Science Quote by Joseph Rotblat

“Cling tenaciously” is doing the moral work here. Joseph Rotblat could have said “maintain” or “retain,” the antiseptic verbs of policy briefs. Instead he picks language that sounds bodily, even childish: hands refusing to let go of something dangerous because it feels like security. Coming from a physicist who helped launch the Manhattan Project and then walked away, the phrase reads less like abstract pacifism than like an insider’s diagnosis of addiction.

Rotblat’s intent is to puncture the self-justifying narrative of deterrence. Nuclear states portray their arsenals as reluctant necessities, regrettable burdens carried for stability. “Cling” flips that: the weapons aren’t a weight, they’re a comfort object. The subtext is that the nuclear club isn’t simply trapped by geopolitics; it is emotionally and institutionally invested in the prestige, leverage, and bargaining power that nuclear status confers. “Tenaciously” also hints at bureaucratic momentum: militaries, labs, and political careers built around keeping the doomsday machine credible.

Context matters. Rotblat spent decades arguing that the scientific community couldn’t hide behind technical achievement while governments turned physics into permanent hostage-taking. After the Cold War, optimism about disarmament collided with modernization programs and the quiet logic of “just in case.” His line lands as a rebuke to that moment of squandered possibility: when the existential rationale for vast arsenals weakened, the habit remained.

The rhetorical power is its refusal to dignify nuclear possession as sober realism. It frames it as a choice - stubborn, self-interested, and perilously human.