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Atomic Bomb Quotes

Browse 193 quotes about Atomic Bomb.

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Atomic Bomb Quotes

“I dispute the point that nuclear energy is 'clean' and 'cost-effective'. As I recall, when we first harnessed nuclear power it was to drop an atom bomb on a civilian population, not to save the environment. However, you must admit, the victors are never tried for war crimes.”

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Book:Brushstrokes of a Gadfly
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“For ten years after the atomic bomb was dropped there was so little public discussion of the bomb or of radioactivity that even the Chugoku Shinbun, the major newspaper of the city where the atomic bomb was dropped, did not have the movable type for 'atomic bomb' or 'radioactivity'. The silence continued so long because the U.S. Army Surgeons Investigation Team in the fall of 1945 had issued a mistaken statement: all people expected to die from the radiation effects of the atomic bomb had by then already died; accordingly, no further cases of physiological effects due to residual radiation would be acknowledged.”

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Author:Kenzaburō Ōe
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“If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.”

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Author:C.S. Lewis
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“I think that what has kept the world safe from the bomb since 1945 has not been a deterrence, in the sense of fear of specific weapons, so much as it’s been memory,” [Hersey] said in 1986, in a rare interview. “The memory of what happened at Hiroshima.”

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Book:Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World
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“In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. ‘How are we to live in an atomic age?’ I am tempted to reply: Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.’ In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances… and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty. This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.”

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Author:C.S. Lewis
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“Do-oh died on March 14, 2007, just as the buds of her beloved drooping cherry trees behind her house were ready to burst. Having surpassed by two years her goal to live until seventy-five, she had, by her own measure, defeated the atomic bomb. "What I mean is - I mean, they dropped the bombs thinking everyone will die, right? But not everyone was killed. I think it takes great emotional strength and force of will to triumph over nuclear weapons.”

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Author:Susan Southard
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“If you think atomic explosions in Asia wouldn't affect Americans, consider this. A study published in Scientific American in 2010 looked at the probable impact of a "small" nuclear war, one in which India and Pakistan each dropped fifty atomic bombs. The scientists concluded that the explosions would ignite massive firestorms, sending enormous amounts of dust and smoke into the atmosphere. This would block some of the sun's light from reaching the earth, making the planet colder and darker - for about ten years. Farming would collapse, and people all over the globe would starve to death. And that's if only half of one percent of all the atomic bombs on earth were used. In the end, this is a difficult story to sum up. The making of the atomic bomb is one of history's most amazing examples of teamwork and genius and poise under pressure. But it's also the story of how humans created a weapon capable of wiping our species off the planet. It's a story with no end in sight. And, like it or not, you're in it.”

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Book:Bomb: The Race to Build—and Steal—the World's Most Dangerous Weapon
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“Approaching the Cenotaph again, we stop so a group of school-children can stand for an unobstructed photo by the shallow memorial pool. Each holds a paper crane in their hands, and they all look so proud. It reminds me of the class photograph from 1945. The children in today’s class also look no older than five or six, and their smiles beam just as bright. And hearing their laughter as the teacher tries to get them to settle long enough to take the photo, I recall something Mom said years after she returned from Angola: ‘No matter what language you speak or what nationality you are, tears and laughter always sound the same.”

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Book:Beautiful Shining People
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“Should the research worker of the future discover some means of releasing this [atomic] energy in a form which could be employed, the human race will have at its command powers beyond the dream of scientific fiction, but the remotest possibility must always be considered that the energy once liberated will be completely uncontrollable and by its intense violence detonate all neighbouring substances. In this event, the whole of the hydrogen on earth might be transformed at once and the success of the experiment published at large to the universe as a new star.”

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Author:Francis William Aston
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“You must come to my office to play cards sometime. Bring a lot of money. Be sensible, comrade.” “We would be very excited to get our hands on a current-generation American atomic device,” says Defense. “We are less interested in receiving several hundred at once. So no, we will not be claiming any direct responsibility for sinking their fucking warships.”

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Book:Uncanny Magazine Issue 62: January/February 2025
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“What the diary does not reveal, for it stops too soon, is the appalling fact that from late 1945 until 1952 Japanese medical researchers were prohibited by U.S. occupation authorities from publishing scientific articles on the effects of the atomic bombs.”

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Book:Hiroshima Diary: The Journal of a Japanese Physician, August 6-September 30, 1945
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“Trinity’s witnesses responded just as those to Apollo 11 would, as J. Robert Oppenheimer remembered: "We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent." Oppenheimer later said the he beheld his radiant blooming cloud and thought of Hindu scripture: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." Aloud, however, the physicist made the ultimate engineer comment: "It worked.”

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Book:Rocket Men: The Epic Story of the First Men on the Moon
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“He was the only person making his way into the city; he met hundreds and hundreds who were fleeing, and every one of them seemed to be hurt in some way. The eyebrows of some were burned off and skin hung from their faces and hands. Others, because of pain, held their arms up as if carrying something in both hands. Some were vomiting as they walked. Many were naked or in shreds of clothing. On some undressed bodies, the burns had made patterns—of undershirt straps and suspenders and, on the skin of some women (since white repelled the heat from the bomb and dark clothes absorbed it and conducted it to the skin), the shapes of flowers they had had on their kimonos. Many, although injured themselves, supported relatives who were worse off. Almost all had their heads bowed, looked straight ahead, were silent, and showed no expression whatsoever.”

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Book:Hiroshima
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“Every American who has permitted himself to make jokes about atom bombs, or who has come to regard them as just one sensational phenomenon that can now be accepted as part of civilization, like the airplane and the gasoline engine… ought to read Mr. Hersey,” the editorial read.”

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Book:Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World
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“People are shopping these days. The stores are crowded. Buyers are intent but not gay. The news of the atomic bomb came as a terrible shock to everybody, and the easiest way to take your mind off it is to buy things.”

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Book:The Wild Flag: Editorials from the New Yorker on Federal World Government and Other Matters
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“Suddenly, there was an enormous flash of light, the brightest light I have ever seen or that I think anyone has ever seen. It blasted; it pounced; it bored its way into you. It was a vision which was seen with more than the eye. It was seen to last forever. You would wish it would stop; altogether it lasted about two seconds. [Witnessing the first atomic bomb test explosion.]”

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Author:Isidor Isaac Rabi
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“Summoned by Congress that November to testify about use of the bombs on Japan and their after-effects, the [General Groves] eventually conceded that radiation had been responsible for some of the deaths in the atomic cities, but informed the Senate Special Committee on Atomic Energy that doctors had assured him that radiation poisoning “is a very pleasant way to die.”

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Book:Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World
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“Japan suffered terribly from the atomic bomb but never adopted a pose of moral superiority, implying: 'We would never have done it!' The Japanese know perfectly well they would have used it had they had it. They accept the idea that war is war; they give no quarter and accept none. Total war, they recognize, knows no Queensberry Rules. If you develop a devastating new weapon during a total war, you use it; you do not put it into the War Museum.”

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Book:The land of the rising yen: Japan
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“In the end, this is a difficult story to sum up. The making of the atomic bomb is one of history's most amazing examples of teamwork and genius and poise under pressure. But it's also the story of how humans created a weapon capable of wiping our species off the planet. It's a story with no end in sight. And, like it or not, you're in it.”

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Author:Steve Sheinkin
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