Quotes about weapon
page 10

Stephen Harper photo

“It [the Iraq invasion] was absolutely an error. It's obviously clear the evaluation of weapons of mass destruction proved not to be correct. That's absolutely true and that's why we're not sending anybody to Iraq.”

Stephen Harper (1959) 22nd Prime Minister of Canada

To Gilles Duceppe during the 2008 English leaders' debate, October 2, 2008: On the Iraq war.
2008

Lupe Fiasco photo

“I only fear God, know the weapons of the weak, the weakness of the heart, and never fall asleep…”

Lupe Fiasco (1982) rapper

"Emperor's Soundtrack"
Albums, Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor (2006)

Margaret Thatcher photo
Orson Scott Card photo
E. W. Hobson photo
Christopher Monckton photo
Stendhal photo

“Never had he found himself so close to those terrible weapons of feminine artillery.”

Jamais il ne s'était trouvé aussi près de ces terribles instruments de l'artillerie féminine.
Vol. I, ch. XVI
Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black) (1830)

Eric Holder photo

“It has come to my attention that you have now asked an additional question: ‘Does the President have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil?’" Holder wrote. "The answer to that question is no.”

Eric Holder (1951) 82nd Attorney General of the United States

Five questions: Targeting Americans on U.S. soil http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/07/us/drones-five-things/index.html, CNN, March 8, 2013.
2010s

James K. Morrow photo
Frank Herbert photo

“Where is the weapon with which I enforce your bondage? You give it to me every time you open your mouth.”

Frank Herbert (1920–1986) American writer

"Laclac Riddle"; p. 68
The Bureau of Sabotage series, Whipping Star (1969)

Statius photo

“So a lioness that has newly whelped, beset by Numidian hunters in her cruel den, stands upright over her young, gnashing her teeth in grim and piteous wise, her mind in doubt; she could disrupt the groups and break their weapons with her bite, but love for her offspring binds her cruel heart and from the midst of her fury she looks round at her cubs.”
Ut lea, quam saeuo fetam pressere cubili venantes Numidae, natos erecta superstat, mente sub incerta torvum ac miserabile frendens; illa quidem turbare globos et frangere morsu tela queat, sed prolis amor crudelia vincit pectora, et a media catulos circumspicit ira.

Source: Thebaid, Book X, Line 414

Dwight D. Eisenhower photo
Jeremy Corbyn photo
Donald J. Trump photo
Roger Bacon photo

“One man I know, and one only, who can be praised for his achievements in this science. Of discourses and battles of words he takes no heed: he follows the works of wisdom, and in these finds rest. What others strive to see dimly and blindly, like bats in twilight, he gazes at in the full light of day, because he is a master of experiment. Through experiment he gains knowledge of natural things, medical, chemical, indeed of everything in the heavens or earth. He is ashamed that things should be known to laymen, old women, soldiers, ploughmen, of which he is ignorant. Therefore he has looked closely into the doings of those who work in metals and minerals of all kinds; he knows everything relating to the art of war, the making of weapons, and the chase; he has looked closely into agriculture, mensuration, and farming work; he has even taken note of the remedies, lot casting, and charms used by old women and by wizards and magicians, and of the deceptions and devices of conjurors, so that nothing which deserves inquiry should escape him, and that he may be able to expose the falsehoods of magicians. If philosophy is to be carried to its perfection and is to be handled with utility and certainty, his aid is indispensable. As for reward, he neither receives nor seeks it. If he frequented kings and princes, he would easily find those who would bestow on him honours and wealth. Or, if in Paris he would display the results of his researches, the whole world would follow him. But since either of these courses would hinder him from pursuing the great experiments in which he delights, he puts honour and wealth aside, knowing well that his wisdom would secure him wealth whenever he chose. For the last three years he has been working at the production of a mirror that shall produce combustion at a fixed distance; a problem which the Latins have neither solved nor attempted, though books have been written upon the subject.”

Bridges assumes that Bacon refers here to Peter Peregrinus of Maricourt.
Source: Opus Tertium, c. 1267, Ch. 13 as quoted in J. H. Bridges, The 'Opus Majus' of Roger Bacon (1900) Vol.1 http://books.google.com/books?id=6F0XAQAAMAAJ Preface p.xxv

Alberto Gonzales photo

“Torture is not tolerated by this country on the battlefield or off. Anyone who tortures or abuses a detainee tarnishes the service of every honorable student and soldier in this room today. The President has said this, and I will say it again: those who commit torture in the name of the United States government will be prosecuted. In any discussion of Guantanamo, detainees and military commissions, I think that one final fact helps put things in perspective — and that is the fact that members of al Qaeda are not merely common criminals. Some critics around the world have argued that they are “just” criminals, that their crimes somehow do not amount to war crimes. But here are the facts: al Qaeda seeks to employ weapons of mass slaughter as a means of achieving political goals against both the civilian and military capacity of the United States, Europe, and our allies throughout the world. Its members continue to fight our Armed Forces on battlefields around the world, and they will continue to do so until we stop them. Al Qaeda has committed acts on a scale that transcends mere crime, as recognized by NATO immediately after the attacks of September 11th. Their crimes are therefore nothing less than war crimes. Given the magnitude of the atrocities al Qaeda has committed, there can be no comparison between the crimes of its members and that of common civilian criminals.”

Alberto Gonzales (1955) 80th United States Attorney General

Speech regarding Civil Liberties and the War on Terrorism (November 20, 2006)

“There's no need to fear or hope, but only to look for new weapons.”

Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995) French philosopher

from Postscript on the Societies of Control

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton photo
Dick Cheney photo

“We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.”

Dick Cheney (1941) American politician and businessman

Cheney on NBC's Meet the Press, March 16, 2003 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3080244/
2000s, 2003

Enoch Powell photo
Aung San Suu Kyi photo
Benjamín Netanyahu photo
Tawakkol Karman photo
Phillip Abbott Luce photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
George W. Bush photo
Pearl S.  Buck photo

“Had Japan been a tenth as wise as Abraham Lincoln, had Hitler been a hundredth part as sensible, we today, the United States and England, would not have a chance in this war. Had those two enemies of ours coveted the lands upon subject peoples dwell today and had they whispered the magic word freedom to those peoples, they might have set half the world against us in a moment. But they have lost because they attacked lands already free, and because they have enslaved peoples accustomed to freedom. By this one thing alone, if by no other, they are doomed. They have misread the hearts and minds of men. By their enslavement of the peoples whom they have made subject by force of arms, they have aroused against themselves a greater force than can be found in any army, in any weapon. It is this- the will of men everywhere to be free. Let us learn today from Abraham Lincoln, as we fight this war still so far from victory. He could not win that war until he lit the fire in the hearts of men and women enslaved. Nothing had been enough to make men rise up and shout aloud for victory until that moment. A few men like war and enjoy it as a game. But most men and all women hate war. They will not fight with their whole hearts unless they are set aflame. And the torch is always the same words. Whisper those words and men and women will shout them aloud and sing them as they march. The words are simple but they are the most potent in the universe- they are the spiritual dynamite of victory. The words? "All persons held as slaves… are and henceforward shall be free."”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

Source: What America Means to Me (1943), p. 195

Tom Stoppard photo

“I still believe that if your aim is to change the world, journalism is a more immediate short-term weapon.”

Tom Stoppard (1937) British playwright

Source: Interview, The Guardian (London, 1988-03-18).

Geert Wilders photo
Jimmy Carter photo
David Harvey photo
John Edwards photo

“Let me be clear: Under no circumstances can Iran be allowed to have nuclear weapons. … To ensure that Iran never gets nuclear weapons, we need to keep all options on the table. Let me reiterate--all options must remain on the table.”

John Edwards (1953) American politician

Comments (via satellite) at the Seventh Annual Herzliya Conference in Israel. http://www.herzliyaconference.org/Eng/_Articles/Article.asp?ArticleID=1728&CategoryID=223

Osama bin Laden photo

“The events that affected my soul in a direct way started in 1982 when America permitted the Israelis to invade Lebanon and the American Sixth Fleet helped them in that. This bombardment began and many were killed and injured and others were terrorised and displaced.
I couldn't forget those moving scenes, blood and severed limbs, women and children sprawled everywhere. Houses destroyed along with their occupants and high rises demolished over their residents, rockets raining down on our home without mercy. The situation was like a crocodile meeting a helpless child, powerless except for his screams. Does the crocodile understand a conversation that doesn't include a weapon? And the whole world saw and heard but it didn't respond. In those difficult moments many hard-to-describe ideas bubbled in my soul, but in the end they produced an intense feeling of rejection of tyranny, and gave birth to a strong resolve to punish the oppressors. And as I looked at those demolished towers in Lebanon, it entered my mind that we should punish the oppressor in kind and that we should destroy towers in America in order that they taste some of what we tasted and so that they be deterred from killing our women and children.
And that day, it was confirmed to me that oppression and the intentional killing of innocent women and children is a deliberate American policy. Destruction is freedom and democracy, while resistance is terrorism and intolerance.
This means the oppressing and embargoing to death of millions as Bush Sr did in Iraq in the greatest mass slaughter of children mankind has ever known, and it means the throwing of millions of pounds of bombs and explosives at millions of children - also in Iraq - as Bush Jr did, in order to remove an old agent and replace him with a new puppet to assist in the pilfering of Iraq's oil and other outrages.
So with these images and their like as their background, the events of September 11th came as a reply to those great wrongs, should a man be blamed for defending his sanctuary?”

Osama bin Laden (1957–2011) founder of al-Qaeda

Full transcript of bin Ladin's speech http://www.aljazeera.com/archive/2004/11/200849163336457223.html Aljazeera, (01 Nov 2004)
2000s, 2004

Thomas C. Schelling photo
John F. Kennedy photo
Helen Keller photo
Fred Brooks photo

“The programmer's primary weapon in the never-ending battle against slow system is to change the intramodular structure. Our first response should be to reorganize the modules' data structures.”

Fred Brooks (1931) American computer scientist

Brooks (1975, Chapter 9) as quoted in Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction, by Steve C. McConnell

John Pierpont photo

“If Dhṛtarāṣṭra's men, with weapons in their hands, should slay me in the fight, unresisting and unarmed, that were happier for me!”

W. Douglas P. Hill (1884–1962) British Indologist

Source: The Bhagavadgītā (1973), p. 81. (46.)

Seneca the Younger photo

“A sword by itself does not slay; it is merely the weapon used by the slayer.”
quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit: occidentis telum est.

Seneca the Younger (-4–65 BC) Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist

Seneca is here describing arguments used by 'certain men,' not stating his own opinion.
Alternate translation: A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer's hand. (translator unknown).
Source: Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter LXXXVII: Some arguments in favor of the simple life, Line 30

John Scalzi photo
Ammon Hennacy photo
Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani photo
George W. Bush photo

“I faced a lot of criticism as president. I didn't like hearing people claim I had lied about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction or cut taxes to benefit the rich. But the suggestion that I was a racist because of the response to Katrina represented an all-time low. I told Laura at the time that it was the worst moment of my presidency. I feel the same way today.”

pp. 325, Chapter 10: Katrina https://books.google.com/books?id=iUJTvsUGWOcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=decision+points&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CBwQ6AEwAGoVChMImu6s8_WEyAIVjNkeCh1oFgyY#v=onepage&q=kanye&f=false
2010s, 2010, Decision Points (November 2010)

Robert Spencer photo
H. G. Wells photo
Chris Walla photo

“If I could be a vegetable, I'd be a pumpkin. It's realistically the only vegetable you can use as a weapon, or in any manner of defense.”

Chris Walla (1975) American musician

20 questions with Christopher Walla (2000)

George W. Bush photo

“I wasn't happy when we found out there wasn't weapons [of mass destruction in Iraq]</s”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2nd Presidential Debate, October 8, 2004
2000s, 2004

Bernard Cornwell photo
Rory Bremner photo
Tony Blair photo

“[The Joint Intelligence Committee] concludes that Iraq has chemical and biological weapons, that Saddam has continued to produce them, that he has existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, which could be activated within 45 minutes, including against his own Shia population, and that he is actively trying to acquire nuclear weapons capability.”

Tony Blair (1953) former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Hansard http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm200102/cmhansrd/vo020924/debtext/20924-01.htm#20924-01_spmin0 House of Commons, 6th series, vol. 390, col. 3.
House of Commons statement on publication of the dossier concerning Iraq and Weapons of Mass Destruction, 24 September 2002.
2000s

Dmitriy Ustinov photo
Dwight D. Eisenhower photo

“I was against it on two counts. First, the Japanese were ready to surrender, and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing. Second, I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

On his stated opposition to the use of the atomic bomb against the Japanese at the end of World War II, as quoted in Newsweek (11 November 1963), p. 107
1960s

John Dear photo
Vladimir Putin photo

“In order to preserve a balance, while we aren't planning to build a missile defence of our own, as it's very expensive and its efficiency is not quite clear yet, we have to develop offensive strike systems. They [U. S. ] should give us all the information about the missile defence, and we will be ready then to provide some information about offensive weapons.”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

Putin said that arms control talks between Moscow and Washington were proceeding in a positive way. (December 2009) http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/29/nuclear-weapons-russia
2006- 2010

Maxwell D. Taylor photo
Kwame Nkrumah photo

“To the true African journalist, his newspaper is a collective organizer, a collective instrument of mobilization and a collective educator—a weapon, first and foremost, to overthrow colonialism and imperialism and to assist total African independence and unity.”

Kwame Nkrumah (1909–1972) Pan Africanist and First Prime Minister and President of Ghana

At the Second Conference of African Journalists; Accra, November 11, 1963. http://nkrumahinfobank.org/article.php?id=441&c=51

Leonid Brezhnev photo
George W. Bush photo
Gustave Courbet photo
Johnny Depp photo

“I see kids who are complete cynics. They're not dreaming. They're out there with high-powered weapons, smoking crack behind the 7-Eleven. They've seen it all. These kids are going to take us into 2000 and beyond. That's scary, man. I wouldn't say I'm pessimistic or optimistic. I'm more realistic, I guess. But not cynical. I look. I watch.”

Johnny Depp (1963) American actor, film producer, and musician

Quoted in Anthony Decurtis, "Rolling Stone 30th Anniversary Special: Johnny Depp," http://www.johnnydeppfan.com/interviews/rollingstone.htm Rolling Stone (1998)

Sung-Yoon Lee photo
Margaret Thatcher photo
Jerry Coyne photo

“Guilt is the great weapon of the Authoritarian Left, and we must resist it when it comes to endorsing free expression.”

Jerry Coyne (1949) American biologist

" National Coalition Against Censorship and PEN defend Met’s showing of a “controversial” painting https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/12/09/national-coalition-against-censorship-and-pen-defend-mets-showing-of-a-controversial-painting/" December 9, 2017

Moses Mendelssohn photo
George W. Bush photo

“See, free nations are peaceful nations. Free nations don't attack each other. Free nations don't develop weapons of mass destruction.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

Midwest Airlines Center, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, October 3, 2003 http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2003/10/20031003-4.html
2000s, 2003

Jan Smuts photo
Vandana Shiva photo
John Aubrey photo
Charles Stross photo
Martin Amis photo
Robert Hunter (author) photo
Jean Paul Sartre photo
John F. Kennedy photo
Zeev Sternhell photo
Peter Sloterdijk photo
Curtis LeMay photo
George Fox photo
Vilhelm Ekelund photo
Richard Dawkins photo
Karl Jaspers photo
Charlie Brooker photo
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky photo
Jonathan Schell photo

“Either we will sink into a final coma and end it all or, as I trust and believe, we will awaken to the truth of our peril, a truth as great as life itself, and, like a person who has swallowed a lethal poison but shakes off his stupor at the last moment and vomits the poison up, we will break through the layers of our denials, put aside our fainthearted excuses, and rise up to cleanse the earth of nuclear weapons.”

" The Choice http://books.google.com/books?id=tYKJsAEs1oQC&q=%22Either+we+will+sink+into+the+final+coma+and+end+it+all+or+as+I+trust+and+believe+we+will+awaken+to+the+truth+of+our+peril+a+truth+as+great+as+life+itself+and+like+a+person+who+has+swallowed+a+lethal+poison+but+shakes+off+his+stupor+at+the+last+moment+and+vomits+the+poison+up+we+will+break+through+the+layers+of+our+denials+put+aside+our+fainthearted+excuses+and+rise+up+to+cleanse+the+earth+of+nuclear+weapons%22&pg=PA231#v=onepage," The Fate of the Earth (1982)

John R. Bolton photo

“The only thing that will stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons is regime change in Tehran.”

John R. Bolton (1948) American lawyer and diplomat

Former US Ambassador to UN Skeptical over Latest Vote on Iran http://m.voanews.com/a/407117.html, Voice of America, November 1, 2009

Gustav Stresemann photo

“The conquest of Riga is of the greatest importance not only from the military, but also form the political point of view… Our military situation was never more glorious than it is at present. Meanwhile, there is also the U-boat war, which is taking its course. The destruction of enemy tonnage that was expected of it on the basis of official predictions, has not only been achieved, but partly exceeded by more than half…Time is working for us. Britain to-day is fighting the war with a watch in her hand, and it is in this that I see the fundamentally decisive effect of the U-boat weapon for us and the approach of peace…If we are to achieve anything through compromise and understanding, then the Government must not be forced to make any statements renouncing something from the outset. For this reason the tactics by which it has been and is still being tried to make the Government declare its disinterestedness in Belgium, are wrong. Even those who share the attitude of Herr Scheidemann ought to fight for the last stone in Belgium, in order to exploit to the utmost that which possession has made into a dead pledge…However, the fact that we are going to have peace—and, we hope, soon—will in my conviction be due, apart from our military achievements, to the effects of unrestricted U-boat warfare, of which I have repeatedly said before the Main Committee that while I reject the formula that it will force Britain to her knees, I believe as firmly in the formula that it will force Britain to the conference table.”

Gustav Stresemann (1878–1929) German politician, statesman, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate

Speech in the Reichstag (October 1917), quoted in W. M. Knight-Patterson, Germany. From Defeat to Conquest 1913-1933 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1945), p. 121
1910s