Michael Douglas Quotes

Talking to the superpowers about disarmament is like talking to drug dealers about stopping drug deliveries.

Do not hide behind utopian logic which says that until we have the perfect security environment, nuclear disarmament cannot proceed. This is old-think. This is the mentality of the Cold War era. We must face the realities of the 21st century. The Conference on Disarmament can be a driving force for building a safer world and a better future.

Nuclear weapons are infinitely less important in our foreign policy than they were in the days of the Cold War. I don't think we need nuclear weapons any longer.

The pens which write against disarmament are made with the same steel from which guns are made.

Arms control has to have a future, or none of us does.

In the age when the atom has been split, the moon encircled, diseases conquered, is disarmament so difficult a matter that it must remain a distant dream? To answer, yes, is to despair for the future of mankind.

If the history of the past fifty years teaches us anything, it is that peace does not follow disarmament -- disarmament follows peace.

Disarmament has become the urgent imperative of our time. I do not say this because I equate the absence of arms to peace, or because I believe that bringing an end to the nuclear arms race automatically guarantees the peace, or because the elimination of nuclear warheads from the arsenals of the world will bring in its wake that change in attitude requisite to the peaceful settlement of disputes between nations. Disarmament is vital today, quite simply, because of the immense destructive capacity of which men dispose.

We want a rocket-free country. That’s what we want.

Even a total and universal disarmament does not guarantee the maintenance of peace.

I know of no more important subject to the peace of Europe and the world than the reasonable reduction of armaments, especially in Europe, and of naval armaments throughout the world.

I most sincerely wish that the world in which we live be free from the threat of a nuclear holocaust and from the ruinous arms race. It is my cherished desire that peace be not separated from freedom which is the right of every nation. This I desire and for this I pray.

People were really interested in what was going on because of the international context of the Cold War.

It has become impossible to give up the enterprise of disarmament without abandoning the whole great adventure of building up a collective peace system.

I agree with the many who consider freezing all sorts of weapons systems a first step in a realistic disarmament policy.

The Cold War went on for so long that it bred a kind of worldwide military establishment. Even when budgets went down in the early and mid-nineties, it didn't really affect it.

If men do not now succeed in abolishing war, civilization and mankind are doomed.

India, Pakistan, China, Singapore and South Korea are heavily investing in nuclear arms. Since 21st century is the century of Asia, Asian countries should be the first ones to drop this arms race.

As a first step there must be an offer to achieve equality of rights in disarmament by abolishing the weapons forbidden to the Central Powers by the Peace Treaties.

Nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation are not utopian ideals. They are critical to global peace and security.

Among pacifists it was above all the English who always insisted on the importance of disarmament. They said that the man in the street would not understand the kind of pacifism that neglected to demand immediate restriction of armaments.

For while the threat of nuclear holocaust has been significantly reduced, the world remains a very unsettled and dangerous place.

We have a moral imperative to keep up the search for something better than mutual assured destruction.

There is only one thing worse than one nation having the atomic bomb -- that's two nations having it.

Let no one expect us to disarm unilaterally. We are not a naive people.