Robert McNamara

There is no more important task in a democracy than resolving the differences among people and finding a course of action that…

— Robert McNamara

[General Curtis] LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side has lost. But what makes it…

— Robert McNamara

They'll be no learning period with nuclear weapons. Make one mistake and you're going to destroy nations.

— Robert McNamara

It was a perfectly beautiful night, as fall nights are in Washington. I walked out of the president's Oval Office, and as…

— Robert McNamara

It would be our policy to use nuclear weapons wherever we felt it necessary to protect our forces and achieve our objectives.

— Robert McNamara

One must take draconian measures of demographic reduction against the will of the populations. Reducing the birth rate has proved to be…

— Robert McNamara

Measure what is important, don't make important what you can measure

— Robert McNamara

Yeah, yeah, that's right. And I'd rather be damned if I don't.

— Robert McNamara

All those involved in the firebombing of Tokyo .. were war criminals interviews recorded in the movie The Fog of War.. the…

— Robert McNamara

Lesson 2: The indefinite combination of human fallibility and nuclear weapons will lead to the destruction of nations.

— Robert McNamara

...but highly placed sources within the Kennedy Administration disagreed: "[T]he assumption that the strategic nuclear balance mattered in any way was wrong...…

— Robert McNamara

We burned to death 100,000 Japanese civilians in Tokyo - men, women and children. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would…

— Robert McNamara

I would characterize current US nuclear weapons policy as immoral, illegal, militarily unnecessary, and dreadfully dangerous

— Robert McNamara

Let's go in, let's totally destroy Cuba.

— Robert McNamara

In my seven years as Secretary, we came within a hair's breadth of war with the Soviet Union on three different occasions!…

— Robert McNamara

Neither conscience nor sanity itself suggests that the United States is, should or could be the global gendarme.

— Robert McNamara

Coercion, after all, merely captures man. Freedom captivates him.

— Robert McNamara

The commitment of government to deal with the population issue is of course essential....There are many ways to make the death rate…

— Robert McNamara

A computer does not substitute for judgment any more than a pencil substitutes for literacy. But writing without a pencil is no…

— Robert McNamara

That's one of the major lessons: no president should ever take this nation to war without full public debate in the Congress…

— Robert McNamara

At my age, 85, I'm at age where I can look back and derive some conclusions about my actions. My rule has…

— Robert McNamara

One solitary God-centered, God-intoxicated man can do more to keep God's love alive and His presence felt in the world than a…

— Robert McNamara

If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals. And I think he's right. He, and I'd say…

— Robert McNamara

I formed the hypothesis that each of us could have achieved our objectives without the terrible loss of life. And I wanted…

— Robert McNamara

General, you don't have a war plan! All you have is a kind of horrible spasm!

— Robert McNamara