For if enough people were really convinced that growth should be halted, and if they acted on that conviction, then billions of others might be deprived of any realistic hope of gaining the opportunities now enjoyed by the more fortunate.

I'm against fashionable thinking.

Many people believe that the current system must inevitably end in total annihilation. They reject, sometimes very emotionally, any attempts to analyze this notion.

A surprising number of government committees will make important decisions on fundamental matters with less attention than each individual would give to buying a suit.

A healthy and fully functioning society must allocate its resources among a variety of competing interests, all of which are more or less valid but none of which should take precedence over national security.

The objective of nuclear-weapons policy should not be solely to decrease the number of weapons in the world, but to make the world safer - which is not necessarily the same thing.

Anything that reduces war-related destruction should not be considered altogether immoral.

Deterrence itself is not a preeminent value; the primary values are safety and morality.

It is immoral from almost any point of view to refuse to defend yourself and others from very grave and terrible threats, even as there are limits to the means that can be used in such defense.

The widespread diffusion of nuclear weapons would make many nations able, and in some cases also create the pressure, to aggravate an on-going crisis, or even touch off a war between two other powers for purposes of their own.

There was no race - but to the extent that there was an arms competition, it was almost entirely on the Soviet side, first to catch up and then to surpass the Americans.

My guess is that nuclear weapons will be used sometime in the next hundred years, but that their use is much more likely to be small and limited than widespread and unconstrained.

Nuclear war is such an emotional subject that many people see the weapons themselves as the common enemy of humanity.

Human and moral factors must always be considered. They must never be missing from policies and from public discussion.

I am against the whole cliche of the moment.

Only those who are ideologically opposed to military programs think of the defense budget as the first and best place to get resources for social welfare needs.

Hopefully, nations will refuse to accept a situation in which nuclear accidents actually do occur, and, if at all possible, they will do something to correct a system which makes them likely.

To the extent that these advanced weapons or their components are treated as articles of commerce, perhaps for peaceful uses as in the Plowshare program, their cost would be well within the resources available to many large private organizations.

In 1960 I published a book that attempted to direct attention to the possibility of a thermonuclear war, to ways of reducing the likelihood of such a war, and to methods for coping with the consequences should war occur despite our efforts to avoid it.

I'm against ignorance.

Projecting a persuasive image of a desirable and practical future is extremely important to high morale, to dynamism, to consensus, and in general to help the wheels of society turn smoothly.

For if enough people were really convinced that growth should be halted, and if they acted on that conviction, then billions of others might be deprived of any realistic hope of gaining the opportunities now enjoyed by the more fortunate.

A total nuclear freeze is counterproductive - especially now, when technology is rapidly changing and the Soviets have some important strategic advantages.

I'm against sloppy, emotional thinking.

In a world which is armed to its teeth with nuclear weapons, every quarrel or difference of opinion may lead to violence of a kind quite different from what is possible today.

New developments in weapon systems during the 1950s and early 1960s created a situation that was most dangerous, and even conducive to accidental war.

From a scientific perspective there is some indication that a nuclear war could deplete the earth's ozone layer or, less likely, could bring on a new Ice Age - but there is no suggestion that either the created order or mankind would be destroyed in the process.

For some years I have spent my time on exactly these questions - both in thinking about ways to prevent war, and in thinking about how to fight, survive, and terminate a war, should it occur.

Nuclear weapons are intrinsically neither moral nor immoral, though they are more prone to immoral use than most weapons.

World War I broke out largely because of an arms race, and World War II because of the lack of an arms race.

Because of new technologies, new wealth, new conditions of domestic life and of international relations, unprecedented criteria and issues are coming up for national decision.

Failures of perspective in decision-making can be due to aspects of the social utility paradox, but more often result from simple mistakes caused by inadequate thought.

And their conviction is that if it is done with that kind of purity it will go somewhere. I believe that with all my heart, but I'm not responsible for its going somewhere.

The compensation of a very early success is a conviction that life is a romantic matter. In the best sense one stays young.

Ronald Reagan's well documented final battles with Alzheimer's disease were fought with the same conviction and courage that his many public battles were fought.

Many hard comments have been made on my efforts in India from the side of the Congress party, yet I feel content in the deep conviction that the offer I traveled 22,000 miles to discuss with Indian leaders was a real contribution to a solution of our differences.

For a successful revolution it is not enough that there is discontent. What is required is a profound and thorough conviction of the justice, necessity and importance of political and social rights.

I was induced to establish several orders of merit, from conviction that emulation, well directed, becomes a useful servant; and, that the latent genius of some youth is more easily brought into action this way, than by the more sordid gratification of self-interest.

Music is a hobby, because I'm not making any money out of it, but I put just as much conviction into that as I do into my acting.

The deepest thing in any one is the conviction of the bad luck that follows boasting.

One of the dreariest spots on life's road is the point of conviction that nothing will ever again happen to you.

Insurance - an ingenious modern game of chance in which the player is permitted to enjoy the comfortable conviction that he is beating the man who keeps the table.

The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, peculiar to myself and to a few other solitary men, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence.

Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.

It was very important that it be done in such a way that it be executed with complete conviction. If I had done it both ways, if I was trying to cover myself in case it didn't work, then it would have been to no purpose.

Courage and conviction are powerful weapons against an enemy who depends only on fists or guns. Animals know when you are afraid; a coward knows when you are not.

I retired from public Business from a thorough Conviction that it was not in my Power to do any Good, and very much disgusted with Measures, which appeared to me inconsistent with common Policy and Justice.

And indeed this theme has been at the centre of all my research since 1943, both because of its intrinsic fascination and my conviction that a knowledge of sequences could contribute much to our understanding of living matter.

My personal conviction is that science is concerned wholly with truth, not with ethics.