anti-nuclear-weapons-activists

"The spectre of Hiroshima and Nagasaki still looms over humanity. This makes the advocacy of Nihon Hidankyo invaluable. This Nobel Peace Prize sends a powerful message. We have the duty to remember. And an even greater duty to protect the next generations from the horrors of nuclear war"

"It’s extremely meaningful that the organisation that has worked toward abolishing nuclear weapons received the Nobel Peace Prize"

"... Born in 1907, Laura Capon came from a family of upper-middle-class Italian Jews. They were living in Rome when Benito Mussolini came to power in 1922; and when she and Enrico married in 1928. Laura, who had been studying science, enjoyed following her husband’s work and related breakthroughs in physics. She helped my grandfather write his first textbook. Five years of forced wartime secrecy from 1940–1945 temporarily broke the flow of discourse between them. She shared more about those details in Atoms in the Family, but my grandmother doesn’t mention how Hitler’s Holocaust robbed her of her father Augusto Capon, an admiral in the Italian Navy. Because of his position, my great-grandfather didn’t believe he was in danger, even when the situation under Mussolini continued to deteriorate. The elderly Admiral Capon refused an offer from Enrico’s older sister Maria to take shelter at her home outside of Rome along with some other Jews."

"... I reached the door and read the sign: '. " ...." The name brought back the memory of a slim and swarthy young Sicilian leaning against the tall in my parents' backckyard, isolated and quiet among the numerous merrymakes at my wedding reception. It was the summer of 1928, and earlier that year Majorana had joined the small group of students being trained in "modern" physics by Enrico Fermi and Franco Rasetti. Fermi had told me marvels about him: he was a wizard at mathematical calculatons; in physics he was a genius, like Galilei and Newton. Nature had bestowed upon him exceptional intellectual gifts ... but not the power to cope with life. After a few years of association with the group, Majorana stopped going to the physics building; despite his outstanding work he isolated himself and eventually became almost a recluse. Then, after a dramatic return to the academic world and a few weeks of teaching at the , he mysteriously disappeared in 1938, forever, perhaps a suicide, or perhaps a hermit in the secrecy of some convent. Forgotten for many years, his name was now a beacon attracting to Erice the brilliant in science, the young as well as the old."

"The founder of the Civic Disarmament Committee (CDC) of Chicago interpreted the US gun problem in light of her experience working for nuclear peace and universal human security in the early Cold War. As the spouse of Enrico Fermi, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist who conducted the first successful experiments in nuclear fission at the University of Chicago in 1942. Laura Fermi had witnessed the birth of a new global order. Like Enrico and many of the scientists who contributed to the Manhattan Project, Laura Fermi became active in the nuclear peace movement after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Fermi learned to organize activists first in the peace movement and then, beginning in 1959, as a local environmentalist, years before the cause gained national attention. ... At the end of the 1960s she turned toward disarming civilian populations and abolishing handguns, reasoning that disarmament was as feasible for American citizens as limiting nuclear proliferation had been among nation-states. Others working in nascent gun control groups marveled at her incomparable wit and humor and her tireless passion for peace. She liked to tease audiences that they should "never underestimate the power of little old ladies in tennis shoes.""

", a first-year student of physics like Fermi, was not a usual person; his main interest was directed to that part of the world which is not made of human beings. ... ... He had organized a group of students among whom Fermi was prominent in an "Anti-Neighbors Society." The society's single aim was to pester people. The tricks they played ranged from placing a pan of water on a door left ajar which would give a shower to the first person going through, to exploding a in a classroom during a solemn lecture. For the latter prank Rasetti and Fermi, who had built the bomb, risked being expelled forever from the university. They were saved by their teacher of experimental physics, Professor , a tolerant man with keen judgment, who stressed their scholarly achievements at an especially convoked disciplinary meeting of the faculty."

"I'm impressed with the people from Chicago. Hollywood is hype, New York is talk​, Chicago is work."

"People have this idea that I'm part of show business royalty. I cherish the relationship I had with my father, and I'd love to fulfill the fantasy. But when I was young, he was a working actor and hadn't quite made it yet."

"It's difficult for me to meet women because my crowd is much older. I know that for some of the young women I do meet, a relationship with me can be envisioned as a benefit to their career."

"I said it as Gordon Gekko, but I don’t believe that greed is good. The size of fortunes in finance have increased. It’s an accumulation of our political system over the past 30 years; the amount of money that’s invested in certain politicians, so the politician is not responsible to his constituency, but to the people who financially supported him. What you’re seeing now is the result of years of choosing the person who has the best financial connections. I’m sure Gordon Gekko would have been friends with Donald Trump. I’ve known Donald fairly well over the years, in New York. They would probably play golf together!"

"I'm a risk-taker. Most of my career has not been a joyful experience, but it has been challenging. I like the dangers."

"If your work isn't exciting, doesn't stir the emotions, where's the challenge? Where's the progress if you always play it safe?"

"You rack your brain. You take it personally in the beginning, you start blaming yourself. My career came before my family. My marriage was not great, and so you do hide yourself in your work. I should have focused more on my family. But that's hard to say when you're in the midst of your career, when you are in your own mind stepping out of your father's shadow, trying to create a life of your own."

"Cancer didn't bring me to my knees, it brought me to my feet."

"This year, 2020, is the worst year of my life. I was born in 1944, so I took no part in the Second World War. But this is one of the worst things I can imagine. The pandemic affects everyone, regardless of their financial status. The only hope I have is that it brings us all a little closer. But it is a tragedy, and it indicates which countries have strong governments and those which do not. I hope that it will prepare us for the next time."

"Do you know what absolute happiness is? For me, it is to wake up my kids in the morning - these little pieces of innocence - to wake them and find they're so happy to see me! It is unequivocal love, no question about it."

"The Cold War's end pushed disarmament down most leaders' agendas. It's a sophisticated issue, which I think is one reason why it is not so hands-on to many people. It's not visceral. It's not like a starving child."

"A work ethic. Courtesy to your fellow human beings. And kindness. Which are traits you have to work at and rehearse. Particularly compassion — I feel a certain responsibility to conduct myself as somebody who has been blessed and fortunate simply because I was born a white male. And also to teach them to be good citizens of the planet. I'm conscious of us all being in this together."

"I read the script, and I think, 'That's a good movie, and that's a really good movie, moves me, makes me laugh, this and that.' I don't worry about the part. Then I'm looking who's around me? Who's the director? Who's the cast? And I would much rather have a little part in a good movie than a big part in a crappy movie."

"Poem: After the Bomb had Fallen"

"Poem: Lines on the Death of my Husband"

"No matter what obstacles we face, we will keep moving and keep pushing and keep sharing this light with others. This is our passion and commitment for our one precious world to survive."

"The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons provides the pathway forward at a moment of great global crisis. It is a light in a dark time. And more than that, it provides a choice. A choice between the two endings: the end of nuclear weapons or the end of us. It is not naive to believe in the first choice. It is not irrational to think nuclear states can disarm. It is not idealistic to believe in life over fear and destruction; it is a necessity."

"Many critics of this movement suggest that we are the irrational ones, the idealists with no grounding in reality. That nuclear-armed states will never give up their weapons. But we represent the only rational choice. We represent those who refuse to accept nuclear weapons as a fixture in our world, those who refuse to have their fates bound up in a few lines of launch code. Ours is the only reality that is possible. The alternative is unthinkable. The story of nuclear weapons will have an ending, and it is up to us what that ending will be. Will it be the end of nuclear weapons, or will it be the end of us?"

"Nuclear weapons, like chemical weapons, biological weapons, cluster munitions and land mines before them, are now illegal. Their existence is immoral. Their abolishment is in our hands. The end is inevitable. But will that end be the end of nuclear weapons or the end of us? We must choose one. We are a movement for rationality. For democracy. For freedom from fear. We are campaigners from 468 organisations who are working to safeguard the future, and we are representative of the moral majority: the billions of people who choose life over death, who together will see the end of nuclear weapons."

"The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2017 to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). The organization is receiving the award for its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons. We live in a world where the risk of nuclear weapons being used is greater than it has been for a long time. Some states are modernizing their nuclear arsenals, and there is a real danger that more countries will try to procure nuclear weapons, as exemplified by North Korea. Nuclear weapons pose a constant threat to humanity and all life on earth. Through binding international agreements, the international community has previously adopted prohibitions against land mines, cluster munitions and biological and chemical weapons. Nuclear weapons are even more destructive, but have not yet been made the object of a similar international legal prohibition. Through its work, ICAN has helped to fill this legal gap. An important argument in the rationale for prohibiting nuclear weapons is the unacceptable human suffering that a nuclear war will cause."

"Today, I want you to feel in this hall the presence of all those who perished in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I want you to feel, above and around us, a great cloud of a quarter million souls. Each person had a name. Each person was loved by someone. Let us ensure that their deaths were not in vain."

"The belief of some governments that nuclear weapons are a legitimate and essential source of security is not only misguided, but also dangerous, for it incites proliferation and undermines disarmament. All nations should reject these weapons completely — before they are ever used again. This is a time of great global tension, when fiery rhetoric could all too easily lead us, inexorably, to unspeakable horror. The specter of nuclear conflict looms large once more. If ever there were a moment for nations to declare their unequivocal opposition to nuclear weapons, that moment is now."

"We applaud those nations that have already signed and ratified the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, and we urge all others to follow their lead. It offers a pathway forward at a time of alarming crisis. Disarmament is not a pipe dream, but an urgent humanitarian necessity."

"Prayer helped me with the loss of my wife to cancer and with a child who had fallen on tough times. Now prayer helps me to be a father, to be an actor and to be a man, it always helps to have a bit of prayer in your back pocket. At the end of the day, you have to have something and for me that is God, Jesus, my Catholic upbringing, my faith. In a way (my life) all leads back to a little boy in Navan, my home town on the banks of the Boyne. Sometimes, it has been painted in melodramatic tones but it was a fantastic way to be brought up. The Catholicism and the Christian brothers, those are deep-rooted images and the foundation for a person of some acting skill, God has been good to me. My faith has been good to me in the moments of deepest suffering, doubt and fear. It is a constant, the language of prayer... I might not have got my sums right from the Christian Brothers or might not have got the greatest learning of literature from them but I certainly got a strapping amount of faith. But there is one thing that the people of Ireland know how to do and that is to survive. You have to keep your faith and stay optimistic."

"During my early years as an actor, Bond was never a desire, but when Cassie was playing in For Your Eyes Only, then, of course, it became a joke. I would do my own impersonations of James Bond. Just for fun. Just driving her home from work, or going out, or talking about her experience on it. But even so, it was not an ambition to play James Bond. I had my sights set on other aspects of the work."

"Atomic physics, was the worst thing that happened in the 20th century."

"Facing up to the Nazis and the powers of the Nazi state coloured my life as an artist."

"I don't want my image to appear in the mass media, since it would detract from the project."

"Auto-destructive art is conceived as a desperate last-minute subversive political weapon used by artists. It is an attack on the Capitalist system and the production of war materials. It is committed to nuclear disarmament and people's struggle."

"What is the significance of viewer participation in your work? It has to do with kinetic art. Kinetic art has very much to do with the interaction between spectator and art. In the second half of the ’50s, this became a big international movement. When I moved from painting to connections within media, this came through in the first work, which was an exhibition of found cardboard pieces. It was a turning point for me. The world itself, the industrial fabricated world, could stand for the man-made world of art."

"At the beginning I was confronted with a choice: move into art or revolutionary politics,... I took the path of art at the age of 18.... I could see this possibility of using the ideas of social change within art."

"In his 60 years of critiquing waste, commercialization, environmental exploitation, and social injustice, he has employed trash, old newspapers, liquid crystals, and industrial materials, and he has even painted with acid. Since Metzger is known for his work’s philosophical dimension, sometimes penning essays related to his art’s themes."

"While the problem can sometimes seem overwhelming, we can turn things around – but we must move beyond climate talk to climate action."

"If I only had a little humility, I'd be perfect."

"Don't let Ted Turner deface my movie with his crayons."

"I want to plant a few more seeds here and there before they plant me."

"Our country is supposed to be of the people, by the people and for the people, and if that's not worth fighting for I don't know what is."

"Democracy is not something we have, it's something we do."

"I, for one, am certainly going to continue to raise a little hell."

"I may have lost the election but I have not lost my reason to live."

"The only politician to be a rising star in three decades."

"at some point numbers do count."

"I would have walked on the water But I wasn't fully insured. And the BMA sent a writ my way With the very first leper I cured."

"Now God killed John Lennon and he let Barry Manilow survive, But the good Lord blessed little Adrian Mitchell with the fastest cock alive."