#clear

In the 1990s, we were certain that Saddam Hussein had a nuclear arsenal. In fact, his factories could barely make soap. ↗

— Fareed Zakaria

#barely #certain #could #fact #factories

The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything except our thinking. Thus, we are drifting toward catastrophe beyond conception. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive. ↗

— Albert Einstein

#nuclear #thinking #change

Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds. ↗

— J. Robert Oppenheimer

#death #destruction #nuclear-weapons #death

Just before the Clear Air Turbulence went back into warp and its crew sat down at the table, the ship expelled the limp corpse of Zallin. Where it had found a live man in a suit, it left a dead youth in shorts and a tattered shirt, tumbling and freezing while a thin shell of air molecules expanded around the body, like an image of departing life. ↗

— Iain Banks

#death #life #shell #space #vacuum

It is such a supreme folly to believe that nuclear weapons are deadly only if they're used. The fact that they exist at all, their presence in our lives, will wreak more havoc than we can begin to fathom. Nuclear weapons pervade our thinking. Control our behavior. Administer our societies. Inform our dreams. They bury themselves like meat hooks deep in the base of our brains. They are purveyors of madness. They are the ultimate colonizer. Whiter than any white man that ever lived. The very heart of whiteness. ↗

— Arundhati Roy

#colonizer #danger #fear #folly #humanity

The Peruvian flute music is . . . cool. In this music, they have not yet invented the industrial revolution that leads to excessive punctuality or the failed experiment they call the nuclear family. This is the music of elements, untarnished, unrehearsed. ↗

— Kate Braverman

#experiment #music #nuclear-family #revolution #experience

The humiliation that Jane had felt turned to something else--grief perhaps, or regret. Regret that she had not known how to act with a boy, regret that she had not been wiser. ↗

— Beverly Cleary

#boys #dating #etiquette #fifteen #humiliation

We need not renounce the use of conventional force. We will be ready to repel any clear and present danger that poses a genuine threat to our national security and survival. ↗

— Theodore C. Sorensen

#clear #conventional #danger #force #genuine

Trent’s chest rises with a quick inhale as his hands lift to grab mine and pull them out, placing them with a pat on the outside of his shirt. “Okay, you win. But don’t do that while I’m driving or we’ll end up in a ditch.” He looks over his shoulder again, adding in a soft, solemn tone, “I’m serious, Kacey. I can’t handle it. ↗

— K.A. Tucker

#k-a-tucker #kacey-cleary #kacey-trent #ten-tiny-breaths #trent-emerson

The endless newsreel clips of nuclear explosions that we saw on TV in the 1960s (were) a powerful incitement to the psychotic imagination, sanctioning *everything*. ↗

— J.G. Ballard

#nuclear #psychosis #tv #imagination