Herman Kahn Quotes

43 Sourced Quotes

Human and moral factors must always be considered. They must never be missing from policies and from public discussion.

Herman Kahn
New developments in weapon systems during the 1950s and early 1960s created a situation that was most dangerous, and even conducive to accidental war.

Herman Kahn
Nuclear war is such an emotional subject that many people see the weapons themselves as the common enemy of humanity.

Herman Kahn
For if enough people were really convinced that growth should be halted, and if they acted on that conviction, then billions of others might be deprived of any realistic hope of gaining the opportunities now enjoyed by the more fortunate.

Herman Kahn
Nuclear weapons are intrinsically neither moral nor immoral, though they are more prone to immoral use than most weapons.

Herman Kahn
World War I broke out largely because of an arms race, and World War II because of the lack of an arms race.

Herman Kahn
My guess is that nuclear weapons will be used sometime in the next hundred years, but that their use is much more likely to be small and limited than widespread and unconstrained.

Herman Kahn
Only those who are ideologically opposed to military programs think of the defense budget as the first and best place to get resources for social welfare needs.

Herman Kahn
A total nuclear freeze is counterproductive - especially now, when technology is rapidly changing and the Soviets have some important strategic advantages.

Herman Kahn
"I don't want to live in your world in which 1 percent of the children are born defective."My answer was rather brutal, I fear. "It is not my world,"

Herman Kahn
It may literally turn out that a Hottentot, an educated and literate Hottentot it is true, but one who is a member of a relatively primitive society, would be able to make bombs.

Herman Kahn
Anything that reduces war-related destruction should not be considered altogether immoral.

Herman Kahn
Even if military advantages were not to be had by deliberately limiting attack to counterforce targets, I suspect that most governments would still prefer to observe such limits. Almost nobody wants to go down in history as the first man to kill 100,000 people.

Herman Kahn
The final outcome of benevolent, informed, and intelligent decisions may turn out to be disastrous. But choices must be made; dies must be cast.

Herman Kahn
In addition to the obvious dangers, there is another subtle but by no means minor disadvantage to a pure deterrence posture: the threat of mutual suicide is a very uninspiring concept, no matter how logical it may seem. If it happened to involve explicitly the annihilation of all humanity it would also be totally immoral; one doubts if it could long remain an important part of United States policy.

Herman Kahn
Here is another form of deterrence which, while not a Doomsday Machine, is still an"ultimate" of a sort. This could be called the Homicide Pact Machine, an attempt to make a failure of Type I Deterrence mean automatic mutual homicide. The adherents to this somewhat more practical device hope to divide the work of deterrence in a natural way: We destroy the enemy and the enemy destroys us, neither of us cheating by buying any effective Counterforce as Insurance for our respective societies. The Homicide Pact Machine is clearly more satisfactory to both humanitarians and neutrals than the Doomsday Machine and both should make the distinction.

Herman Kahn
Even though it is the ultimate in Type I Deterrence, the Doomsday Machine is an unsatisfactory basis for a weapon system. It is most improbable that either the Soviet or U.S.governments would ever authorize procuring such a machine. The project is expensive enough so it would be subject to a searching budgetary and operational scrutiny—a scrutiny which would raise questions it could never survive.

Herman Kahn
He ambles along the platform."Lots of times people say about systems analysis, why don't you guys do an experiment? What the hell are you sitting here figuring things? Why don't you go out and run an experiment? Well we'd love to run experiments, but there are two difficulties. One, in realistic experiments, people get shot down. That's not the major difficulty. We're willing to do it." The audience laughs. "We are. The real difficulty is we're talking weapons which aren't in existence yet."

Herman Kahn
Projecting a persuasive image of a desirable and practical future is extremely important to high morale, to dynamism, to consensus, and in general to help the wheels of society turn smoothly.

Herman Kahn
In any case, the thought of a catastrophe or holocaust unleashed by accidental (i. e. nonhistorical) causes might be very unsettling to any Marxists who had a passionate belief in a deterministic theory of history. Instead of saying "It is inevitable that we will take over the world in fifty years", this Marxist would have to add, "Always assuming some capitalist fool doesn't press the button."

Herman Kahn
A surprising number of government committees will make important decisions on fundamental matters with less attention than each individual would give to buying a suit.

Herman Kahn
From a scientific perspective there is some indication that a nuclear war could deplete the earth's ozone layer or, less likely, could bring on a new Ice Age - but there is no suggestion that either the created order or mankind would be destroyed in the process.

Herman Kahn
Failures of perspective in decision-making can be due to aspects of the social utility paradox, but more often result from simple mistakes caused by inadequate thought.

Herman Kahn
A healthy and fully functioning society must allocate its resources among a variety of competing interests, all of which are more or less valid but none of which should take precedence over national security.

Herman Kahn
We must not look too dangerous to the enemy. This does not mean that we cannot do anything that threatens him. After all, our mere possession of a Type I Deterrence capability implies that we can harm him if we desire. But it does mean, to the extent that is consistent with our other objectives, we should not make him more insecure than is necessary. We do not want to make him so unhappy and distraught that he will be tempted to end his anxieties by the use of drastic alternatives. We do not wish him to conclude, "better a fearful end than endless fear." We must not appear to be excessively aggressive, irresponsible, trigger-happy, or accident prone, today or in the future.

Herman Kahn