We are now facing a problem more of ethics than of physics.

Baruch has argued for international cooperation and enforceable controls over atomic energy. Science has supplied the technical capacity; he now turns to the human obligations governing its use. He says the solution requires sacrifices of national pride and position, then introduces the proposed international authority’s powers.

The immediate difficulty is not knowing how atomic energy works, but agreeing how people and nations should use and control it.

This is not a dismissal of physics or a claim that moral intentions alone will prevent war. In this speech the ethical appeal leads directly into detailed institutional controls and sanctions.

Society, Politics, Morality

• We are here to make a choice between the quick and the dead.
• Peace is never long preserved by weight of metal or by an armament race.
• We must elect World Peace or World Destruction.
• More law, less justice. Marcus Tullius Cicero
• What is food to one, is to others bitter poison. Lucretius

• en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bernard_Baruch

Bernard Baruch, Address to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission (the Baruch Plan) (1946), Address to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission, 14 June 1946, immediately before the numbered measures beginning ‘1. General.’. Checked at Quotogeny, https://quotogeny.com/q/a-problem-more-of-ethics-than-of-physics/ (22 October 2026).

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