Authors: David Pratt

The Impossible Takes Longer (17 page)

BOOK: The Impossible Takes Longer

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Albert Einstein
PHYSICS, 1921

Extract from a letter to President Frankin D. Roosevelt, August
2,
1939. The letter was composed by Leo Szilard and signed by Einstein.

956.1 made one mistake in my life—when I signed that letter to President Roosevelt advocating that atom bombs should be built. But perhaps I can be forgiven for that because we all felt that there was a high probability that the Germans were working on this problem and they might have success and use the atomic bomb to become the master race.

Albert Einstein
PHYSICS, 1921

957. What was gunpowder? Trivial. What was electricity? Meaningless. This atomic bomb is the Second Coming in Wrath.

Winston Churchill
LITERATURE, 1953

958. Our generation has succeeded in stealing the fire of the gods, and it is doomed to five with the horror of its achievement.

Henry Kissinger
PEACE, 1973

959. I thank God on bended knees that we did not make the uranium bomb.

Otto Hahn
CHEMISTRY, 1944

Remark on learning of the Hiroshima bomb, August 6,1945, while in British custody with other German physicists

960. It seems to me that the scientists who led the way to the atomic bomb were extremely skilful and ingenious, but not wise men. They delivered the fruits of their discoveries unconditionally into the hands of politicians and soldiers; thus they lost their moral innocence and their intellectual freedom.

Max Born
PHYSICS, 1954

961.1 remember the spring of 1941 to this day. I realized then that a nuclear bomb was not only possible—it was inevitable . . . I did realize how very, very serious it could be. And I had then to start taking sleeping pills. It was the only remedy. I've never stopped since then.

James Chadwick
PHYSICS, 1935

962. We may conclude that the dropping of the atomic bombs was not so much the last military act of the Second World War as the first major operation of the cold diplomatic war with Russia now in progress.

Patrick Blackett
PHYSICS, 1948

963. From the moment that I was elected General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and thereby head of the Soviet Nation, the most important question for me was this: What could be done to put an end to the nuclear arms race?

MikhailGorbachev
PEACE, 1990

THE HOLOCAUST

964. Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.

Elie Wiesel
PEACE, 1986

965.1 remember: it happened yesterday, or eternities ago. A young Jewish boy discovered the Kingdom of Night. I remember his bewilderment, I remember his anguish. It all happened so fast. The ghetto. The deportation. The sealed cattle car. The fiery altar upon which the history of our people and the future of mankind were meant to be sacrificed.

Elie Wiesel
PEACE, 1986

966. It seemed as impossible to conceive of Auschwitz with God as to conceive of Auschwitz without God.

Elie Wiesel
PEACE, 1986

967. Scientific abstraction, social and economic contention, nationalism, xenophobia, religious fanaticism, racism, mass hysteria. All found their ultimate expression in Auschwitz.

Elie Wiesel
PEACE, 1986

968. Auschwitz must have been hanging in the air for a long, long time, centuries, perhaps like a dark fruit slowly ripening in the sparkling rays of innumerable ignominious deeds, waiting to finally drop on one's head.

Imre Kertész
LITERATURE, 2002

969. Which writer today is not a writer of the Holocaust?

Imre Kertész
LITERATURE, 2002

970. The Holocaust is a value because it has led to immeasurable knowledge through immeasurable suffering, thus creating an immeasurable moral resource.

Imre Kertész
LITERATURE, 2002

971. What I discovered in Auschwitz is the human condition, the end point of a great adventure, where the European traveler arrived after his two-thousand-year-old moral and cultural history.

Imre Kertesz
LITERATURE, 2002

972. I experienced my most radical moments of happiness in the concentration camp. You cannot imagine what it's like to be allowed to lie in the camp's hospital, or to have a 10-minute break from indescribable labor. To be very close to death is also a kind of happiness. Just surviving becomes the greatest freedom of all.

Imre Kertész
LITERATURE, 2002

973. I have endeavoured—perhaps it is not sheer self-deception— to perform the existential labour that being an Auschwitz-survivor has thrust upon me as a kind of obligation. I realize what a privilege has been bestowed on me. I have seen the true visage of this dreadful century, I have gazed into the eye of the Gorgon, and have been able to keep on living. Yet, I knew I would never be able to free myself from the sight; I knew this visage would always hold me captive. And if you now ask me what still keeps me here on this earth, what keeps me alive, then, I would answer without any hesitation: love.

Imre Kertész
LITERATURE, 2002

974. If I could not have written, I could not have survived. Death was my teacher.

Nelly Sachs
LITERATURE, 1966

975. Jews were required to wear the Star of David and to obey a 6 p.m. curfew. I had gone to play with a Christian friend and had stayed too late. I turned my brown sweater inside out to walk the few blocks home. As I was walking down an empty street, I saw a German soldier approaching. He was wearing the black uniform that I had been told to fear more than others—the one worn by specially recruited SS soldiers. As I came closer to him, trying to walk fast, I noticed that he was looking at me intently. Then he beckoned me over, picked me up, and hugged me. I was terrified that he would notice the star inside my sweater. He was speaking to me with great emotion, in German. When he put me down, he opened his wallet, showed me a picture of a boy, and gave me some money. I went home more certain than ever that my mother was right: people were endlessly complicated and interesting.

Daniel Kahneman
ECONOMICS, 2002

PEACE AND PEACEMAKING

976. No more war. No more bloodshed. No more tears. Peace unto you. Shalom, salaam, for ever.

Menachem Begin
PEACE, 1978

At the signing of the peace treaty with Egypt, 1979

977. Today I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter's gun. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand. I repeat: do not let the olive branch fall from my hand.

Yasser Arafat
PEACE, 1994

Conclusion of speech to the UN, November 13,1974

978. The time for the healing of the wounds has come. The moment to bridge the chasms that divide us has come. The time to build is upon us.

Nelson Mandela
PEACE, 1993

Inaugural Address as President of South Africa, May ro, 1994

979. We, the soldiers who have returned from battles stained with blood; we who have seen our relatives and friends killed before our eyes; we who have attended their funerals and cannot look in the eyes of their parents; we who have come from a land where parents bury their children; we who have fought against you, the Palestinians—we say to you today, in a loud and a clear voice: enough of blood and tears. Enough.

Yitzhak Rabin
PEACE, 1994

Speech at the White House, September 13, 1993, after signing the peace agreement

980. We must learn to live together as brothers, or we shall perish together as fools.

Martin Luther King
PEACE, 1964

981. We prepare for war like precocious giants and for peace like retarded pygmies.

Lester Pearson
PEACE, 1957

982. What we need is Star Peace and not Star Wars.

Mikhail Gorbachev
PEACE, 1990

983. If you desire peace, cultivate justice, but at the same time cultivate the fields to produce more bread; otherwise, there will be no peace.

Norman Borlaug
PEACE, 1970

984. The struggle for peace and the struggle for human rights are inseparable.

Willy Brandt
PEACE, 1971

985. You don't make peace with your friends. You make it with very unsavory enemies.

Yitzhak Rabin
PEACE, 1994

986. If man does find the solution for world peace, it will be the most revolutionary reversal of his record we have ever known.

George C. Marshall
PEACE, 1953

987. Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace, and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war.

Winston Churchill
LITERATURE, 1953

988. The desire for peace is the mark of all civilized men and women.

Henry Kissinger
PEACE, 1973

989. If history teaches anything it is that there can be no peace without equilibrium and no justice without restraint.

Henry Kissinger
PEACE, 1973

990. Whenever peace—conceived as the avoidance of war—has been the primary objective of a power or a group of powers, the international system has been at the mercy of the most ruthless member.

Henry Kissinger
PEACE, 1973

991. All works of love are works of peace.

Mother Teresa
PEACE, 1979

992. People who are offering revenge, they are just an enemy. But when you offer peace and love that infuriates people. And you get killed for that. That's why Christ is killed, that's why King is shot, that's why Gandhi is killed.

Derek Walcott
LITERATURE, 1992

993. My country is a country of teachers. It is therefore a country of peace. We discuss our successes and failures in complete freedom. Because our country is a country of teachers, we closed the army camps and our children go with books under their arms, not with rifles on their shoulders. We believe in dialogue, in agreement, in reaching a consensus. We reject violence. Because my country is a country of teachers, we believe in convincing our opponents, not defeating them. We prefer raising the fallen to crushing them, because we believe that no one possesses the absolute truth. Because mine is a country of teachers, we seek an economy in which men cooperate in a spirit of solidarity, not an economy in which they compete to their own extinction.

Oscar Arias Sánchez
PEACE, 1987

Last Words

"Let us now praise famous men," wrote Yeshua Ben Sira in Ec-clesiasticus two thousand years ago, in words that might be applied to the men and women who have been awarded the Nobel Prize: "men of mercy, whose righteous deeds have not been forgotten . . . their glory will not be blotted out. . . and their name lives to all generations." The final words of a few may stand for the many laureates who took leave of life with the same grace as they had lived it, and who by their lives and work left the world a better place.

994. Never was there a time in my life when I had so much to live for—and so much to die for.

Frederick Banting
MEDICINE, 1923

Diary entry, January 31, 1941, three weeks before his death.

995. It has been a good journey—well-worth making once.

Winston Churchill
LITERATURE, 1953

January 1965, possibly his last recorded utterance

996. I want to go when / want. It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share; it is time to go. I will do it elegandy.

Albert Einstein
PHYSICS, 1921

Just before his death

997. I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life; longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen—the Promised Land.

Martin Luther King
PEACE, 1964

Speech in Memphis, Tennessee, April 3, 1968, the evening before his death