Robert McNamara Quotes

15 Sourced Quotes

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

Robert McNamara
Brains, on the whole, are like hearts, and they go where they are appreciated.

Robert McNamara
Military force—especially when wielded by an outside power—cannot bring order in a country that cannot govern itself.

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
We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who participated in the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation. We made our decisions in the light of those values. Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why.

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

Robert McNamara
The indefinite combination of human fallibility and nuclear weapons will lead to the destruction of nations.

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

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

Robert McNamara
I must say 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.

Robert McNamara
All the evidence of history suggests that man is indeed a rational animal, but with a near infinite capacity for folly.... He draws blueprints for Utopia, but never quite gets it built. In the end he plugs away obstinately with the only building material really ever at hand—his own part comic, part tragic, part cussed, but part glorious nature.

Robert McNamara
Lesson #7: Belief and seeing are both often wrong.
Lesson #8: Be prepared to reexamine your reasoning.
Lesson #9: In order to do good, you may have to engage in evil.
Lesson #10: Never say never.
Lesson #11: You can't change human nature...

Robert McNamara
I would rather have a wrong decision made than no decision at all.

Robert McNamara
You can never substitute emotion for reason. I still would allow a place for intuition in this process, but not emotion. They say I am a power gabber. But knowledge is power, and I an giving them knowledge, so they will have more power. Can't they see that?

Robert McNamara
We all make mistakes. We know we make mistakes. I don't know any military commander, who is honest, who would say he has not made a mistake. There's a wonderful phrase: "the fog of war." What "the fog of war" means is: war is so complex it's beyond the ability of the human mind to comprehend all the variables. Our judgment, our understanding, are not adequate. And we kill people unnecessarily.

Robert McNamara