MCGEORGE BUNDY

… composed largely of the same class of people as those who brought Hitler to power — the penny-proud, ignorant petit bourgeois folk .

As important as having strength is knowing how to use it.

Very near the heart of all foreign affairs is the relationship between policy and military power.

We cannot assert that the policy of sustained reprisal will succeed in changing the course of the contest in Vietnam. It may fail and we cannot estimate the odds of success with any accuracy.

In the real world of real political leaders a decision that would bring even one hydrogen bomb on one city of one's own country would be recognized as a catastrophic blunder.

A surgical operation is bloody, messy and never fun.

A nuclear exchange confined to military targets seems more possible, not less, when both sides have a sure second strike capability. Then you might have a more stable balance of terror.

The Crocodile. He just lies there on the riverbank, his eyes half closed, looking sleepy. Then whap, he bites.

The right way to deal with the bureaucracy is to get close to it—to use it.

If we guard our toothbrushes and diamonds with equal zeal, we will lose fewer toothbrushes and more diamonds.

We can't assume what we don't believe.

I was brought up in a home where the Secretary of State was not the subject of partisan debate.

[Thomas] Dewey's view was that if he made no mistakes he would win So we sat around making sure he would make no mistakes. And I think we succeeded, but in fact that isn't the way it went. [Dewey lost]

Americans don't stay where they're not wanted.

I know there is no present evidence, and I think there is no present likelihood that the Cubans and the Cuban Government and the Soviet Government would in combination attempt to install major offensive capability.

The actions you plan to take and the actions you actually decide to take [in a crisis] are not always the same.

Leaflet operations should be expanded to obtain maximum practicable psychological effect on the North Vietnamese population.

Our best chance of success is a policy of sustained reprisal against North Vietnam. We believe the risks of such a policy are real but acceptable. Measured against the cost of defeat, this program seems cheap.

The Annual Shame

It was obvious uh, that uh, the situation in Vietnam was far from stable in 1964 and that there, if in fact the United States was going to uh carry out its declared intent to uh, do its best to prevent uh, a Communist overrun of South Vietnam, uh, there would be at least hard choices to make, and there might be a choice for uh, stronger action.

There is nearly always uh, a process of wanting contingency plans made in the military.

Vietnam, really more accurately, Laos, was almost after Berlin the top problem at the beginning of the Kennedy Administration in '61, foreign problem.

The most persistent of all attractive illusions in our country may be that racism can be ended by one single blow.

Well, it is alarming to have a president [Reagan] who doesn't know what he is doing.

Presidents and Lyndon Johnson was really no exception, very rapidly learned the difference between a contingency plan and an authorized act.