We are told that the intention is to substitute law for war; that that is, in essence, the whole object of the United Nations. It is another of those… - Frederick Lindemann, 1st Viscount Cherwell

Man is indeed a strange mass of contradictions. Here we are, microscopic creatures scuttling about on the surface of a minor planet circling round a second-rate star in one of half-a-million galaxies. In some ways our minds are so capacious and penetrating. We can judge the weight and composition of stars whose light started before man appeared on this earth. We can unveil the secrets of the nuclei which are so small that if we could put together as many of them as there are drops of water in the ocean they would together scarcely form a particle visible with a microscope. Yet we seem to be unable to order our own affairs so as to avoid exterminating one another. Perhaps the threat of this new weapon may in the end bring home to the various nations the overriding need of finding means, at no matter what cost and sacrifice, of reaching agreement without resort to force. We must pray that this will be achieved in time, for if it is not then the end of civilized life on this planet is at hand.

[O]ur whole future depends upon our productivity: that is, the amount of useful and valuable output which can be turned out with a given amount of labour and raw materials. To improve this is far and away the most important problem confronting this country—apart, of course, from the need to preserve peace. Unless we succeed in doing it, in a generation our standard of living will sink to that of the people of Portugal and will harm not only Great Britain but the sterling area as a whole.

In learning how to manipulate nuclear energy man has taken the greatest step in the control of the forces of nature since his half-human ancestors learnt how to make and maintain fire. Just as fires can be, and in the early days often were, utterly destructive of life in the forests and on the prairies, so this new power may be utterly destructive of all that has been built up in a thousand generations. Man's moral stature has not grown with his intellectual stature, or rather perhaps it would be fairer to say man's institutions have not advanced as fast as his power to harness the forces of nature to his will. For I am convinced that if a vote could be taken the world over as to whether there was any object in the world for which it was worth while to start an aggressive war, not one man in a hundred would say "Yes." Unfortunately, as we have recently seen, modern developments make it so easy for a few vicious leaders to mislead, control and dominate great nations that the natural, decent human instincts of mankind are no adequate safeguard.