Cold-Blooded Quotes (2 quotes)
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.
We are disappointed if the cold-blooded scientist assures us that Man cannot exist on Mars. … We do resent a restraint on our imagination. We should like to believe in marvelous men on Venus.
From Harlow Shapley and Cecilia H. Payne, eds., The Universe of Stars: Radio Talks from the Harvard Observatory (1926, Rev. Ed., 1929). As quoted and cited in Marcel Chotkowski LaFollette, Science on the Air: Popularizers and Personalities on Radio and Early Television (2009), 42 & 287.
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) -- 
