List of Robert McNamara Quotes

It Is True That At The Time [1962] We Had A Strategic Nuclear Force Of Approximately Five Thousand Warheads Compared To The Soviet's Three Hundred.

...but Highly Placed Sources Within The Kennedy Administration Disagreed: "[t]he Assumption That The Strategic Nuclear Balance Mattered In Any Way Was Wrong... As Far As I Am Concerned, It Made No Difference... If My Memory Serves Me Correctly, We Had Some Five Thousand Strategic Nuclear Warheads As Against T Heir Three Hundred. Can Anyone Seriously Tell Me That Their Having Three Hundred And Forty Would Have Made Any Difference? The Military Balance Wasn't Changed. I Didn't Believe It Then, And I Don't Believe It Now..."

It Would Be Our Policy To Use Nuclear Weapons Wherever We Felt It Necessary To Protect Our Forces And Achieve Our Objectives.

I Like To Run Down To The Beach And Have A Little Swim In The Nude In The Morning.

I Would Characterize Current Us Nuclear Weapons Policy As Immoral, Illegal, Militarily Unnecessary, And Dreadfully Dangerous

Action Should Be Founded On Contemplation, And Those Of Us Who Act Don't Put Enough Time, Don't Give Enough Emphasis, To Contemplation.

Engagement Is The Conscious Inhabitation Of Your Body And Mind. Practice Is Happening When Your Open Awareness Is Moving With, In And Through Your Embodied Activity. Intrinsic To Practice Is Your Conscious Participation With Your Life. Engagement Is The Conduction Of Your Free And Open Awareness Through Your Activities, Whatever They May Be.

Rationality Will Not Save Us.

Elimination Of Nuclear Weapons, So Naive, So Simplistic, And So Idealistic As To Be Quixotic? Some May Think So. But As Human Beings, Citizens Of Nations With Power To Influence Events In The World, Can We Be At Peace With Ourselves If We Strive For Less? I Think Not.

Management Is The Gate Through Which Social And Economic And Political Change, Indeed Change In Every Direction, Is Diffused Though Society.

I Formed The Hypothesis That Each Of Us Could Have Achieved Our Objectives Without The Terrible Loss Of Life. And I Wanted To Test That By Going To Vietnam.

[general Curtis] Lemay Recognized That What He Was Doing Would Be Thought Immoral If His Side Has Lost. But What Makes It Immoral If You Lose And Not Immoral If You Win?