In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. “How are we to live in an atomic age?”

I am tempted to reply: “Why,
as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year,
or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night;
or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.”

In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation.
Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways.

...

Nothing is more likely to destroy a species or a nation than a determination to survive at all costs.
Those who care for something else more than civilization are the only people by whom civilization is at all likely to be preserved.