TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY ®  •  TODAYINSCI ®
Celebrating 24 Years on the Web
Find science on or your birthday

Today in Science History - Quickie Quiz
Who said: “Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index H > Category: Hiroshima

Hiroshima Quotes (18 quotes)

Quote by Hideki Yukawa: A Thousand Paper Cranes. Peace on Earth and in the Heavens.
Background by anngelfra CC BY 2.0 (source)

A Thousand Paper Cranes. Peace on Earth and in the Heavens.
Inscribed, in the handwriting of Yukawa, on the surface of the bell inside the Children’s Peace Monument at Hiroshima, Japan. The crane is a symbol of longevity and happiness in Japan. The monument to mourn all the children whose death was caused by the atomic bomb was inspired by 12-year-old Sadako Sasaki, who believed that if she could fold 1000 paper cranes she would be cured of the leukemia that resulted from her exposure to the radiation of the atomic bomb when two years old. She died before completing them.
Science quotes on:  |  Atomic Bomb (115)  |  Crane (4)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Heaven (266)  |  Heavens (125)  |  Inscription (12)  |  Memorial (4)  |  Paper (192)  |  Paper Crane (2)  |  Peace (116)  |  Sadako Sasaki (3)  |  Thousand (340)

As the Director of the Theoretical Division of Los Alamos, I participated at the most senior level in the World War II Manhattan Project that produced the first atomic weapons.
Now, at age 88, I am one of the few remaining such senior persons alive. Looking back at the half century since that time, I feel the most intense relief that these weapons have not been used since World War II, mixed with the horror that tens of thousands of such weapons have been built since that time—one hundred times more than any of us at Los Alamos could ever have imagined.
Today we are rightly in an era of disarmament and dismantlement of nuclear weapons. But in some countries nuclear weapons development still continues. Whether and when the various Nations of the World can agree to stop this is uncertain. But individual scientists can still influence this process by withholding their skills.
Accordingly, I call on all scientists in all countries to cease and desist from work creating, developing, improving and manufacturing further nuclear weapons - and, for that matter, other weapons of potential mass destruction such as chemical and biological weapons.
[On the occasion of the 50th Anniversary of Hiroshima.]
Letter, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (Nov 1995), 51:6, 3.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Alive (97)  |  Atomic Bomb (115)  |  Back (395)  |  Biological (137)  |  Call (781)  |  Cease (81)  |  Century (319)  |  Chemical (303)  |  Continue (179)  |  Destruction (135)  |  Development (441)  |  Disarmament (6)  |  Division (67)  |  Era (51)  |  Feel (371)  |  First (1302)  |  Horror (15)  |  Hundred (240)  |  Individual (420)  |  Influence (231)  |  Looking (191)  |  Los Alamos (6)  |  Manhattan Project (15)  |  Manufacturing (29)  |  Mass (160)  |  Matter (821)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Nation (208)  |  Nuclear (110)  |  Nuclear Weapon (17)  |  Occasion (87)  |  Other (2233)  |  Person (366)  |  Potential (75)  |  Process (439)  |  Produced (187)  |  Project (77)  |  Relief (30)  |  Remaining (45)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Senior (7)  |  Skill (116)  |  Still (614)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Time (1911)  |  Today (321)  |  Uncertain (45)  |  Various (205)  |  War (233)  |  Weapon (98)  |  Weapons (57)  |  Work (1402)  |  World (1850)

During my span of life science has become a matter of public concern and the l'art pour l'art standpoint of my youth is now obsolete. Science has become an integral and most important part of our civilization, and scientific work means contributing to its development. Science in our technical age has social, economic, and political functions, and however remote one's own work is from technical application it is a link in the chain of actions and decisions which determine the fate of the human race. I realized this aspect of science in its full impact only after Hiroshima.
Max Born
My Life & My Views (1968), 49.
Science quotes on:  |  Action (342)  |  Age (509)  |  Application (257)  |  Art (680)  |  Aspect (129)  |  Become (821)  |  Civilization (220)  |  Concern (239)  |  Decision (98)  |  Determine (152)  |  Development (441)  |  Economic (84)  |  Fate (76)  |  Function (235)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Race (104)  |  Impact (45)  |  Integral (26)  |  Life (1870)  |  Matter (821)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Most (1728)  |  Obsolete (15)  |  Political (124)  |  Politics (122)  |  Race (278)  |  Remote (86)  |  Scientific (955)  |  Social (261)  |  Standpoint (28)  |  Work (1402)  |  Youth (109)

For more than two years, ever since August 6, 1945, I have been looking at physicists as science writer for The New York Herald Tribune.
The context of this quote makes it interesting. White had been a staff reporter at the newspaper since 1943. The day he became science writer is notable. The first atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan on 6 Aug 1945. The newspaper immediately responded to the need to provide information on science for the public’s interest stimulated by that event. (The newspaper also had to compete with the New York Times science reporter, William L. Laurence, who had been on the inside track at the Manhattan Project, and covered the news of the atomic attacks on Japan.) In 'A Newsman Looks at Physicists', Physics Today (May 1948), 1, No. 1, 15.
Science quotes on:  |  Atom Bomb (4)  |  Looking (191)  |  More (2558)  |  New (1273)  |  Newspaper (39)  |  Physicist (270)  |  Reporter (5)  |  Two (936)  |  Writer (90)  |  Year (963)

I admit that the generation which produced Stalin, Auschwitz and Hiroshima will take some beating, but the radical and universal consciousness of the death of God is still ahead of us. Perhaps we shall have to colonise the stars before it is finally borne in upon us that God is not out there.
In Thomas Mann: a Critical Study (1971), 175.
Science quotes on:  |  Admission (17)  |  Atheism (11)  |  Auschwitz (5)  |  Colonization (3)  |  Consciousness (132)  |  Death (406)  |  Generation (256)  |  God (776)  |  Produced (187)  |  Radical (28)  |  Stalin_Joseph (5)  |  Star (460)  |  Stars (304)  |  Still (614)  |  Universal (198)  |  Will (2350)

I have, also, a good deal of respect for the job they [physicists] did in the first months after Hiroshima. The world desperately needed information on this new problem in the daily life of the planet, and the physicists, after a slow start, did a good job of giving it to them. It hasn’t come out with a fraction of the efficiency that the teachers might have wished, but it was infinitely more effective than anyone would have dared expect.
In 'A Newsman Looks at Physicists', Physics Today (May 1948), 1, No. 1, 15.
Science quotes on:  |  Daily (91)  |  Daily Life (18)  |  Deal (192)  |  Effective (68)  |  Efficiency (46)  |  Expect (203)  |  First (1302)  |  Good (906)  |  Information (173)  |  Job (86)  |  Life (1870)  |  Month (91)  |  More (2558)  |  New (1273)  |  Physicist (270)  |  Planet (402)  |  Problem (731)  |  Respect (212)  |  Slow (108)  |  Start (237)  |  Teacher (154)  |  Wish (216)  |  World (1850)

If atomic bombs are to be added as new weapons to the arsenals of a warring world, or to the arsenals of nations preparing for war, then the time will come when mankind will curse the names of Los Alamos and Hiroshima. The people must unite, or they will perish.
Speech at Fuller Lodge when the U.S. Army was honouring the work at Los Alamos. (16 Oct 1945). Quoted in Kai Bird, Martin J. Sherwin, American Prometheus: the Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (2005), 323.
Science quotes on:  |  Arsenal (5)  |  Atomic Bomb (115)  |  Curse (20)  |  Los Alamos (6)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Must (1525)  |  Name (359)  |  Nation (208)  |  New (1273)  |  People (1031)  |  Perish (56)  |  Preparing (21)  |  Time (1911)  |  Unite (43)  |  War (233)  |  Weapon (98)  |  Weapons (57)  |  Will (2350)  |  World (1850)

Let us sum up the three possible explanations of the decision to drop the bomb and its timing. The first that it was a clever and highly successful move in the field of power politics, is almost certainly correct; the second, that the timing was coincidental, convicts the American government of a hardly credible tactlessness [towards the Soviet Union]; and the third, the Roman holiday theory [a spectacular event to justify the cost of the Manhattan Project], convicts them of an equally incredible irresponsibility.
In The Political and Military Consequences of Atomic Energy (1948), 126. As cited by Maurice W. Kirby and Jonathan Rosenhead, 'Patrick Blackett (1897)' in Arjang A. Assad (ed.) and Saul I. Gass (ed.),Profiles in Operations Research: Pioneers and Innovators (2011), 17. Blackett regarded the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan as unnecessary because a Japanese surrender was inevitable.
Science quotes on:  |  Atomic Bomb (115)  |  Certainly (185)  |  Clever (41)  |  Cost (94)  |  Decision (98)  |  Drop (77)  |  Equally (129)  |  Event (222)  |  Explanation (246)  |  Field (378)  |  First (1302)  |  Government (116)  |  Holiday (12)  |  Incredible (43)  |  Irresponsibility (5)  |  Manhattan Project (15)  |  Move (223)  |  Politics (122)  |  Possible (560)  |  Power (771)  |  Project (77)  |  Roman (39)  |  Soviet (10)  |  Spectacular (22)  |  Successful (134)  |  Sum (103)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Union (52)

One must expect a war between U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. which will begin with the total destruction of London. I think the war will last 30 years, and leave a world without civilised people, from which everything will have to build afresh—a process taking (say) 500 years.
Stated just one month after the Hiroshima atomic explosion. Russell became one of the best-known antinuclear activists of his era.
Letter to Gamel Brenan (1 Sep 1945). In Nicholas Griffin (Ed.), The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell (2002), 410.
Science quotes on:  |  Atomic Bomb (115)  |  Begin (275)  |  Best (467)  |  Build (211)  |  Destruction (135)  |  Era (51)  |  Everything (489)  |  Expect (203)  |  Explosion (51)  |  Known (453)  |  Last (425)  |  Month (91)  |  Must (1525)  |  People (1031)  |  Process (439)  |  Say (989)  |  Think (1122)  |  Total (95)  |  War (233)  |  Will (2350)  |  World (1850)  |  Year (963)

One would have to have been brought up in the “spirit of militarism” to understand the difference between Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the one hand, and Auschwitz and Belsen on the other. The usual reasoning is the following: the former case is one of warfare, the latter of cold-blooded slaughter. But the plain truth is that the people involved are in both instances nonparticipants, defenseless old people, women, and children, whose annihilation is supposed to achieve some political or military objective.… I am certain that the human race is doomed, unless its instinctive detestation of atrocities gains the upper hand over the artificially constructed judgment of reason.
Max Born
In The Born-Einstein Letters: Correspondence Between Albert Einstein and Max Born (1971), 205. Born’s commentary (at age 86) added for the book, printed after letter to Albert Einstein, 8 Nov 1953.
Science quotes on:  |  Annihilation (15)  |  Atomic Bomb (115)  |  Atrocity (6)  |  Auschwitz (5)  |  Blood (144)  |  Both (496)  |  Certain (557)  |  Children (201)  |  Cold (115)  |  Cold-Blooded (2)  |  Construct (129)  |  Defenseless (3)  |  Difference (355)  |  Doom (34)  |  Former (138)  |  Gain (146)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Race (104)  |  Involved (90)  |  Judgment (140)  |  Military (45)  |  Nagasaki (3)  |  Objective (96)  |  Old (499)  |  Other (2233)  |  People (1031)  |  Political (124)  |  Race (278)  |  Reason (766)  |  Reasoning (212)  |  Slaughter (8)  |  Spirit (278)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Understand (648)  |  Warfare (12)

Qualified scientists in Washington believe that the atom-blasting of Japan is the start toward heating plants the size of telephone booths for great factories, and motor-car trips of 1,000 hours on one gram of fuel. One expert estimated that with a few grams of uranium it might be possible to power the Queen Mary from Europe to the U.S. and back again. One of America’s leading scientists, Doctor Vollrath, said that the new discovery brings man’s attempt to reach the moon within bounds of possibility.
Newspaper
The Maple Leaf (8 Aug 1945), 4.
Science quotes on:  |  America (143)  |  Atom (381)  |  Atomic Bomb (115)  |  Attempt (266)  |  Back (395)  |  Belief (615)  |  Blast (13)  |  Bound (120)  |  Bounds (8)  |  Car (75)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Doctor (191)  |  Estimation (7)  |  Europe (50)  |  Expert (67)  |  Factory (20)  |  Fuel (39)  |  Gram (4)  |  Great (1610)  |  Hour (192)  |  Japan (9)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mile (43)  |  Moon (252)  |  Motor (23)  |  Motor Car (3)  |  New (1273)  |  Plant (320)  |  Possibility (172)  |  Possible (560)  |  Power (771)  |  Qualified (12)  |  Reach (286)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Size (62)  |  Start (237)  |  Telephone (31)  |  Telephone Booth (2)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Trip (11)  |  U.S.A. (7)  |  Uranium (21)

REST IN PEACE. THE MISTAKE SHALL NOT BE REPEATED.
Anonymous
Inscription on the cenotaph at Hiroshima, Japan. Quoted in Alan L. Mackay, The Harvest of a Quiet Eye (1977. In Robert Andrews Famous Lines: a Columbia Dictionary of Familiar Quotations (1997), 340.
Science quotes on:  |  Atomic Bomb (115)  |  Cenotaph (2)  |  Mistake (180)  |  Peace (116)  |  Repetition (29)  |  Rest (287)

The Atomic Age was born in secrecy, and for two decades after Hiroshima, the high priests of the cult of the atom concealed vital information about the risks to human health posed by radiation. Dr. Alice Stewart, an audacious and insightful medical researcher, was one of the first experts to alert the world to the dangers of low-level radiation.
(Udeall is a former U.S. Secretary of the Interior.)
Quoted in Gayle Jacoba Greene, The Woman Who Knew Too Much (1999), back cover.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Alert (13)  |  Atom (381)  |  Atomic Age (6)  |  Atomic Bomb (115)  |  Concealed (25)  |  Danger (127)  |  Decade (66)  |  Expert (67)  |  First (1302)  |  Former (138)  |  Health (210)  |  High (370)  |  Human (1512)  |  Information (173)  |  Interior (35)  |  Low (86)  |  Priest (29)  |  Radiation (48)  |  Researcher (36)  |  Risk (68)  |  Alice Stewart (5)  |  Two (936)  |  Vital (89)  |  World (1850)

The city of Hiroshima stands as more than a monument to massive death and destruction. It stands as a living testament to the necessity for progress toward nuclear disarmament.
Speech (11 Jan 1978)). In Bill Adler (ed.), The Wit and Wisdom of Ted Kennedy (2011).
Science quotes on:  |  City (87)  |  Death (406)  |  Destruction (135)  |  Disarmament (6)  |  Life (1870)  |  Living (492)  |  Massive (9)  |  Monument (45)  |  More (2558)  |  Necessity (197)  |  Nuclear (110)  |  Progress (492)  |  Stand (284)  |  Testament (4)

The double horror of two Japanese city names [Hiroshima and Nagasaki] grew for me into another kind of double horror; an estranging awareness of what the United States was capable of, the country that five years before had given me its citizenship; a nauseating terror at the direction the natural sciences were going. Never far from an apocalyptic vision of the world, I saw the end of the essence of mankind an end brought nearer, or even made, possible, by the profession to which I belonged. In my view, all natural sciences were as one; and if one science could no longer plead innocence, none could.
Heraclitean Fire: Sketches from a Life before Nature (1978), 3.
Science quotes on:  |  Atomic Bomb (115)  |  Awareness (42)  |  Belong (168)  |  Capable (174)  |  City (87)  |  Country (269)  |  Direction (185)  |  End (603)  |  Essence (85)  |  Horror (15)  |  Innocence (13)  |  Japanese (7)  |  Kind (564)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Men Of Science (147)  |  Nagasaki (3)  |  Name (359)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Science (133)  |  Nearer (45)  |  Never (1089)  |  Possible (560)  |  Profession (108)  |  Saw (160)  |  State (505)  |  Terror (32)  |  Two (936)  |  View (496)  |  Vision (127)  |  World (1850)  |  Year (963)

The dropping of the Atomic Bomb is a very deep problem… Instead of commemorating Hiroshima we should celebrate… man’s triumph over the problem [of transmutation], and not its first misuse by politicians and military authorities.
Address to New Europe Group meeting on the third anniversary of the Hiroshima bomb. Quoted in New Europe Group, In Commemoration of Professor Frederick Soddy (1956), 6-7.
Science quotes on:  |  Atomic Bomb (115)  |  Authority (99)  |  Celebrate (21)  |  Celebration (7)  |  Commemoration (2)  |  Deep (241)  |  Dropping (8)  |  First (1302)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Military (45)  |  Misuse (12)  |  Politician (40)  |  Problem (731)  |  Transmutation (24)  |  Triumph (76)

The ginkgo tree is from the era of dinosaurs, but while the dinosaur has been extinguished, the modern ginkgo has not changed. After the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, the ginkgo was the first tree that came up. It’s amazing.
As quoted in Columbia University Press Release, On Campus (21 Feb 2013).
Science quotes on:  |  Amazing (35)  |  Atomic Bomb (115)  |  Change (639)  |  Dinosaur (26)  |  Era (51)  |  Extinguish (8)  |  First (1302)  |  Modern (402)  |  Tree (269)

There is no question in my mind that we live in one of the truly bestial centuries in human history. There are plenty of signposts for the future historian, and what do they say? They say ‘Auschwitz’ and ‘Dresden’ and ‘Hiroshima’ and ‘Vietnam’ and ‘Napalm.’ For many years we all woke up to the daily body count on the radio. And if there were a way to kill people with the B Minor Mass, the Pentagon—Madison Avenue axis would have found it.
In Voices in the Labyrinth: Nature, Man, and Science (1979), 2.
Science quotes on:  |  Auschwitz (5)  |  Avenue (14)  |  Body (557)  |  Count (107)  |  Daily (91)  |  Death (406)  |  Do (1905)  |  Future (467)  |  Historian (59)  |  History (716)  |  Human (1512)  |  Kill (100)  |  Live (650)  |  Mass (160)  |  Mind (1377)  |  People (1031)  |  Question (649)  |  Radio (60)  |  Say (989)  |  Truly (118)  |  Way (1214)  |  Year (963)


Carl Sagan Thumbnail In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) -- Carl Sagan
Quotations by:Albert EinsteinIsaac NewtonLord KelvinCharles DarwinSrinivasa RamanujanCarl SaganFlorence NightingaleThomas EdisonAristotleMarie CurieBenjamin FranklinWinston ChurchillGalileo GalileiSigmund FreudRobert BunsenLouis PasteurTheodore RooseveltAbraham LincolnRonald ReaganLeonardo DaVinciMichio KakuKarl PopperJohann GoetheRobert OppenheimerCharles Kettering  ... (more people)

Quotations about:Atomic  BombBiologyChemistryDeforestationEngineeringAnatomyAstronomyBacteriaBiochemistryBotanyConservationDinosaurEnvironmentFractalGeneticsGeologyHistory of ScienceInventionJupiterKnowledgeLoveMathematicsMeasurementMedicineNatural ResourceOrganic ChemistryPhysicsPhysicianQuantum TheoryResearchScience and ArtTeacherTechnologyUniverseVolcanoVirusWind PowerWomen ScientistsX-RaysYouthZoology  ... (more topics)
Sitewide search within all Today In Science History pages:
Visit our Science and Scientist Quotations index for more Science Quotes from archaeologists, biologists, chemists, geologists, inventors and inventions, mathematicians, physicists, pioneers in medicine, science events and technology.

Names index: | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |

Categories index: | 1 | 2 | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
Thank you for sharing.
- 100 -
Sophie Germain
Gertrude Elion
Ernest Rutherford
James Chadwick
Marcel Proust
William Harvey
Johann Goethe
John Keynes
Carl Gauss
Paul Feyerabend
- 90 -
Antoine Lavoisier
Lise Meitner
Charles Babbage
Ibn Khaldun
Euclid
Ralph Emerson
Robert Bunsen
Frederick Banting
Andre Ampere
Winston Churchill
- 80 -
John Locke
Bronislaw Malinowski
Bible
Thomas Huxley
Alessandro Volta
Erwin Schrodinger
Wilhelm Roentgen
Louis Pasteur
Bertrand Russell
Jean Lamarck
- 70 -
Samuel Morse
John Wheeler
Nicolaus Copernicus
Robert Fulton
Pierre Laplace
Humphry Davy
Thomas Edison
Lord Kelvin
Theodore Roosevelt
Carolus Linnaeus
- 60 -
Francis Galton
Linus Pauling
Immanuel Kant
Martin Fischer
Robert Boyle
Karl Popper
Paul Dirac
Avicenna
James Watson
William Shakespeare
- 50 -
Stephen Hawking
Niels Bohr
Nikola Tesla
Rachel Carson
Max Planck
Henry Adams
Richard Dawkins
Werner Heisenberg
Alfred Wegener
John Dalton
- 40 -
Pierre Fermat
Edward Wilson
Johannes Kepler
Gustave Eiffel
Giordano Bruno
JJ Thomson
Thomas Kuhn
Leonardo DaVinci
Archimedes
David Hume
- 30 -
Andreas Vesalius
Rudolf Virchow
Richard Feynman
James Hutton
Alexander Fleming
Emile Durkheim
Benjamin Franklin
Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Hooke
Charles Kettering
- 20 -
Carl Sagan
James Maxwell
Marie Curie
Rene Descartes
Francis Crick
Hippocrates
Michael Faraday
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Francis Bacon
Galileo Galilei
- 10 -
Aristotle
John Watson
Rosalind Franklin
Michio Kaku
Isaac Asimov
Charles Darwin
Sigmund Freud
Albert Einstein
Florence Nightingale
Isaac Newton


by Ian Ellis
who invites your feedback
Thank you for sharing.
Today in Science History
Sign up for Newsletter
with quiz, quotes and more.