Alastair Reynolds Quotes

I think the world is safer without Iran with a nuclear weapon. The world has got the potential to be safer if we fully implement the Paris agreement.

People are spending way too much time thinking about climate change, way too little thinking about AI.

The new century has brought on its own terrible dangers, which although not reaching the apocalyptic potential of the Cold War, still have the capacity to shake our world.

On good days, I can see the inherent goodness in people, and that human beings have a high capacity to learn and adapt. But things like the environment, nuclear weapons and ideas like peak oil - if you think about them too much, they can really freak you out.

Over most of history, threats have come from nature - disease, earthquakes, floods, and so forth. But the worst now come from us. We've entered a geological era called the anthropocene. This started, perhaps, with the invention of thermonuclear weapons.

Above all else, we need a reaffirmation of political commitment at the highest levels to reducing the dangers that arise both from existing nuclear weapons and from further proliferation.

Above all, I would not expect a wise race, at great expense, to set loose an army of self-replicating robots.

Any possession of nuclear weapons in the Middle East is a danger.

Technology will save us if it doesn't wipe us out first.

I want to work hard toward my goal that there will be zero nuclear power generation.

With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon. In all those stories where there is the guy with the pentagram and the holy water, … he’s sure he can control the demon. But it doesn’t work out.

We have lost our vision for the future. Before, we say, 'Nothing will be the same. Cars will fly, and we go to the end of the universe.' We have this kind of naive but exciting idea of the future. Now, the vision has been reduced to ways to select our garbage and how to survive global warming.

Nuclear weapons remain a costly distraction from the real security threats we face, like climate change.

The biggest problem that the world has is nuclear weapons. Global warming is not our big problem. Our big problem is the maniacs that are controlling weaponry that has never been like it is today.

When nuclear weapons were an elite club of five relatively sane world powers, the Left was convinced the planet was about to go ka-boom any minute, and the handful of us who survived would be walking in a nuclear winter wonderland. Now anyone with a few thousand bucks and an unlisted number in Islamabad in his Rolodex can get a nuke, and the Left couldn't care less.

We cannot by ourselves reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the world, but we are doing what has to be done all over the world if those weapons are one day to be eliminated. We will not contemplate any circumstance in which their possession or threatened use is justified. We reject the secrecy and hypocrisy which surrounds the continuing refinement of the technology.

There is no question that Iraq possesses biological and chemical weapons and that he [Saddam Hussein] seeks to acquire additional weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons. That is not in debate. I also agree with President Bush that Saddam Hussein is a threat to peace and must be disarmed, to quote President Bush directly.

A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. The only value in our two nations possessing nuclear weapons is to make sure they will never be used. But then would it not be better to do away with them entirely?

I'm worried about the world because of nuclear proliferation.

The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five.

Unlike South Africa, which decided on its own to eliminate its nuclear weapons and welcomed inspection as a means of creating confidence in its disarmament, Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance - not even today - of the disarmament, which was demanded of it and which it needs to carry out to win the confidence of the world and to live in peace.

Some of the American military obviously were thinking in terms of fighting a nuclear war. I was opposed to that.

[Not achieving a nuclear test ban] would have to be classed as the greatest disappointment of any administration of any decade, of any time and of any party.

I am against nuclear weapons, regardless of whether they are in the hands of Iran or Israel or any Western country. But obviously some states are allowed to have weapons of mass destruction while others are not.

The reduction of nuclear arsenals and the removal of the threat of worldwide nuclear destruction is a measure, in my judgment, ofthe power and strength of a great nation.