Robert McNamara Quotes - Page 2

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• One cannot fashion a credible deterrent out of an incredible action.

  Robert McNamara

  Fashion, Action, Incredibles

  Robert S. McNamara (1968). “The essence of security: reflections in office”

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• Belief and seeing are both often wrong.

  Robert McNamara

  Nihilism, Belief, Seeing

  Robert S. McNamara (2004). “Official Teacher's Guide for The Fog of War: An Errol Morris Film”

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• 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 thousand half-hearted, talkative busy men living frightened, fragmented lives of quiet desperation.

  Robert McNamara

  Faith, Inspiration, Men

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

  Robert McNamara

  Peace, War, Kind

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

  Robert McNamara

  War, Patriotic, President

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• The 'realist' conception of continuing old-fashioned 'balance of power' politics may have been well founded in the past, but it is inconsistent with our increasing interdependent world. On moral grounds alone there can be no justification for the 20th century level of killing. To settle disputes without violence must become the primary goal of foreign policy for every nation.

  Robert McNamara

  Past, Goal, Balance

  30 Copy quote

• What makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?

  Robert McNamara

  Winning, Tokyo, Vietnam War

  "The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara". Documentary, www.imdb.com. August 30, 2003.

  14 Copy quote

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

  Robert McNamara

  United States, Sanity, Should

  Robert S. McNamara (1968). “The essence of security: reflections in office”

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• All those involved in the firebombing of Tokyo .. were war criminals interviews recorded in the movie The Fog of War.. the firebombing of Tokyo occurred before the atom bombs.. 100,000 civilians died in one night from American bombs.. 500,000 altogether over several days say some.

  Robert McNamara

  Country, War, Night

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• [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?

  Robert McNamara

  Children, Winning, Men

  "The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara". Documentary, www.imdb.com. August 30, 2003.

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• It was a perfectly beautiful night, as fall nights are in Washington. I walked out of the president's Oval Office, and as I walked out, I thought I might never live to see another Saturday night.

  Robert McNamara

  Beautiful, Fall, Night

  40 Copy quote

• The greatest contribution Vietnam is making-right or wrong is beside the point-is that it is developing an ability in the United States to fight a limited war, to go to war without the necessity of arousing the public ire.

  Robert McNamara

  War, Fighting, United States

  30 Copy quote

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

  Robert McNamara

  Mistake, Nuclear, Weapons

  "The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara". Documentary, www.imdb.com. August 30, 2003.

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• 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.

  Robert McNamara

  Loss, Vietnam, Tests

  "The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara". Documentary, August 30, 2003.

  11 Copy quote

• 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.

  Robert McNamara

  Philosophy, Moving, Practice

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• 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.

  Robert McNamara

  Thinking, Events, Nuclear

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• Management is the gate through which social and economic and political change, indeed change in every direction, is diffused though society.

  Robert McNamara

  Political, Management, Economic

  "Mortgaging the Earth: The World Bank, Environmental Impoverishment and the Crisis of Development". Book by Bruce Rich, p. 83, 1994.

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• Action should be founded on contemplation, and those of us who act don't put enough time, don't give enough emphasis, to contemplation.

  Robert McNamara

  Giving, Enough Time, Action

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

  Robert McNamara

  Inspirational, Nuclear, Weapons

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

  Robert McNamara

  Umpires, Would Be, Nuclear

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• I like to run down to the beach and have a little swim in the nude in the morning.

  Robert McNamara

  Running, Beach, Morning

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• ...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..."

  Robert McNamara

  Memories, Military, Believe

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• 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.

  Robert McNamara

  Time, Three, Nuclear

  Robert S. McNamara (1988). “The first century of the nuclear age: can we survive it”

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