This is the reality of nuclear weapons: they may trigger a world war; a war which, unlike previous ones, destroys all of civilization.
Interpretation
Nuclear weapons represent a grave threat to civilization, as they could lead to destruction on an unprecedented scale.
Joseph Rotblat highlights the existential danger posed by nuclear weapons, emphasizing that their deployment could spark a global conflict resulting in the total annihilation of human civilization. Unlike past wars, which while devastating, left some remnants of society intact, a nuclear war threatens to obliterate all aspects of civilization, urging a deep reflection on the moral and ethical implications of such destructive capabilities.
In practice
In discussions about global security and disarmament, this quote emphasizes the dire consequences of nuclear warfare.
But the first the general public learned about the discovery was the news of the destruction of Hiroshima by the atom bomb. A splendid achievement of science and technology had turned malign. Science became identified with death and destruction.
If the militarily most powerful and least threatened states need nuclear weapons for their security, how can one deny such security to countries that are truly insecure? The present nuclear policy is a recipe for proliferation. It is a policy for disaster.
The quest for a war-free world has a basic purpose: survival. But if in the process we learn how to achieve it by love rather than by fear, by kindness rather than by compulsion; if in the process we learn to combine the essential with the enjoyable, the expedient with the benevolent, the practical with the beautiful, this will be an extra incentive to embark on this great task.
Indeed, the whole human species is endangered, by nuclear weapons or by other means of wholesale destruction which further advances in science are likely to produce.
Technology is driving us together. In many ways we are becoming like one family. With the global threats resulting from science and technology, the whole of humankind now needs protection. We have to extend our loyalty to the whole of the human race.
A man's shortcomings are taken from his epoch; his virtues and greatness belong to himself.
The problem then with Jesus is that he cannot be removed from his time and transplanted into our own without simply creating him anew
If anything had or could have a value equal to gold and silver, it would require no tender law; and if it had not that value it ought not to have such a law; and, therefore, all tender laws are tyrannical and unjust and calculated to support fraud and oppression.
Money is the great power today. Men sell their souls for it. Women sell their bodies for it. Others worship it. The money power has grown so great that the issue of all issues is whether the corporation shall rule this country or the country shall again rule the corporations.
Psychiatry in this place is like serving an in-flight meal in the middle of a plane crash. If I wanted to make you well, as a doctor, I should be giving you a parachute, not a cheese-and-pickle sandwich.
I've had to come to grips with a God that fits my own experience, which is, my God could not be offering protection and not have protected my boy.
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