A Quote by Rick Wilson

The purpose of nuclear weapons is to deter. The mission of deterrence to make all parties in possession of nuclear weapons never, ever use them.

Rick Wilson

Quote Topics

Deter Deterrence Ever Make Mission Never Nuclear Nuclear Weapons Parties Possession Purpose Them Use Weapons

Quote Author

Rick Wilson
American - Author
Born: November 21, 1963

What is the only provocation that could bring about the use of nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. What is the priority target for nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. What is the only established defense against nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. How do we prevent the use of nuclear weapons? By threatening to use nuclear weapons. And we can't get rid of nuclear weapons, because of nuclear weapons. The intransigence, it seems, is a function of the weapons themselves.

Martin Amis

I don't want to use the term "nuclear weapons" because those people in Iran who have authority say they are not building nuclear weapons. I make an appeal to the countries who do have nuclear weapons. They don't consider them a nuclear threat. But let's say a country that doesn't have nuclear weapons gets involved in building them, then they are told by those that already have nuclear weapons that they oppose [such a development]. Where is the justice in that?

Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Presidents should be very careful at all times in discussing the use or non-use of nuclear weapons. Presidents since the cold war have used nuclear deterrence to keep the peace, and I don't believe that any president should make any blanket statements with respect to the use or non-use of nuclear weapons.

Hillary Clinton

I, who had been in favour of nuclear energy for generating electricity ... I suddenly realised that anybody who has a nuclear reactor can extract the plutonium from the reactor and make nuclear weapons, so that a country which has a nuclear reactor can, at any moment that it wants to, become a nuclear weapons power. And I, right from the beginning, have been terribly worried by the existence of nuclear weapons and very much against their use.

Mark Oliphant

There are nine countries in the world that have nuclear weapons. There are about 27,000 nuclear weapons total on the planet. The countries that have nuclear weapons deploy them ready for use and have doctrines saying that they would use them in certain circumstances.

John Burroughs

Our nuclear free status means that we decline to acquiesce in the strategies of nuclear deterrence. We will not turn a blind eye to them, and pretend that the weapons are no longer a threat. We will not in any way tolerate the testing of nuclear weapons, or their manufacture, or their deployment.

David Lange

Basically [United States and France] said "We will use nuclear weapons whenever it suits our purposes to do so." So this expansion of doctrines regarding possible use of nuclear weapons makes them more, you know, sort of, salient and important and so it's increasing the perceived political value of nuclear weapons and therefore causing or contributing to possible proliferation.

John Burroughs

We have a legal and moral obligation to rid our world of nuclear tests and nuclear weapons. When we put an end to nuclear tests, we get closer to eliminating all nuclear weapons. A world free of nuclear weapons will be safer and more prosperous.

Ban Ki-moon

The sole purpose of nuclear weapons must be to deter their use by others.

Dianne Feinstein

It is my view that there is no sensible military use for nuclear weapons, whether "strategic" weapons, "tactical" weapons, "theatre" weapons, weapons at sea or weapons in space.

Noel Gayler

Iran is not about building nuclear weapons. We don't wanna build nuclear weapons. We don't believe that nuclear weapons bring security to anybody, certainly not to us.

Mohammad Javad Zarif

If we are really anxious not to have nuclear weapons in Iran, the first thing is to call an international conference on abolishing all nuclear weapons, including Israeli nuclear weapons.

Bruce Kent

It is my fervent goal and hope... that we will someday no longer have to rely on nuclear weapons to deter aggression and assure world peace. To that end the United States is now engaged in a serious and sustained effort to negotiate major reductions in levels of offensive nuclear weapons with the ultimate goal of eliminating these weapons from the face of the earth.

Ronald Reagan

Our republic is a responsible nuclear state that, as we made clear before, will not use nuclear weapons first unless aggressive hostile forces use nuclear weapons to invade on our sovereignty.

Kim Jong-un

The professed function of the nuclear weapons on each side is to prevent the other side from using their nuclear weapons. If that's all it is, then we've gotta as: how many nuclear weapons do you need to do that?