Quotes from Robert McNamara

We do not have the God-given right to shape every nation in our image or as we choose.

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

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

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

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

We burned to death 100 000 Japanese civilians in Tokyo - men, women and children. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?

Belief and seeing are both often wrong.

We see what we want to believe.

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

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.

Never answer the question that is asked of you. Answer the question that you wish had been asked of you.

We burned to death 100,000 Japanese civilians in Tokyo - men, women and children. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?

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

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

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.

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

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 I, were behaving as war criminals.

The war in Vietnam is going well and will succeed.

At my age, 85, I'm at age where I can look back and derive some conclusions about my actions. My rule has been try to learn, try to understand what happened. Develop the lessons and pass them on.

Short of nuclear war itself, population growth is the gravest issue the world faces. If we do not act, the problem will be solved by famine, riots, insurrection and war.

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.

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

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

I don't object to its being called "McNamara's war." I think it is a very important war and I am pleased to be identified with it and do whatever I can to win it.