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“An infant crying in the crib can better appreciate the character of its mother than we can fathom the full nature of God.”
“Self-centeredness is death. Centeredness in God and in his people brings life.”
“These mighty weapons of explosion and fire are already obsolete, and the improved weapons of today will be dwarfed by the monstrous weapons of tomorrow.”
“The race of armaments is nothing less than a race to mutual suicide.”
“It is no longer possible to place a halo around war and speak of it in idealistic terms.”
“We Christians should urge our government to destroy all its atomic bombs, stop making any additional ones, and stop all preparations to wage war with biological weapons. Such actions would... place our government in an advantageous position to plead with all other nations to join with us in an international treaty of disarmament by as rapid stages as possible.”
“Instead of spending our money on preparedness to fight, we should pour out billions in a common effort to solve common problems around the earth... on the scale of present preparations for total war. ...This vast sum should be spent on food, clothing, shelter, medicine, seed, fertilizer, livestock, machinery, tools and other requirements of efficient production and distribution. ...Instead of spending billions on preparedness to wage war with pestilence, vast sums should be spent on health measures and the eradication of plague from the face of the earth.”
“The way of disarmament and of mutual aid and of international cooperation is a highly dangerous way. It is not safe. But it is safer, safer than the race of armaments and the third world war.”
“To depend upon mutual aid is right. It is better to run the risks of doing right.”
“If the race of armaments continues it will lead to the third world war and to the destruction of our civilization.”
“Professor Toynbee reminds us that sixteen civilizations have already been destroyed and that nine others are mortally sick and destined to go the way of the preceding sixteen. This just leaves one, our own civilization. And it is highly vulnerable because it is a machine civilization, it is a city civilization, and this generation has power to smash the machine and demolish the city.”
“Mutual aid is the way to prevent the third world war. Mutual aid is also the way to stop the internal growth of Communism by providing our people with plenty, security and freedom.”
“War is waged by governmental action and war can be prevented only by actions of governments. This means that individuals must act as citizens and influence the behavior of governments if they are to be effective in preventing war.”
“It is impossible to use an atomic bomb here to defend the population of our own city. Likewise we cannot use our bacterial weapons here in our own country. These weapons of annihilation must be used offensively. And against their use no effective defense is possible.”
“Preparedness to use the weapons of war creates the tempers, the quarrels and the crises which lead to the outbreak of war.”
“Through every legitimate educational procedure the truth must be driven home to the masses of people that the race of armaments is not a means of defense but a race to mutual suicide.”
“The truth must be driven home that it is sinful to prepare to annihilate millions of God's children in other lands.”
“Western man has progressively accepted the use of violence during the years since the outbreak of the First World War. In that war the Germans began the practice of indiscriminate bombing of civilian populations of British cities. ...The peoples of the Allied world and of neutral countries were shocked and outraged by this evidence of German inhumanity and bestiality... the dropping of bombs on men, women and children sleeping peacefully in their beds in great cities. ...By the year 1945 most people of the United Nations were rejoicing over the winning of the war through the destruction from the air of numerous German and Japanese cities, and were revealing scarcely a qualm of conscience over this unequaled devastation and annihilation. The practice from which they had recoiled in horror less than three decades previously, they were now using with cold premeditation and concentrated skill. And nothing like the havoc they wrought had ever before been seen on this earth.”
“Every basic doctrine of Christianity is nullified to the degree that we accept the ideas and practices of atomic war: the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, the inestimable value of human life, the kinship of all peoples, the duty and privilege of sympathy and compassion and affection, the responsibility of the strong to bear the burdens of the weak, the overcoming of evil with goodness, the redemptive power of self-giving love, the supremacy of spiritual forces over material might.”
“We can take Jesus seriously and strive earnestly to follow him, or we can prepare to wage atomic war, but it is utterly impossible to do both at the same time.”