When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I would say that I was absolutely convinced of the possibility of our making an uranium engine, but I never thought that we would make a bomb; and at the bottom of my heart, I was really glad that it was to be an engine and not a bomb.
Reports in Washington show that our reasoning was just like that of your physicists. With all this information available, at least to privileged persons, I cannot understand why it is generally held in the United States that we completely missed the basic principle of the bomb until after Hiroshima.
There is such thing as a 'smart bomb' - bombs are smart these days, you know.
Being bombastic for the sake of being bombastic has just never been my take on the world.
The real abhorrent consequence of the invention of atomic bombs is the fact that we still have them and they're spreading.
It was because of my deep concerns about nuclear weapons that I went to Hiroshima. And then I was astounded in Hiroshima to find that nobody had really studied it.
I have to bring to your notice a terrifying reality: with the development of nuclear weapons Man has acquired, for the first time in history, the technical means to destroy the whole of civilization in a single act.
The genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima.
Even with the best intentions, you can have a nuclear war, a nuclear holocaust, through miscalculation, through accidents.
The atom bomb was no 'great decision.' It was merely another powerful weapon in the arsenal of righteousness.