Disarmament Quotes

When distrust exists between governments, when there is a danger of war, they will not be willing to disarm even when logic indicates that disarmament would not affect military security at all. (Ludwig Quidde)
A few profit – and the many pay. But there is a way to stop it. You can't end it by disarmament conferences. You can't eliminate it by peace parleys at Geneva. Well-meaning but impractical groups can't wipe it out by resolutions. It can be smashed effectively only by taking the profit out of war. View quote
Smedley Butler
The chief reason warfare is still with us is neither a secret death-wish of the human species, nor an irrepressible instinct of aggression, nor, finally and more plausibly, the serious economic and social dangers inherent in disarmament, but the simple fact that no substitute for this final arbiter in international affairs has yet appeared on the political scene. View quote
Hannah Arendt
I agree with the many who consider freezing all sorts of weapons systems a first step in a realistic disarmament policy. View quote
Alva Myrdal
Even a total and universal disarmament does not guarantee the maintenance of peace. View quote
Ludwig Quidde
The popular, and one may say naive, idea is that peace can be secured by disarmament and that disarmament must therefore precede the attainment of absolute security and lasting peace. View quote
Ludwig Quidde
The United States strongly seeks a lasting agreement for the discontinuance of nuclear weapons tests. We believe that this would be an important step toward reduction of international tensions and would open the way to further agreement on substantial measures of disarmament. View quote
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. View quote
Dwight D. Eisenhower
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. View quote
Arthur Henderson
The Disarmament Conference has become the focal point of a great struggle between anarchy and world order... between those who think in terms of inevitable armed conflict and those who seek to build a universal and durable peace. View quote
Arthur Henderson
It has become impossible to give up the enterprise of disarmament without abandoning the whole great adventure of building up a collective peace system. (Arthur Henderson)
The relationship of the two problems is rather the reverse. To a great extent disarmament is dependent on guarantees of peace. Security comes first and disarmament second. View quote
Ludwig Quidde
Disarmament or limitation of armaments, which depends on the progress made on security, also contributes to the maintenance of peace. View quote
Ludwig Quidde
The twentieth century had dispensed with the formal declaration of war and introduced the fifth column, sabotage, cold war, and war by proxy, but that was only the beginning. Summit meetings for disarmament pursued mutual understanding and a balance of power but were also held to learn the strengths and weaknesses of the enemy. The world of the war-or-peace alternative became a world in which war was peace and peace war. View quote
Stanisław Lem
Conflict is not inevitable, but disarmament is... everyone now accepts that if there is a default by Saddam the international community must act to enforce its will. View quote
Tony Blair
Unilateral disarmament by Britain is opposed to our country's best interests, could begin the unravelling of NATO and therefore jeopardise the stability of Europe. View quote
James Callaghan
Disarmament without checks is but a shadow - and a community without law is but a shell. View quote
John F. Kennedy
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? View quote
Philip Noel-Baker, Baron Noel-Baker
Defeatism about the feasibility of plans for disarmament and ordered peace has been the most calamitious of all the errors made by democratic governments in modern times. View quote
Philip Noel-Baker, Baron Noel-Baker
The pens which write against disarmament are made with the same steel from which guns are made. View quote
Aristide Briand
Let me remind you that nuclear disarmament is not just an ardent desire of the people, as expressed in many resolutions of the United Nations. It is a legal commitment by the five official nuclear states, entered into when they signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. (Joseph Rotblat)
More must be done in concrete terms in order to promote the cause of disarmament. View quote
Alva Myrdal
The smaller nations can in fact exercise greater influence on disarmament negotiations than they have hitherto done. View quote
Alva Myrdal
So long as peace is not attained by law (so argue the advocates of armaments) the military protection of a country must not be undermined, and until such is the case disarmament is impossible. View quote
Ludwig Quidde
Some pacifists have carried the sound idea of the prime importance of security too far, to the point of declaring that any consideration of disarmament is superfluous and pointless as long as eternal peace has not been attained. View quote
Ludwig Quidde