Confrontation is the road to war, destruction and end of civilization. Even today it deprives the world's peoples of hundreds of millions of dollars … - Yevgeniy Chazov

I am convinced that today is a great and exciting day not only for the members of our international movement but also for all physicians on our planet, irrespective of their political and religious beliefs. For the first time in history, their selfless service for the cause of maintaining life on Earth is marked by the high Nobel Prize. True to the Hippocratic Oath, we cannot keep silent knowing what final epidemic-nuclear war — can bring to humankind. The bell of Hiroshima rings in our hearts not as a funeral knell, but as an alarm bell calling out to actions to protect life on our planet. We were among the first to demolish the nuclear illusions that existed and to unveil the true face of nuclear weapons — the weapons of genocide. We warned the peoples and governments that medicine would be helpless to offer even minimal relief to the hundreds of millions of victims of nuclear war. However, our contacts with patients inspire our faith in the human reason. Peoples are heedful of the voice of physicians who warn them of the danger and recommend the means of prevention.

If I am Chernenko's doctor and if I am here, then Chernenko is well because a doctor should be with his patient.

He wasn’t a man of erudition, yet very quickly grasped the significance of this or that problem for the state at large and for his own popularity rating. As one far removed from the sciences, he had tremendous respect for the opinions of scientists.