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In this first testing ground of the atomic bomb I have seen the most terrible and frightening desolation in four years of war. It makes a blitzed Pacific island seem like an Eden. The damage is far greater than photographs can show.

The real abhorrent consequence of the invention of atomic bombs is the fact that we still have them and they're spreading.

I am not sure why, but I have been obsessed by the Atom Bomb ever since it first happened.

The atom bomb was no 'great decision.' It was merely another powerful weapon in the arsenal of righteousness.

But I think the bomb instead constitutes merely a first step in a new control by man over the forces of nature too revolutionary and dangerous to fit into old concepts.

The atomic weapons race and the secrecy surrounding it crushed American democracy. It induced us to conduct government according to lies. It distorted justice. It undermined American morality.

The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul.

The terror of the atom age is not the violence of the new power but the speed of man's adjustment to it, the speed of his acceptance.

And I thought about the psychic numbing involved in strategic projections of using hydrogen bombs or nuclear weapons of any kind. And I also thought about ways in which all of us undergo what could be called the numbing of everyday life.

Being bombastic for the sake of being bombastic has just never been my take on the world.