Dr. Teller has a mind very different from mine. I think one needs both — Edward Teller

"The physicist Edward Teller, known as the “father of the H-bomb,” went further to deny that omnicide—a concept he derided—was remotely feasible. In answer to a question I posed to him as late as 1982, he said emphatically it was “impossible” to kill by any imaginable use of thermonuclear weapons that he had co-invented “more than a quarter of the earth’s population.” At the time, I thought of this assurance, ironically, as his perception of “the glass being three-quarters full.” (Teller was, along with Kahn, Henry Kissinger, and the former Nazi missile designer Wernher von Braun, one of Kubrick’s inspirations for the character of Dr. Strangelove.) And Teller’s estimate was closely in line with what the JCS actually planned to do in 1961, though a better estimate (allowing for the direct effects of fire, which JSC calculations have always omitted) would have been closer to one-third to one-half of total omnicide. But the JCS were mistaken in 1961, and so was Herman Kahn in 1960, and so was Teller in 1982. Nobody’s perfect. Just one year after Teller had made this negative assertion (at a hearing of the California state legislature which we both addressed, on the Bilateral Nuclear Weapons Freeze Initiative), the first papers appeared on the nuclear-winter effects of smoke injected into the stratosphere by firestorms generated by a thousand or more of the fifty thousand existing H-bombs used on cities. Contrary to Kahn and Teller, an American Doomsday Machine already existed in 1961—and had for years—in the form of pre-targeted bombers on alert in the Strategic Air Command (SAC), soon to be joined by Polaris submarine-launched missiles. Although this machine wasn’t likely to kill outright or starve to death literally every last human, its effects, once triggered, would come close enough to that to deserve the name Doomsday."

"I hate doubt, yet I am certain that doubt is the only way to approach anything worth believing in."

"I believe in good. It is an ephemeral and elusive quality. It is the center of my beliefs, but it cannot be strengthened by talking about it."

"At the end of the war, most people wanted to stop. I didnt. Because here was more knowledge. And in the coming uncertain period, with a dangerous man like Stalin around, and our incomplete knowledge, I felt that more knowledge is necessary. Among the people who knew a great deal about the hydrogen bomb, I was the only advocate of it. And that is, I think, my contribution. Not that I invented it, others would have — and others in the Soviet Union did. But I was the one person who put knowledge, and the availability of knowledge, above everything else."

"A fact is a simple statement that everyone believes. It is innocent, unless found guilty. A hypothesis is a novel suggestion that no one wants to believe. It is guilty, until found effective."

"The preservation of peace and the improvement of the lot of all people require us to have faith in the rationality of humans. If we have this faith and if we pursue understanding, we have not the promise but at least the possibility of success. We should not be misled by promises. Humanity in all its history has repeatedly escaped disaster by a hairs breadth. Total security has never been available to anyone. To expect it is unrealistic; to imagine that it can exist is to invite disaster. What we do have in our technological capacities is an opportunity to use our inventiveness, our creativity, our wisdom and our understanding of our fellow beings to create a future world that is a little better than the one in which we live today."

"One of the first major steps in the direction of modern skepticism came through the victory of Occam over Aquinas in a controversy about language. The statement that modi essendi were replaced by modi significandi et intelligendi, or that ontological referents were abandoned in favor of pragmatic significations, describes broadly the change in philosophy which continues to our time. From Occam to Bacon, from Bacon to Hobbes, and from Hobbes to contemporary semanticists, the progression is clear: ideas become psychological figments, words become useful signs. ... To one completely committed to this realm of becoming, as are the empiricists, the claim to apprehend verities is a sign of . Probably we have here but a highly sophisticated expression of the doctrine that ideals are hallucination and that the only normal, sane person is the healthy extrovert, making instant, instinctive adjustments to the stimuli of the material world."

"To have success in science, you need some luck. But to succeed in science, you need a lot more than luck. And its not enough to be smart — lots of people are very bright and get nowhere in life. In my view, you have to combine intelligence with a willingness not to follow conventions when they block your path forward."

"I, too, believed it was impossible to change the existing society into one that would be for the benefit of all; neither could I espouse any given ideal for society. But [...] I felt that even if one did not have an ideal vision of society, one could have one’s work to do. Whether it was successful or not was not our concern; it was enough that we believed it to be a valid work. The accomplishment of that work, I believed, was what our real life was about. Yes. I want to carry out a work of my own; for I feel that by so doing our lives are rooted in the here and now, not in some far-off ideal goal."

"We have already mentioned what may, perhaps, appear paradoxical to some of our readers, — that the division of labour can be applied with equal success to mental as to mechanical operations, and that it ensures in both the same economy of time."

"The war was finished. It had lasted ten equivalent years and taken ten million lives. Thus it was neither of long duration nor of serious attrition. It hadnt any great significance; it was not intended to have. It did not prove a point, since all points had long ago been proven. What it did, perhaps, was to emphasize an aspect, sharpen a concept, underline a trend. On the whole it was a successful operation. Economically and ecologically it was of healthy effect, and who should grumble? And after wars, men go home. No, no, men start for home. Its not the same."

"The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on. ... The genius of a good leader is to leave behind him a situation which common sense, without the grace of genius, can deal with successfully."