"'But if I don't do it,' some scientists feel, 'other will. So what's the difference?' This is less an argument than the mannerism of the irresponsible. It is based upon a conception of yourself as an altogether private man, upon the acceptance of your own impotence, upon the idea that the act in question, whatever it be, is a part of fate and so not subject to your decision. My answers to this mannerism are: If you do not do it, you at least are not responsible for its being done. If you refuse to do it out loud, others may quietly refrain from doing it, and those who still do it may then do it only with hesitation and guilt. To refuse to do it is to begin the practice of a professional code, and perhaps the creation of that code as a historical force. To refuse to do it is an act affirming yourself as a moral centre of responsible decision; it is an act which recognizes that you as a scientist are now a public man--whether you want to be or not; it is the act of a man who rejects 'fate', for it reveals the resolution of one human being to take at least his own fate into his own hands" (The Causes of World War III, 1958, p. 170).