Quote

Long before the terrifying potential of the arms race was recognized, there was a widespread instinctive abhorrence of nuclear weapons, and a strong desire to get rid of them.

Nuclear war is such an emotional subject that many people see the weapons themselves as the common enemy of humanity.

We all need to look into the dark side of our nature - that's where the energy is, the passion. People are afraid of that because it holds pieces of us we're busy denying.

There's a reason why anger, fear, and hatred are paths to the dark side: they all spring from a single source - the same source as a certain flavor of love. A dangerously sweet, addictive flavor.

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

I'm not surprised that I tend to go for the dark side. I was a really scared kid, so I think I understand what scares people.

My feelings of revulsion and foreboding about nuclear weapons had not changed an iota since 1945, and they have never left me. Since I was 14, the overriding objective of my life has been to prevent the occurrence of nuclear war.

The underbelly of the human psyche, what is often referred to as our dark side, is the origin of every act of self-sabotage. Birthed out of shame, fear, and denial, it misdirects our good intentions and drives us to unthinkable acts of self-destruction and not-so-unbelievable acts of self-sabotage.

I think it has other roots, has to do, in part, with a general anxiety in contemporary life... nuclear bombs, inequality of possibility and chance, inequality of goods allotted to us, a kind of general racist, unjust attitude that is pervasive.

As long as some of us choose to rely on nuclear weapons, we continue to risk that these same weapons will become increasingly attractive to others.