Weapon,arm, orarmament are terms for any device used to inflict damage or harm to living beings, structures, or systems. Weapons are used to increase the efficacy andefficiency of activities such as hunting,crime, law enforcement, self-defense, andwarfare. In a broader context, weapons may be construed to include anything used to gain a strategic, material or mental advantage over an adversary. Ordinary objects such as sticks, stones, cars, or pencils can be used as weapons, but many are expressly designed for the purpose, such asclubs,swords,guns, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and cyberweapons.
I have no part of mybody, in front at least, that is left without scars; there is no weapon, used at close quarters, or hurled from afar, of which I do not carry the mark. Nay, I have been wounded by thesword,hand to hand; I have been shot witharrows, I have been struck from acatapult, smitten many a time withstones andclubs. ~Alexander the GreatI know they’re weapons ofwar. However, there’s abeauty in unadorned functionality totally separate from that.Fighter planes andbattleships have a simple, unadorned beauty I’m drawn to. But I don’t want to see them in action, killing people. ~Hideaki AnnoThey shall beat theirswords into plowshares, and theirspears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. ~IsaiahIron, at the same time the most useful and the most fatal instrument in the hand of mankind. ~Pliny the ElderThe tools ofconquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There areweapons that are simplythoughts,attitudes,prejudices...to be found only in theminds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill...andsuspicion candestroy...and athoughtless,frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own -- for thechildren and the children yet unborn. ~Rod Serling
Alphabetized by author
Five tomahawks, wi’ blude red-rusted: Five scimitars, wi’ murder crusted; A garter which a babe had strangled: A knife, a father’s throat had mangled.
I have no part of mybody, in front at least, that is left without scars; there is no weapon, used at close quarters, or hurled from afar, of which I do not carry the mark. Nay, I have been wounded by thesword,hand to hand; I have been shot witharrows, I have been struck from acatapult, smitten many a time withstones andclubs.
Alexander the Great, as quoted inThe Man Alexander the Great,Awake! magazine, (22 January 1972).
I know they’re weapons ofwar. However, there’s abeauty in unadorned functionality totally separate from that.Fighter planes andbattleships have a simple, unadorned beauty I’m drawn to. But I don’t want to see them in action, killing people.
Of all the stops on the nuclear weapons assembly line, plutonium production is the dirtiest. Each kilogram of final product generates hundreds of thousand gallons of radioactive waste. ... Chernobyl is a household word. Why have so few people heard ofHanford andMaiak?
The danger is becoming greater. As the arsenals of the superpowers grow in size and sophistication and as other governments—perhaps even, in the future, dozens of governments—acquire these weapons, it may be only a matter of time before madness, desperation, greed or miscalculation lets loose the terrible force.
Jimmy Carter, as quoted inThe Watchtower magazine, (15 August 1981).
Weapons of mass destruction-nuclear,biological, andchemical-along with the systems that deliver them, pose a majorthreat to oursecurity and that of our allies and other friendly nations. Thus, a key part of ourstrategy is to seek to stem the proliferation of such weapons and to develop an effective capability to deal with these threats.
A preemptiveactiontoday, however well-justified, may come back with unwelcomeconsequences in thefuture. And because … I've done this. I've ordered these kinds of actions — I don't care how precise your bombs and your weapons are, when you set them off,innocentpeople willdie.
It is ironic that the accumulation of arms is one of the few expanding industries in a period ofeconomic depression and gloom.
Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, UN Secretary-General, as quoted inWatching the World,Awake! magazine (22 October 1982).
Everygun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, atheft from those whohunger and are not fed. . . . This world in arms is not spendingmoney alone. It is spending . . . thehopes of itschildren.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, "The Chance for Peace", (16 April 1953).
Count Dashkov: I am convinced there is a deepconspiracy afoot inRussia that ispoisoning people’sminds. Thisevil is a threat to themonarchy itself! But it must be suppressed with powerfulweapons!
Golivinski: Weapons?
Count Dashkov:Documentation, my boy…proof of theirvillainous conspiracy!Proof is the weapon! And you are skilled at fashioning such weapons, my boy!
Research desk: Despite the Russian court’s condemnation and the Dodd Keating congressional report in 1964, the world wide use and publication ofthe “Protocols” has continued. Not only did theKu Klux Klan continue to distribute the book inAmerica.. but in 1968, inBeiruit, theIslamic institute there published300,000 copies inFrench,Italian,Spanish, andArabic.
Graphic novelist: Thenwhy? Why? When everyone knows that the “protocols” is afake… why are they stillpublishing it?
Research desk: Because it is aweapon of massdeception!
The best measure of the Allied advantage was in terms of military hardware, however, since it was withcapital rather thanlabour - with machinery rather than manpower - that theGermans and theJapanese were ultimately to be defeated. In every major category of weapon, theAxis powers fell steadily further behind with each passing month. Between 1942 and 1944, the Allies out-produced the Axis in terms of machine pistols by a factor of 16 to 1, innaval vessels,tanks andmortars by roughly 5 to 1, and inrifles, machine-guns,artillery and combataircraft by roughly 3 to 1. Blitzkrieg had been possible when the odds were just the other way round. Once both sides were motorized - one of the defining characteristics of total war - the key to victory becamelogistics, notheroics. The fourfold numerical superiority ofBritish armour was one of the deciding factors at El Alamein. The average ratio ofSoviet toGerman armour at the beginning of the offensives of 1944 and 1945 was just under eight. The ratio in terms of combat aircraft on the Eastern Front rose from three in July 1943 to ten by January 1945. Likewise, Allied dominance of the skies ensured the success of D-Day and guaranteed the ultimate defeat of the Germans in Western Europe.
Niall Ferguson,The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West (2006), p. 518-519
Wheniron was found, thetrees began to tremble, but the iron reassured them: 'Let no handle made from you enter into anything made from me, and I shall bepowerless to injure you.'
They shall beat theirswords into plowshares, and theirspears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
Robert McNamara, U.S. secretary of defense under President Kennedy, according toThe New York Times;On the Brink of Nuclear War as quoted inAwake! magazine (22 May 1992).
Nuclear weapons serve nomilitary purpose whatsoever. They are totally useless — except only to deter one’s opponent from using them.
Robert McNamara, as quoted inThe Nuclear Dilemma,Awake! magazine (22 August 1988).
Henri Ducard: Over the ages, our weapons have grown more sophisticated. WithGotham, we tried a new one -economics. But, we underestimated certain of Gotham'scitizens. Such as yourparents.Gunned down by one of the very people they were trying tohelp. Create enoughhunger and everyone becomes acriminal.
Iron, at the same time the most useful and the most fatal instrument in the hand of mankind. For by the aid of iron we lay open the ground, we plant trees, we prepare ourvineyard-trees, and we force our vines each year to resume their youthful state, by cutting away their decayed branches. It is by the aid of iron that we constructhouses, cleaverocks, and perform so many other useful offices of life. But it is with iron also that wars, murders, and robberies are effected, and this, not only hand to hand, but from a distance even, by the aid of missiles and winged weapons, now launched from engines, now hurled by the human arm, and now furnished with feathery wings. This last I regard as the most criminal artifice that has been devised by the human mind; for, as if to bring death upon man with still greater rapidity, we have given wings to iron and taught it to fly.
After he had brought them all to wear full armor, and by that means into the confidence of thinking themselves now invincible, he turned what before had been idle profusion and luxury into an honorable expense. For being long used to vie with each other in their dress, the furniture of their houses, and service of their tables, and to glory in outdoing one another, the disease by custom was grown incurable, and there was no possibility of removing it altogether. But he diverted the passion, and brought them, instead of these superfluities, to love useful and more manly display, and, reducing their other expenses, to take delight in appearing magnificent in their equipage of war. Nothing then was to be seen in the shops but plate breaking up, or melting down, gilding of breastplates, and studding bucklers and bits with silver; nothing in the places of exercise, but horses managing, and young men exercising their arms; nothing in the hands of the women, but helmets and crests of feathers to be dyed, and military cloaks and riding-frocks to be embroidered; the very sight of all which quickening and raising their spirits, made them contemn dangers, and feel ready to venture on any honorable dangers. Other kinds of sumptuosity give us pleasure, but make us effeminate; the tickling of the sense slackening the vigor of the mind; but magnificence of this kind strengthens and heightens the courage; as Homer makes Achilles at the sight of his new arms exulting with joy, and on fire to use them. When Philopoemen had obtained of them to arm, and set themselves out in this manner, he proceeded to train them, mustering and exercising them perpetually; in which they obeyed him with great zeal and eagerness. For they were wonderfully pleased with their new form of battle, which, being so knit and cemented together, seemed almost incapable of being broken. And then their arms, which for their riches and beauty they wore with pleasure, becoming light and easy to them with constant use, they longed for nothing more than to try them with an enemy, and fight in earnest.
Isolated as they are within a distinctly outcast category,CB weapons have acquired an array ofmoral andlegal proscriptions that is unique among present-day armaments. This, however, is something with which most novel weapon technologies of the past have had to contend. Users of thecrossbow, for example, in twelfth centuryEurope riskedexcommunication bythe Church, andgunpowder went through a long period of moral opprobrium before becoming assimilated. People eventually became accustomed to these developments, and the weapons became conventional. Incendiary weapons provide a further example: witness the obloquy that fastened upon the recorded users ofGreek fire inmedievalEurope, orP.G.T. Beauregarde's expressions of moral outrage during theAmerican Civil War, or the special attention given toflamethrowers in theLeague of Nationsdisarmament deliberations, and then the increasing conventionalization ofnapalm and other incendiaries during theSpanish Civil War,World War II, theKorean war andVietnam.
Rod Serling: The tools ofconquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There areweapons that are simplythoughts,attitudes,prejudices...to be found only in theminds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill...and suspicion can destroy...and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own -- for thechildren and the children yet unborn. And thepity of it is...that these things cannot be confined...to the Twilight Zone.
Statesmen ofdedication andsincerity, many of them in this hall, have done their utmost to arrest this development. Yet the arms race goes on. It is as if the arms race had escaped rational human control.
Kalevi Sorsa, Prime Minister of the Republic of Finland. The Second Special Session on Disarmament met June 7 to July 9, 1982. Quoted inDisarmament or Delusion?,Awake! magazine, (January 8, 1983).
During these four years the arms race has exacerbated the threat to peace, heightening the anxieties of peoples and imposing heavier burdens on each nation at the expense of itseconomic and social development.
Zenko Suzuki, Prime Minister of Japan. The Second Special Session on Disarmament met June 7 to July 9, 1982. Quoted inDisarmament or Delusion?,Awake! magazine, (January 8, 1983).
Removing the threat ofa world war—anuclear war—is the most acute and urgent task of the present day. Mankind is confronted with a choice: we must halt the arms race and proceed to disarmament or face annihilation.
Final Document of the United Nations First Special Session on Disarmament, (1978).
