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I am not sure it can ever be used... I don't think we ought to use this thing unless we absolutely have to. It is a terrible thing to order the use of something that is so terribly destructive, destructive beyond anything we have ever had. You have got to understand that this isn't a military weapon. It is used to wipe out women and children and unarmed people, and not for military uses. So we have got to treat this differently from rifles and cannon and ordinary things like that.

— Harry S. Truman Attributed

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More quotes by Harry S. Truman

Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima and destroyed its usefulness to the enemy.

Announcing the Bombing of Hiroshima (1945)

If wars in the future are to be prevented the nations must be united in their determination to keep the peace under law.

Address to Congress (1945)

At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often not a free one.

No government is perfect. One of the chief virtues of a democracy, however, is that its defects are always visible and under democratic processes can be pointed out and corrected.

Socialism is a scare word they have hurled at every advance the people have made in the last 20 years.

All Harry S. Truman quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Harry S. Truman (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.