Jonathan Schell Quotes & Sayings

The use of a mere dozen nuclear weapons ... would be a human catastrophe without parallel ... Because so few weapons can kill so many people, even far-reaching disarmament proposals would leave us implicated in plans for unprecedented slaughter of innocent people. The sole measure that can free us from this burden is abolition. — Jonathan Schell

It is a key fact about American policy in Vietnam that the withdrawel of American troops was built into it from the start. None of the presidents who waged war in Vietnam contemplated an open-ended campaign; all promised the public that American troops would be able to leave in the not-too-remote future. The promise of withdrawel precluded a policy of occupation of the traditional colonial sort, in which a great power simply imposes its will on a small one indefinitely. — Jonathan Schell

Every person is the right person to act. Every moment is the right moment to begin. — Jonathan Schell

Lovers of freedom, lovers of social justice, disarmers, peacekeepers, civil disobeyers, democrats, civil-rights activists, and defenders of the environment are legions in a single multiform cause, and they will gain strength by knowing it, taking encouragement from it, and when appropriate and opportune, pooling their efforts. — Jonathan Schell

Reason must sit at the knee of instinct and learn reverence for the miraculous instinctual capacity for creation. — Jonathan Schell

The machinery of destruction is complete, poised on a hair trigger, waiting for the 'button' to be 'pushed' by some misguided or deranged human being or for some faulty computer chip to send out the instruction to fire. That so much should be balanced on so fine a point
that the fruit of four and a half billion years can be undone in a careless moment
is a fact against which belief rebels. — Jonathan Schell

The spread of democracy is a wonderful thing-it is a necessary foundation for peace-and it can happen. But it cannot be advanced by force, and still less by the creation of a new empire, an idea that is as unworkable as it morally mistaken. Empire, the embodiment of force, violates equity on a global scale. No lover of freedom can give it support. It is especially contrary to the founding principles of the United States. — Jonathan Schell

It appears that no one is so unfortunate that he or she is exempt from spending cuts, while at the same time no one is so fortunate as to be ineligible for a tax cut — Jonathan Schell

It has been said that the United States was deceived into entering and expanding the Vietnam War by its own overoptimistic propaganda. The record suggests, however, that the policy-makers stayed in Vietnam not so much because of overly optimistic hopes of winning ... as because of overly pessimistic assessments of the consequences of losing. — Jonathan Schell

Of course, some will say the goal [of abolition] is a utopian dream of human perfection. We needn't worry. There will be more than enough sins left for everyone to commit after we have taken nuclear bombs away from ourselves. — Jonathan Schell

The world is not to be approached, blueprint in hand, as if it were so much raw material waiting to be fashioned to someone's design. — Jonathan Schell

[A] new generation, innocent of the divisions of the Cold War, this coming-of-age ... If its members do not feel the urgency to escape the nuclear danger that some of its parents felt, neither has it developed the deep attachment to nuclear arms also often found among their parents, including most of the governing class ... The call for abolition should therefore be, among other things, a call from an older generation to younger one. — Jonathan Schell

Since after extinction no one will be present to take responsibility, we have to take full responsibility now. — Jonathan Schell

No single person can possess the wisdom to chart our course. — Jonathan Schell

The nuclear peril is usually seen in isolation from the threats to other forms of life and their ecosystems, but in fact it should be seen at the very center of the ecological crisis, as the cloud-covered Everest of which the more immediate, visible kinds of harm to the environment are the mere foothills. — Jonathan Schell