We must hold fast to the dream that reason will prevail. The world today is full of anguish and dread. As great as is the danger, still greater is th… - Bernard Lown

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We must hold fast to the dream that reason will prevail. The world today is full of anguish and dread. As great as is the danger, still greater is the opportunity. If science and technology have catapulted us to the brink of extinction, the same ingenuity has brought humankind to the boundary of an age of abundance. Never before was it possible to feed all the hungry. Never before was it possible to shelter all the homeless. Never before was it possible to teach all the illiterates. Never before were we able to heal so many afflictions. For the first time science and medicine can diminish drudgery and pain. Only those who see the invisible can do the impossible. But in order to do the impossible, in the words of Jonathan Schell, we ask "not for our personal survival: we ask only that we be survived. We ask for assurance that when we die as individuals, as we know we must, mankind will live on".

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About Bernard Lown

Dr. Bernard Lown (June 7, 1921 – February 16, 2021) is the original developer of the modern defibrillator and is an internationally known peace activist. He was one of the founders of Physicians for Social Responsibility, and with Yevgeniy Chazov, a co-founder of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which won the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize.

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Additional quotes by Bernard Lown

Perhaps the signal accomplishment of the IPPNW has been the broad-based, free-flowing dialogue between physicians of the two contending power blocs. We heed Einstein's words, "Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding". In a world riven with confrontation and strife, IPPNW has become a model for cooperation among physicians from East and West, from North and South. Paranoid fantasies of a dehumanized adversary cannot withstand the common pursuit of healing and preventing illness.

Martin Buber suggested that evil prevailed because of the inability of man to imagine the real. Yet human beings do have that capacity. Lord Byron, a poet favored by Alfred Nobel, captured the stark essence of a post-nuclear world in his poem "Darkness":

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We physicians protest the outrage of holding the entire world hostage. We protest the moral obscenity that each of us is being continuously targeted for extinction. We protest the ongoing increase in overkill. We protest the expansion of the arms race to space. We protest the diversion of scarce resources from aching human needs. Dialogue without deeds brings the calamity ever closer, as snail-paced diplomacy is outdistanced by missile-propelled technology. We physicians demand deeds to implement further deeds which will lead to the abolition of all nuclear weaponry. We recognise that before abolition can become a reality, the nuclear arms race must be halted.

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