their own building to blame it on the militias and to get rid of some people that weren't cooperating with the system?”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Evolution: the Foundation for Communism, Nazism, Socialism, and the New World Order (2003)

People

“I don't think that Israel has any legal or moral justification for their massive bombing of the entire nation of Lebanon.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

As quoted in "The US and Israel Stand Alone" in Der Spiegel (15 August 2006) http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,431793,00.html
Post-Presidency

Thinking

“Not that I don't think irreverent humor and someone being filthy is funny, I just do what I do. Any comedian would admit throwing an f-bomb in there would help get a reaction. … I'm not on a Puritanical pursuit, but when I would curse in a joke, I believe I'm not done writing it.”

Jim Gaffigan (1966) comedian, actor, author

Tim Brouk (September 6, 2007) "Jim Gaffigan returns to his old stomping grounds, Purdue", Journal and Courier, pp. 1, 2D.

Thinking , Help

“They bombed innocent people trying to murder Saddam
When they gave 'em those chemical weapons to go to war with Iran
This is the information they hold back from Peter Jennings 'cause Condoleeza Rice is just a new-age Sally Hemmings.”

Immortal Technique (1978) American rapper and activist

The 4th Branch
Albums, Revolutionary Vol. 2 (2003)

War , People , Age

“There is complete consensus on this issue. It is self-evident in Islam that it is prohibited to have nuclear bombs. It is eternal law, because the basic function of these weapons is to kill innocent people. This cannot be reversed … You cannot deliberately kill innocent people.”

Yousef Saanei (1937) Iranian grand ayatollah

As quoted in "Nuclear weapons unholy, Iran says" in SFGate (31 October 2003) http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/10/31/MNGHJ2NFRE1.DTL.
2003

People , Law

“What should have occurred after the fall of the Berlin Wall? For almost 50 years, America had sacrificed its wealth and at times the lives of its young, to contain armed communism. Its brave pilots risked their lives by skimming the hills of Western Europe to the great annoyance of German picnickers whose liberty depended, in fact, on such sacrifice. Its submariners left behind comfort, family, and friends, to make full deterrents real. Its men and women in uniform stood at places of peril, willing to risk their lives for our liberty. The West did whatever it had to do to prevent the armed Bolsheviks from achieving tactical or strategic superiority. It sustained its will and its great burden of debt even when its artists, college students, professors, authors and filmmakers, turned against the alleged folly of such efforts. It obsessed on communism and anti-communism; it was haunted by its own and its enemy's bombs, missiles, and nuclear strategies. This was the burden it chose to bear. And then, in a seeming miracle, the fatal weaknesses of tyranny, central planning, and il-liberalism, at a moment of American will, were actualized in the collapse of European communism. Now we could assess and do a real accounting of what we had fought to preserve and to prevent.”

Alan Charles Kors (1943) American academic

2010s, Socialism's Legacy (2011)

Women , Men , Family , Communication

“Some Republicans are not going to want to hear this, but I live near Fort Campbell, and there are 50,000 soldiers there. I tell people you have to truly imagine what your feelings would be if those soldiers were Chinese soldiers and they were occupying the United States. We wouldn't have it. Republican and Democrat, we'd be blowing up the Chinese with roadside bombs as they were coming off the base. No country wants foreign soldiers on their land.”

Rand Paul (1963) American politician, ophthalmologist, and United States Senator from Kentucky

Campaign rally for Ron Paul, 2008-01-31
on US forces in Iraq
2000s

People , Feeling , Imagination , Country

“Dark underbelly to all of this. Sarajevo, where the [Olympic] Games were held in '84, is under threat. The UN and NATO have ordered the Serbs to have their big guns off the surrounding hills by midnight, February 20. All the love that is being manifested in these Games was once manifested in Sarajevo. The cameras pan across the great stadium — bombed out, an empty shell. […] Ten years ago, all that glory gleamed in the center of what is now a cemetery for the dead killed in a ferocious attack. What sense does it make?”

Marion Woodman (1928–2018) Canadian writer

Source: Bone: Dying into Life (2000), p. 94

Love , Game , Sense , Dead

“Punk: I can't help but feel a little resp… hell, who am I kidding? I feel like I started this whole thing. This is all my fault. I've been at the epicenter of everything controversial ever since you took over—actually, since before that, I'm sure you remember, John-Boy.
Cena: I was there.
Punk: You were there. I'm the guy that made walking out look cool. The thing about is I think everybody in the parking lot having a picnic right now have completely misunderstood what I was trying to do. See, I didn't break my contract, I didn't break my word. My contract expired, and I was trying to prove a point to an entire company, not just one man. If anybody has any reason to walk out of the WWE, well you can probably put me at the top of that list. I mean, my microphone constantly cuts out, your friend Kevin Nash runs through the… well, slowly, briskly runs through the crowd, jumps me and screws me not once, but twice. Somebody here doesn't want me to be the WWE Champion. The thing about it is this entire industry is based on men solving their problems in between these ropes. This is the company that gives you Hell in a Cell, this is the company that gives you the Elimination Chamber. I don't wanna sound like a broken record, but "unsafe working environment"? I thrive on that! Hell, this is professional wrestling, this ain't ballet! If you believe in something, you stand and you fight, and you fight on the front line; you don't have a hippie sit-in and grill tofu dogs in the parking lot like a bunch of hippies. [To Triple H] When I had a problem with you and your authority, I dealt with you personally. [To Cena] And you, you big boy scout, when I had a problem with you being the poster boy for this company, I dealt with you personally. Shea-Mo, I'm sure sooner or later, you're gonna step on my toes, I will deal with you personally. Now, I know you three smiley good guys look across the ring from me, and I'm the last guy you expect to see here, [to Triple H] and I know I'm the last guy you expect to see in the foxhole with you. But you know what? Here I am. So… so I got a question—what do we do now?
Triple H: "What do we do now?" That's a big question, "what do we do now?" I say we do what we do on Monday Night Raw—we shut up and fight! How about this? As long as you guys are in agreement, Sheamus, you got yourself a match, fella. Tonight, right here, right now, you will go one-on-one with… [Punk raises his hand] one John Cena. And since I'm the only guy kinda wearing stripes out here, I'll referee. And, foxhole buddy, I got a whole table over there lined up with headphones and pipe bombs just waiting for you with your name on it. And if you want, you can go over there and say anything you feel like.
Punk: You want me to do commentary?!
Triple H: I want you to do commentary.
Punk: Can I wear your blazer?!
Triple H: You can even wear my blazer!
Punk: I'm in!”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

October 10, 2011
WWE Raw

Men , Dogs , Guy , Feeling

“It's the same old theme
Since nineteen-sixteen
In your head, in your head, they are fighting
With their tanks, and their bombs
And their bombs, and their guns
In your head, in your head they are crying
In your head, in your head
Zombie, zombie, zombie-ie-ie
What's in your head, in your head
Zombie, zombie, zombie-ie-ie, oh”

Dolores O'Riordan (1971–2018) Irish singer

"Zombie" (1993)

Fight , Cry

“Our planet… consists largely of lumps of fall-out from a star-sized hydrogen bomb…Within our bodies, no less than three million atoms rendered unstable in that event still erupt every minute, releasing a tiny fraction of the energy stored from that fierce fire of long ago.”

James E. Lovelock (1919) independent scientist, environmentalist and futurist

Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (1979)

Star

“Teller’s irascible behavior forced him out of the mainstream but not out of the lab, thanks to Oppenheimer who didn’t think we should be without geniuses, even those whose enormous egos caused serious friction. As bright and innovative as Teller was, his overall performance during the war left a lot to be desired. He was not content to be part of a team effort (like yours truly) and preferred to work off to the side on new and different and sometime pretty far-out ideas (like yours truly). This caused considerable resentment. After all there was a war going on and most people thought future nuclear weapon concepts should be worked on sometime in the future, after we had finished our primary assignment. Edward’s behavior was like a colonel on a planning staff during a military campaign who tells his commanding general that he’d like to plan for the next war. That would be the end of the colonel, who would be demoted and shipped off to some base in the Aleutian Islands.
[5]Oppenheimer, however, realized that guys like Teller, despite their shortcomings, were necessary to have around; one never knows when a guy like that can be worth his weight in gold, which to the best of my recollection never happened with Teller. So an arrangement was worked out where Teller and a handful of like-minded theoretical physicists, willing to put up with his domineering ways, formed a small group dedicated to doing what they pleased, realizing their efforts stood precious little chance of impacting on the project.
[5]The one idea dearest to Teller’s heart was the H-bomb. He and a couple of his cronies applied themselves to devising various schemes on designing such a weapon. All of them turned out to be impractical and most of them unworkable. Which never slowed him down in the slightest for reasons we’ll never know nor will he. I’ve known Edward for a very long time and although I’ve never known him well, one thing about him became clear to me from the very beginning: he was a creature possessed. By what? Again, who knows? Many, if not most, who have read about his life and what he has done, plus those who have known him directly and observed him close at hand and at great length, would say by Satan (which has been said all over the world about me). I wouldn’t go along with that and although I have seen Teller give some of the most impassioned statements morally defending his positions, some of which I have found deeply moving and thoroughly convincing, I would not say that the God I’ve been told exists has had a tight hold on him. If Edward has been possessed by anyone it’s been himself. I’d say the same for myself, and I’ve given you some reasons why, but hardly all of them. I don’t know all of them and would be ashamed to tell you if I did.”

Samuel T. Cohen (1921–2010) American physicist

F*** You! Mr. President: Confessions of the Father of the Neutron Bomb (2006)

Life , God , War , People

“Today the atomic bomb has altered profoundly the nature of the world as we know it, and the human race consequently finds itself in a new habitat to which it must adapt its thinking.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

"Only Then Shall We Find Courage", New York Times Magazine (23 June 1946).
1940s

World , Nature , Thinking

“Peace is not so much a political mandate as it is a shared state of consciousness that remains elevated and intact only to the degree that those who value it volunteer their existence as living examples of the same. It does not end when jetliners are used as bombs to decimate skyscrapers, nor does it end when a father shoots to death his adolescent son and daughter. Peace ends with the unraveling of individual hope and the emergence of the will to worship violence as a healer of private and social dis-ease. It is, after all, not only nations and communities that need peace so desperately but individuals divided against other individuals and within themselves.”

Aberjhani (1957) author

(p. 257, The American Poet Who Went Home Again).
Book Sources, The American Poet Who Went Home Again (2008)

Death , Peace , Hope , Communication

“It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

After the devastation of Dresden by aerial bombing, and the resulting fire storm (February 1945). Quoted in Where the Right Went Wrong (2004) by Patrick J Buchanan, p. 119 ISBN 0312341156
The Second World War (1939–1945)

Question

“As a famous Arnold Toynbee quote puts it, "Civilizations die from suicide, not murder", as can be seen throughout much of the Western world right now. The progressive agenda — lavish social welfare, abortion, agnosticism, multiculturalism — is collectively the real suicide bomb.”

Mark Steyn (1959) Canadian writer

It's the Demography, Stupid (2006)

World , Quotes , Suicide

“Something tells me a bomb would pretty much take our bus out.”

Ben Moody (1981) American musician

Random stuff

“The catastrophe of the atomic bombs which shook men out of cities and businesses and economic relations, shook them also out of their old-established habits of thought, and out of the lightly held beliefs and prejudices that came down to them from the past.”

H. G. Wells book The World Set Free

The World Set Free

Men , Business , Past

“The Palestinians fight for their rights and their land using stones and catapults but the Israelis retaliate with disproportional and overwhelming power by using bullets and bombs thus killing so many innocent civilians”

Bernard Membe (1953) Tanzanian politician

during the annual International Day of solidarity with the Palestinian people; quoted in Tanzania touts Middle East peace http://dailynews.co.tz/home/?n=15012&cat=home Tha Daily News (2010=11-30)

Fight

“Literature is the opposite of a nuclear bomb.”

Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist

From a speech entitled Come September http://ada.evergreen.edu/~arunc/texts/politics/comeSeptember.pdf.
Speeches

Literature

“Our efforts will only succeed if the Arabs and Turks step up in a much bigger way. This is their fight and they need to act like it. So far, however, Turkey has been more focused on the Kurds than on countering ISIS. And to be fair, Turkey has a long and painful history with Kurdish terrorist groups. But the threat from ISIS cannot wait. As difficult as it may be, we need to get Turkey to stop bombing Kurdish fighters in Syria who are battling ISIS and become a full partner of our coalition efforts against ISIS. The United States should also work with our Arab partners to get them more invested in the fight against ISIS. At the moment, they are focused in other areas.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), Speech on fighting ISIS (November 20, 2015)

Pain , Way , History , Effort

“Under the same circumstances — and the key words are "the same circumstances" — yes, I would do it again. We were in a war for five years. We were fighting an enemy that had a reputation for never surrendering, never accepting defeat. It's really hard to talk about morality and war in the same sentence. In a war, there are so many questionable things done. Where was the morality in the bombing of Coventry, or the bombing of Dresden, or the Bataan Death March, or the Rape of Nanking, or the bombing of Pearl Harbor? I believe that when you're in a war, a nation must have the courage to do what it must to win the war with a minimum loss of lives.”

Theodore Van Kirk (1921–2014) Recipient of the Silver Star

As quoted in "HIROSHIMA - Enola Gay's Crew Recalls The Flight Into a New Era" https://www.nytimes.com/1995/08/06/world/hiroshima-enola-gay-s-crew-recalls-the-flight-into-a-new-era.html?pagewanted=all (1995), The New York Times

Death , War , Courage , Question

“When you're the most powerful entity in the world, as the US government certainly is—the only government to have dropped nuclear bombs on civilian populations ('good' bombs, because dropped by the US)—you get to manufacture your own parallel universe with its unique rules of evidence and standards of proof. What's more, as the mightiest rule-maker, you can coerce other earthlings into 'sharing' your alternate reality. Or else.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

" Beware The Atavistic Dynamics Undergirding Two American Wars, https://misesuk.org/2017/06/21/beware-the-atavistic-dynamics-undergirding-two-american-wars/" The Ludwig von Mises Centre For Property and Freedom, June 21, 2017.
2010s, 2017

World , Reality , Universe

“Look at the movie 'Wag the Dog, I think this has all the elements of that movie. Our reaction to the embassy bombings should be based on sound, credible evidence, not a knee-jerk reaction to try to direct public attention away from his personal problems.”

Jim Gibbons (1944) American attorney, aviator, geologist, hydrologist and politician

On the Monica Lewinsky Scandal; Tokoma Tribune, 1998. http://web.archive.org/20050311213729/votegibbonsout.blogs.com/votegibbonsout/2004/03/did_gibbons_aid.html; Gibbons thought Clinton was too aggressive in taking on the terrorist threat posed by Al Qaida.

Dogs , Jerk , Problem , Thinking

“And you know what people, you ain’t gonna make a difference by buildin’ more bombs. And you ain’t gonna make a difference by puttin’ on more make-up and showin’ up on more television shows. And you’re not gonna make a difference by havin’ the loudest P. A., or the biggest crowd at your concerts. You’re gonna make a difference when you lay down your life, and in complete submission to God, choose to die with Him, in service, to other people…“For so many people that I know, Christianity is this matter of – it has everything to do with morals. ‘Christianity is a religion about morals.’ And they will even talk about Jesus, and they will say ‘Kids need to know about Jesus so that they – so that they won’t, uh – smoke, drink, or dance, or go with girls who do,’ and all that kind of thing, and I kinda go, ‘That’s not why people need to know about Jesus.’ The only reason – the only possible excuse for talking about Jesus is because—we need a Savior.”

Rich Mullins (1955–1997) American christian musician

The Lord's Prayer, Here in America CD http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Here_in_America (February 1994)
In Concert

Life , God , People , Religion

“What a city, what a night, what a crowd, what a bomb, what a mistake, what a wanker you have for a President.”

Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2

Acceptance speech at the MTV Europe Music Awards, referring to French nuclear testing in Pacific (1995)

Night

“We humans are an extremely important manifestation of the replication bomb, because it is through us – through our brains, our symbolic culture and our technology – that the explosion may proceed to the next stage and reverberate through deep space.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

Source: River out of Eden (1995), Ch. 5: The Replication Bomb

“The oppressive weight of disaster and tragedy in our lives does not arise from a high percentage of evil among the summed total of all acts, but from the extraordinary power of exceedingly rare incidents of depravity to inflict catastrophic damage, especially in our technological age when airplanes can become powerful bombs. (An even more evil man, armed only with a longbow, could not have wreaked such havoc at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415.)”

Stephen Jay Gould book I Have Landed

"The Good People of Halifax", p. 390 (originally appeared in The Globe and Mail, 2001-09-20)
I Have Landed (2002)

Age , Evil

“[Nixon] wants a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. He doesn't want to hear anything about it. It's an order, to be done. Anything that flies on anything that moves.”

Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) United States Secretary of State

Phone call with Gen. Alexander Haig (9 December 1970) quoted in National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 123. The quotation was an excerpt from one of several phone conversations in which Kissinger ridiculed Nixon’s views about the war: "When Nixon proposed an escalation in the bombing of Cambodia, Kissinger and Haig felt obliged to humor the president while laughing at him behind his back" (Washington Post, May 27, 2004). Transcript at the National Security Archive http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB123/Box%2029,%20File%202,%20Kissinger%20%96%20Haig,%20Dec%209,%201970%208,50%20pm%20106-10.pdf
1970s

“Iraq hasn't suddenly 'slipped back into' this backward and benighted state. It was bombed there by a mulish military power which didn't know Shiite from Shinola. [translated from German]”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"Irak: Von Tuten und Blasen keine Ahnung gehabt" http://jungefreiheit.de/kolumne/2014/irak-von-tuten-und-blasen-keine-ahnung-gehabt/, Junge Freiheit, June 27, 2014.
2010s, 2014

“I was in Japan a couple of months ago, I saw a preview for the movie Pearl Harbor. And they showed the Japanese airplanes coming in to bomb Pearl Harbor, and I applauded. Nobody else in the theater applauded.”

Bobby Fischer (1943–2008) American chess prodigy, chess player, and chess writer

Radio Interview, July 6 2001 http://www.geocities.jp/bobbby_b/mp3/F_18_3.MP3
2000s

“[Churchill's wartime menus] show him slurping bottles of whisky, champagne [and] brandy with every sumptuous meal, while the underclass fought and starved for the privilege of poverty and unemployment. Thankfully, the Germans bombed Glasgow back to full employment. Even in the 1960s Earl Mountbatten was prosecuted for adding water to the milk on his farm so you can imagine how the landed gentry 'rationed' themselves during the war.”

Ian Brady (1938–2017) British serial killer, perpetrator of the Moors murders

As quoted by Jean Rafferty in "My friend Ian Brady" http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/crime-courts/my-friend-ian-brady.18076533, Scotland Herald (8 July 2012)

War , Imagination , Water

“If the Europeans are telling the truth in their claim that they have killed six million Jews in the Holocaust during the World War II - which seems they are right in their claim because they insist on it and arrest and imprison those who oppose it, why should the Palestinian nation pay for the crime. Why have they come to the very heart of the Islamic world and are committing crimes against the dear Palestine using their bombs, rockets, missiles and sanctions. […] The same European countries have imposed the illegally-established Zionist regime on the oppressed nation of Palestine. If you have committed the crimes so give a piece of your land somewhere in Europe or America and Canada or Alaska to them to set up their own state there. Then the Iranian nation will have no objections, will stage no rallies on the Qods Day and will support your decision.”

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (1956) 6th President of the Islamic Republic of Iran

Translation by Islamic Republic News Agency, Dec 2005
2005, The World without Zionism, 2005

War , Truth , World , Support

“By the dim yellow glow of the overhead bulb, Lepidopt stared at the bomb and the time machine, and he tried to imagine what might go wrong.”

Tim Powers book Three Days to Never

Source: Three Days to Never (2006), Chapter 27 (p. 377)

Imagination , Time

“I returned to civilization shortly after that and went to Cornell to teach, and my first impression was a very strange one. I can't understand it any more, but I felt very strongly then. I sat in a restaurant in New York, for example, and I looked out at the buildings and I began to think, you know, about how much the radius of the Hiroshima bomb damage was and so forth… How far from here was 34th street?… All those buildings, all smashed — and so on. And I would go along and I would see people building a bridge, or they'd be making a new road, and I thought, they're crazy, they just don't understand, they don't understand. Why are they making new things? It's so useless. But, fortunately, it's been useless for almost forty years now, hasn't it? So I've been wrong about it being useless making bridges and I'm glad those other people had the sense to go ahead.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

On his emotional reaction after the first uses of the atomic bomb.
Part 3: "Feynman, The Bomb, and the Military", "Los Alamos from Below", p. 136
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (1985)

People , Understanding , Thinking , Sense

“I have this theory about words: There’s a thousand ways to say "Pass the salt." It could mean, you know, "Can I have some salt?" or it could mean, "I love you." It could mean "I’m very annoyed with you" – really, the list could go on and on. Words are little bombs, and they have a lot of energy inside them.”

Christopher Walken (1943) American actor

Shout Magazine, in the issue from August, in the article "Cookin' with Christopher Walken" (2001)

Love , Way

“Excess of severity is not the path to order. On the contrary, it is the path to the bomb.”

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) British Liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor

Vol. II, bk. 5, ch. 4.
Recollections (1917)

“On that arid square, that fragment nipped off from hot
Africa, soldered so crudely to inventive Europe;
On that tableland scored by rivers,
Our thoughts have bodies; the menacing shapes of our feverAre precise and alive. For the fears which made us respond
To the medicine ad and the brochure of winter cruises
Have become invading battalions;
And our faces, the institute-face, the chain-store, the ruinAre projecting their greed as the firing squad and the bomb.
Madrid is the heart. Our moments of tenderness blossom
As the ambulance and the sandbag;
Our hours of friendship into a people's army.”

W. H. Auden book Spain

Source: Spain (1937), Lines 65–76

Friendship , People , Fear , Winter

“The atomic bomb is a marvelous gift that was given to our country by a wise God.”

Phyllis Schlafly (1924–2016) American activist

Quoted in Women are the Best Warmakers, Raymond Coffey, The Day, New London, Connecticut, 1982-07-08 http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=6RIhAAAAIBAJ&sjid=P3UFAAAAIBAJ&pg=5075,1148166&dq=the-atomic-bomb-is-a-marvelous-gift&hl=en,

God , Country

“During bombing raids in Iraq, the media liked to say that Saddam Hussein used people as human shields. That's not accurate. Although it's true they were used as shields, the fact is they were humans already. So if these humans were used as shields, they were human shields. They weren't being used as human shields. Got that?”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Books, When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? (2004)

People

“More than a bomb or gun/ The footwear is a potent weapon,/ For, what years of shouting couldn’t do/ A momentary missile has done/ And, in the bargain, blackened/ A Journalist’s profession;/ Even if justice has won/ Even Bush to Chidambaram/ It is becoming a bit too common;/ Thank God, it is as yet with danger fraught/ Thank God, my wife has yet used it not.”

Khushwant Singh (1915–2014) Indian novelist and journalist

Quoted in "Do you want India to be a Hindu rashtra?"

God , Justice

“Science is unreasonably effective, it's generated knowledge beyond all expectation. It's also delivered perspective. Yes, we are an insignificant speck in an infinite universe, but we're also rare. And because we're rare, we're valuable. So what are we to do to secure our future? Well, we must learn to value the acquisition of knowledge for its own sake, and not just because it grows our economy or allows us to build better bombs. We must also learn to value the human race and take responsibility for our own survival. Why? Because there's nobody else out there to value us or to look after us. And finally, most important of all, we must educate the next generation in the great discoveries of science and we must teach them to use the light of reason to banish the darkness of superstition, because if we do that, then at least there's a chance that this universe will remain a human one.”

Brian Cox (physicist) (1968) English physicist and former musician

Human Universe, episode 5

Education , Knowledge , Light , Learning

“Yes, we are living in a world of fear. The life of man today is corroded and made bitter by fear. Fear of the future, fear of the hydrogen bomb, fear of ideologies. Perhaps this fear is a greater danger than the danger itself, because it is fear which drives men to act foolishly, to act thoughtlessly, to act dangerously....”

Sukarno (1901–1970) first President of the Republic of Indonesia

Speech at the Opening of the Bandung Conference

Life , Men , World , Fear

“Marcia: Hayley, I congratulate you from a singers point of view because that's a very hard song to sing. George are the bomb. You did a great job.”

Hayley Jensen (1983) Australian singer

Australian Idol, Final Performances, Final 8

Singing

“The war won’t end,” Aviger said. “It’ll just die away…I don’t think the Culture will give in like everybody thinks it will. I think they’ll keep fighting because they believe in it. The Idirans won’t give in, either; they’ll keep fighting to the last, and they and the Culture will just keep going at each other all the time, all over the galaxy eventually, and their weapons and bombs and rays and things will just keep getting better and better, and in the end the whole galaxy will become a battleground until they’ve blown up all the stars and planets and Orbitals and everything else big enough to stand on, and then they’ll destroy all of each other’s big ships and then the little ships, too, until everybody’ll be living in single units blowing each other up with weapons that could destroy a planet…and that’s how it’ll end; probably they’ll invent guns or drones that are even smaller, and there’ll only be a few smaller and smaller machines fighting over whatever’s left of the galaxy, and there’ll be nobody left to know how it all started in the first place.”

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, Consider Phlebas (1987), Chapter 11 “The Command System: Stations” (pp. 380-381).

War , Star , Thinking , Time

“You can't bomb for a humane reason. What we should do is just Mother Teresa them to death with love. It's that old hippie nonsense but it's still the best stuff there is.”

Ken Kesey (1935–2001) novelist

Trip of a Lifetime (1999)

Love , Death

“The British, Chinese, and United States Governments have given the Japanese people adequate warning of what is in store for them. We have laid down the general terms on which they can surrender. Our warning went unheeded; our terms were rejected. Since then the Japanese have seen what our atomic bomb can do. They can foresee what it will do in the future.”

Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)

Report on the Potsdam Conference (1945)

People , Future

“Anyway, I'm sort of glad they've got the atomic bomb invented. If there's ever another war, I'm going to sit right the hell on top of it. I'll volunteer for it, I swear to God I will.”

Jerome David Salinger book The Catcher in the Rye

Source: The Catcher in the Rye (1951), Chapter 18

God , War , Hell

“An atomic Iran is imminent … mullahs may have bomb by June.”

Jerome Corsi (1946) American conservative author

Title of article, WorldNetDaily (2005-04-01) http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=43590

“In combination with other infernal contraptions, like rockets to deliver bombs at large distances, chemical, biological and radioactive poisons, such a war must mean a degree of human suffering and degradation which is beyond the power of imagination. No country would be immune, but those with highly developed industry would suffer most. It is very doubtful whether our technological civilization would survive such a catastrophe.
One may be inclined to regard this as no great loss, but as a just punishment for its shortcomings and sins: the lack of productive genius in art and literature, the neglect of the moral teachings of religion and philosophy, the slowness to abandon outdated political conceptions, like national sovereignty. Yet we are all involved in this tragedy, and the instinct of self-preservation, the love of our children, makes us think about a way of salvation.”

Max Born (1882–1970) physicist

Physics in my generation (1956)

Love , War , Children , Religion

“World War I a railway war of centralization and encirclement. World War II a radio war of decentralization concluded by the Bomb. World War III a TV guerrilla war with no divisions between civil and military fronts.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1970s, Take Today : The Executive as Dropout (1972), p. 152

War , World

“Terrorists are insane people, clothes also can change one's thoughts sometimes. When we were searching for prisoners who had escaped a detention centre, Melis Turganbayev (the former interior minister) came to me and said that they had been eavesdropping on telephone conversations of wives and mistresses of criminals. Their wives and mistresses wore sacks on their heads and they wanted to organise bombings. If you do not like Kyrgyzstan you can leave our country and go wherever you want. We can pay your travel expenses, even to Syria.”

Almazbek Atambayev (1956) President of Kyrgyzstan

Speaking at a press conference — Kyrgyzstan president: 'Women in mini skirts don't become suicide bombers' http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-36846249, BBC (13 August 2016)

People , Travel , Search , Change

“Preparedness to use atomic bombs against men and women and children is a proclamation of faith, a confession of confidence in the rightness and effectiveness of human slaughter as a means of seeking safety and of maintaining justice.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Now is the Time to Prevent a Third World War (1950)

Women , Men , Children , Faith

“This group is composed of those for whom belief in saucers is tantamount to religion…They believe men from outer space will step in on Earth "before it's too late," put a stop to the atomic bomb threat "by their superior powers," and enforce perpetual peace "for the good of the universe"…”

Frank Herbert (1920–1986) American writer

On UFO cultists, In "Flying Saucers: Fact or Farce?", San Francisco Sunday Examiner & Chronicle, "People" supplement, (20 October 1963); reprinted in The Maker of Dune : Insights of a Master of Science Fiction (1987), edited by Tim O'Reilly
General sources

Men , Peace , Religion , Universe

“Nowadays, ever since the attack on the Pentagon in 2001, the capital has been clamped down. How is this manifested? Giant planters blocking government buildings, giant planters barricading every other street. Theoretically, the concrete flowerpots are solid enough to fend off a truck bomb. And yet the effect is ridiculous, as if we believe we can protect ourselves from suicide bombers by hiding behind blooming pots of marigolds, flowers whose main defensive property is repelling rabbits.”

Sarah Vowell book Assassination Vacation

Source: Assassination Vacation (2005), pp. 23-24

Flowers , Suicide

“Poem: After the Bomb had Fallen”

Mary Wilson (1916–2018) British poet, wife of Harold Wilson

“"We didn't bomb the train tunnel, you know. Some of them will probably get out."
"And then we'll shoot them when they show their faces?" I ask.
"Only if we have to," he answers.”

Suzanne Collins (1962) American television writer and novelist

Boggs and Katniss (pp. 209-210)
The Hunger Games trilogy, Mockingjay (2010)

Training

“My God! The English language is a form of communication! Conversation isn’t just crossfire where you shoot and get shot at! Where you’ve got to duck for your life and aim to kill! Words aren’t only bombs and bullets — no, they’re little gifts, containing meanings!”

Philip Roth book Portnoy's Complaint

Source: Portnoy's Complaint (1969), Ch. 4: "The Most Prevalent Form of Degradation in Erotic Life"

Life , God , Communication

“I find wholly baffling the widespread belief today that the dropping of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs was an immoral act, even possibly a war crime to rank with Nazi genocide.”

J. G. Ballard (1930–2009) British writer

"The End of My War", originally printed in the [London] Sunday Times (1995)
A User's Guide to the Millennium (1996)

War

“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.”

Leó Szilárd (1898–1964) Physicist and biologist

"President Truman Did Not Understand" in U.S. News & World Report (15 August 1960)

Exercises , Thinking , Sense

“The rash assertion that 'God made man in His own image' is ticking like a time bomb at the foundation of many faiths, and as the hierarchy of the universe is disclosed to us, we may have to recognize this chilling truth: if there are any gods whose chief concern is man, they cannot be very important gods.”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

Space and the Spirit of Man (1965)

God , Truth , Faith , Universe

“The bombs I dropped on Germany between 1940 and 1944 maybe killed a Rilke or a Goethe or a Hölderin in his cradle. And yes, of course, if it had to be done over, I would do it again. Hitler had condemned us to kill. Not even the most just causes are ever innocent.”

Romain Gary (1914–1980) French writer and diplomat

As quoted in Hope and Memory: Lessons from the Twentieth Century (2003) by Tzvetan Todorov, p. 217

“If one day we are able to complete the fuel cycle and the world sees that it has no choice, that we do possess the technology, then the situation will be different. The world did not want Pakistan to have an atomic bomb or Brazil to have the fuel cycle, but Pakistan built its bomb and Brazil has its fuel cycle, and the world started to work with them. Our problem is that we have not achieved either one, but we are standing at the threshold.”

Hassan Rouhani (1948) 7th President of Islamic Republic of Iran

Discussing how Iran could one day present the world with a nuclear fait accompli, like Pakistan and Brazil did
2004 speech to the Supreme Cultural Revolution Council

World , Problem

“President Obama keeps insisting that ISIS is not Islamic. Well, maybe they don't practice the Muslim faith the same way he does, but if vast numbers of Muslims across the world believe, and they do, that humans deserve to die for merely holding a different idea, or drawing a cartoon, or writing a book, or eloping with the wrong person, not only does the Muslim world have something in common with ISIS, it has too much in common with ISIS. There's so much talk … about wiping out ISIS. You can't, not with bombs. You can only expose that something is a bad idea … Cultures are different. It's okay to judge that rule of law isn't just different than theocracy, it's better. If you don't see that, you're either a religious fanatic or a masochist, but one thing you certainly are not is a liberal. To count yourself as a liberal, you have to stand up for liberal principles. Free speech, separation of church and state, freedom to practice any religion or no religion without the threat of violence. Respect for minorities including homosexuals, equality for women.”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2014/09/27/maher_rips_liberals_over_islam_if_were_giving_no_quarter_to_intolerance_shouldnt_we_start_with_honor_killers.html September 26, 2014.
Real Time with Bill Maher

Women , Books , World , Faith

“I would say to the leaders of the Soviet Union, and to their people, that if either of our countries is to be fully secure, we need a much better weapon than the H-bomb — a weapon better than ballistic missiles or nuclear submarines — and that better weapon is peaceful cooperation.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1963, UN speech

People , Peace , Country

“I am urging the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) leader to stop these bomb and grenade attacks, these acts of sabotage, and killings, of arson and damage to property.”

Sheikh Hasina (1947) Prime Minister of Bangladesh

“Anyone who is a Palestinian citizen, whether Christian, Jewish or Muslim, should decide together in a very free referendum. There is no need for war. There is no need for threats or an atom bomb either.”

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (1956) 6th President of the Islamic Republic of Iran

2006
Source: Time Magazine, December 2006 http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1570714,00.html

War

“We are going to scourge the Third Reich from end to end. We are bombing Germany city by city and ever more terribly in order to make it impossible for her to go on with the war. That is our object; we shall pursue it relentlessly.”

Arthur Travers Harris (1892–1984) Royal Air Force air marshal

Radio address (28 July 1942), as quoted by Sir Courtauld Thomson, in a House of Lords debate on bombing policy (9 February 1944) http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1944/feb/09/bombing-policy

War

“Soldiers, by an agreement between General Ironhewer and me, the troops of the Army of Kentucky have surrendered. That we are beaten is a self-evident fact, and we cannot hope to resist the bomb that hangs over our head like the sword of Damocles. Richmond is fallen. The cause for which you have so long and manfully struggled, and for which you have braved dangers and made so many sacrifices, is today hopeless. Reason dictates and humanity demands that no more blood be shed here. It is your sad duty, and mine, to lay down our arms and to aid in restoring peace. As your commander, I sincerely hope that every officer and soldier will carry out in good faith all the terms of the surrender. War such as you have passed through naturally engenders feelings of animosity, hatred, and revenge. But in captivity and when you return home a manly, straightforward course of conduct will secure the respect even of your enemies. In bidding you farewell, rest assured that you carry with you my best wishes for your future welfare and happiness. I have never sent you where I was unwilling to go myself, nor would I advise you to a course I felt myself unwilling to pursue. You have been good soldiers. Preserve your honor, and the government to which you have surrendered can afford to me and, I hope, will be magnanimous.”

Harry Turtledove book Settling Accounts: In at the Death

C.S. Army General George S. Patton's final address to the Army of Kentucky in July 1944, p. 339
Settling Accounts: In at the Death (2007)

War , Sadness , Peace , Faith

“The bomb reveals the dreadful and total contingency of human existence. Existentialism is the philosophy of the atomic age.”

William Barrett (philosopher) book Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy

Source: Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy (1958), Chapter Three, The Testimony Of Modern Art, p. 57

Age

“I didn't like the atom bomb or any part of it.”

Ernest King (1878–1956) United States Navy admiral, Chief of Naval Operations

King's comment to Commander Whitehill on July 4, 1950, which was transcribed in Whitehill's notes. As quoted in The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth (1995) by Gar Alperovitz, p. 321

Parting

“Before the prospect of an intelligence explosion, we humans are like small children playing with a bomb. Such is the mismatch between the power of our plaything and the immaturity of our conduct. Superintelligence is a challenge for which we are not ready now and will not be ready for a long time. We have little idea when the detonation will occur, though if we hold the device to our ear we can hear a faint ticking sound.”

Nick Bostrom book Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies

Source: Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (2014), Ch. 15

Children , Intelligence , Idea , Time

“The bomb exploded the junk in Vladimir's trunk. Y'know, they always said that Communists would get it in the end.”

Rachel Maddow (1973) American journalist

The Rachel Maddow Show MSNBC (1 April 2009)
Commenting on a bomb that blew a hole in an 80-year-old St. Petersburg statue of Vladimir Lenin.

“Yet to enter approved memory is the "finale" described in the official Air Force history, a 1000-plane raid on civilian targets organized by General "Hap" Arnold to celebrate the war's end, five days after Nagasaki. According to survivors, leaflets were dropped among the bombs announcing the surrender.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Quotes 1990s, 1995-1999, Z Magazine, July 1995

War , History , Memory

“In 1948 the Democrats had little choice but to nominate President Truman, under the banner HE'S GOING TO LOSE. Everybody felt this way: the politicians, the press, the pollsters, the piccolo players, Peter Piper, everybody. The Republicans were so confident that they nominated an individual named Thomas Dewey, whose lone accomplishment was inventing the decimal system. Truman campaigned doggedly around the nation, but his cause appeared to be hopeless. A Dewey victory seemed so inevitable that on election night, the Chicago Tribune printed the famous front-page headline DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN. This was because Dewey had defeated Truman, who immediately threatened to drop an atomic bomb on Chicago, so everybody went ha-ha-ha-ha, just kidding, and wisely elected to have the feisty ex-haberdasher have another term.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Source: Dave Barry Slept Here: A Sort of History of the United States (1989), p. 131

Way , Confidence , Appearance , Victory

“I do not personally regard the whole of the remaining cities of Germany as worth the bones of one British Grenadier. It therefore seems to me that there is one and only one valid argument on which a case for giving up strategic bombing could be based, namely that it has already completed its task and that nothing now remains for the Armies to do except to occupy Germany against unorganized resistance.”

Arthur Travers Harris (1892–1984) Royal Air Force air marshal

Letter to Sir Norman Bottomley (29 March 1945), quoted in [ Bomber Harris: The Story of Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Arthur Harris (1985) by Dudley Saward, p. 294

Personality

“He's an FBI Bomb Dog!!! Do you know how cool that is?! That's the people equivalent of like if Paul Newman was a fire fighting, baby kissing rock square!”

Darby Conley (1970) American cartoonist

Bucky Katt's Big Book of fun, page 147
Bucky Katt, Satchel Pooch

People , Dogs , Kiss , Fight

“Isn't this the prettiest little thing you've ever seen? It was over a year ago I held this belt high in the air after I fought for it for the first time in Dayton, Ohio against Samoa Joe and I proclaimed this belt the most important thing to me. Right now, in my hands, as of this day 6/18/05, THIS becomes the most important belt in the world! This belt in the hands of any other man is just a belt, but in my hands it becomes power. Just like this microphone in the hands of any of the boys in the back is just a microphone, but in the hands of a dangerous man like myself it becomes a pipe-bomb. These words that I speak spoken by anybody else are just words strung loosely together to form sentences. What I say I mean, and what I mean I say, and they become anthems! You see, if I could be afforded the time here a little bit of a story. There was once an old man, walking home from work. He was walking in the snow, and he stumbled upon a snake frozen in the ice. He took that snake, and he brought it home, and he took care of it, and he thawed it out, and he nursed it back to health. And as soon as that snake was well enough, it bit the old man. And as the old man lay there dying he asked the snake, 'Why? I took care of you. I loved you. I saved your life.' And that snake looked that man right in the eye and said, 'You stupid old man. I'm a snake.' The greatest thing the devil ever did was make you people believe he didn't exist… and you're looking at him right now! I AM THE DEVIL HIMSELF! And all of you stupid, mindless people fell for it! You all believed in the same make-believe superhero that the legendary Ricky 'The Dragon' Steamboat saw some year ago today. No, you see, you don't know anything. You followed me hook-line and sinker, all of you did, and I'm not mad at you… I just feel sorry for you. This belongs to me! Everything you see here belongs to me, and I did what I had to do to get my hands on this. Now I am the GREATEST PRO WRESTLER walkin' the Earth today! This is my stage, this is my theater, you are my puppets! When I pulled those marionette strings, and I moved your emotions, and I played with them, and honestly it's 'cause I get off on it. I hate each and every single one of you with a thousand burns and I will not stop… I will not stop until I prove that I am better than you, that I am better than Low Ki, that I am better than AJ Styles! I'm better than Samoa Joe. Ladies and gentlemen, the champ is here! You don't have to love it, but you better learn to accept it. 'Cause I'm taking this with me, and there's not a single person in that locker room that can stop me!”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

Ring of Honor, Death Before Dishonor III. June 18th, 2005.
This promo took place directly after Punk defeated Austin Aries for the ROH World Championship proceeding to turn the, at the time face, Punk heel. Directly after this promo Christopher Daniels made his first appearance in ROH in over a year to challenge for the belt. This promo also made reference to an old parable http://www.snopes.com/critters/malice/scorpion.htm about an animal doing an act of kindness to another creature that is venomous and being surprised when the animal injects the venom to the creature after the act of kindness who then proceeds to explain it is their nature to perform the act.
Ring of Honor

Love , Life , Hate , People

“There's only two paragraphs in there about George Washington … little or nothing about Martin Luther King, a whole section on slavery and how evil we are, a whole section on Japanese internment camps and how we slaughtered millions of Japanese with our bombs… I think most people when they finish that course, they'd be ready to go sign up for ISIS … We have got to stop this silliness crucifying ourselves.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

As quoted in "Fox News' Ben Carson Thinks New AP U.S. History Course Will Make Students Join ISIS" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/01/ben-carson-ap-us-history_n_5910982.html, The Huffington Post (January 10, 2014)

People , Thinking , Evil

“The invention of the printing press probably marks the beginning of the decline of civilization. Once you have it, science follows close behind. Next thing you know the idiots have better weaponry. Then atom bombs. Meantime, social organization becomes increasingly dependent on technology, which becomes increasingly vulnerable to error or sabotage. If we can judge by our own experience, it looks as if you get the printing press, then about a thousand years. After that it’s back to the trees.”

Jack McDevitt (1935) American novelist, Short story writer

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 27 (p. 243)

Error , Tree , Science , Dependency

“I chose to bomb a federal building because such an action served more purposes than other options. Foremost, the bombing was a retaliatory strike; a counter attack, for the cumulative raids and subsequent violence and damage that federal agents had participated in over the preceding years (including, but not limited to, Waco.) From the formation of such units as the FBI's 'Hostage Rescue' and other assault teams amongst federal agencies during the '80s; culminating in the Waco incident, federal actions grew increasingly militaristic and violent, to the point where at Waco, our government - like the Chinese - was deploying tanks against its own citizens.”

Timothy McVeigh (1968–2001) American army soldier, security guard, terrorist

2000s, Why I Bombed the Murrah Federal Building (2001)

“Cambodia only protests against the destruction of the property and lives of Cambodians. All I can say is that I cannot make a protest as long as I am not informed. But I will protest if there is any destruction of Khmer life and property.
Here it is - the first report about several B-52 bombings. Yet I have not been informed about that at all, because I have not lost any houses, any countrymen, nothing, nothing. Nobody was caught in those barrages - nobody, Cambodians.”

Norodom Sihanouk (1922–2012) Cambodian King

Stated two months (May 13, 1969) after American bombings in Cambodia began, as quoted by Henry Kissinger (2000), Years of Renewal, page 498.

Life , Housing

“Nations don't make twelve-inch guns to shoot quail. They don't drop bombs in mid-Pacific lagoons to kill fish. War is inevitable until the time comes when nations give up their sovereign right to make war and learn to settle their problems peacefully.”

Bill Downs (1914–1978) American journalist

CBS News Mid-Century Roundup (1950)

War , Problem , Fish , Learning

“Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. …the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent.
During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower book Mandate for Change

The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude...
The White House Years: Mandate for Change: 1953–1956: A Personal Account (1963), pp. 312-313
1960s

Wisdom , War , World , Way

“Listen, bin Laden is - you know, he's not irrelevant. He was important all along. Just the fact that he was able to elude capture or being killed for nearly a decade, actually more than a decade if you go back to the embassy bombings in 1998 when we first went after him. He's been a symbol of resistance and also of the failure of American policy to reach out and stop this kind of terror. It emboldened other imitators all around the globe. So getting bin Laden is immeasurably important.”

Lawrence Wright (1947) American writer

[Terry Gross, Lawrence Wright : Bin Laden's Death 'Long In Coming', Fresh Air, National Public Radio, May 2, 2011]

Failure

“We need to send the message that anyone who orders suicide bombings against Americans, or protects those who do, commits suicide himself. And U. S. marines will search every cave in Afghanistan to make that principle stick. You order, you die — absolutely, positively, you die.”

Thomas Friedman (1953) American journalist and author

New York Times (6 January 2002) "Someone Tell the Kids".

Search , Suicide

“You who are apprentices in the field of public administration share with me who am older the task of trying to understand the new conditions in our field. Within a single generation, two world wars and a major depression have engulfed mankind. Within the past few months, the successful trial of the atomic bomb has opened the minds of the thoughtful to new possibilities, threats and coercions, and the defeat of Germany and Japan has abruptly presented the problems of peacemaking and reconstruction to war- weary masses of people. They seek release from their tragedies, deprivations and tensions, often in ways that defeat efforts to understand and attack the problems that confront them. To make progress in such a time, we must recruit widely and work as a guild, young and old together, to achieve a co-operative and cumulative effort whether in academic or governmental posts.”

John M. Gaus (1894–1969) American political scientist

Source: Reflections on public administration, 1947, p. 1; Lead paragraph

War , People , World , Way

“Might a bomb no bigger than an orange be found to possess a secret power to destroy a whole block of buildings — nay to concentrate the force of a thousand tons of cordite and blast a township at a stroke?.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Pall Mall Gazette (1924) on HG Wells' suggestion of an atomic bomb, in "BBC Article" http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-33365776
Early career years (1898–1929)

Secret

“People may wonder how Mitt came to join in the Holand Sea Festival, carrying a bomb, and what he thought he was doing. Mitt wondered himself by the end.”

Diana Wynne Jones (1934–2011) English children's fantasy writer

First lines.
Source: Dalemark Quartet, Drowned Ammet (1977), p. 223.

People , Sea