Robert McNamara Quotes

Nuclear weaponry, of course, would be the be-all, end-all of just too many people in too many parts of our planet.

Nuclear weapons are inherently threatening to all of civilization. If that had been a nuclear weapon at the World Trade Center, even the most primitive kind of the Hiroshima, Nagasaki, you wouldn't have a Manhattan. There wouldn't be a democracy of any kind in America.

As long as nuclear weapons exist, the chances of survival of the human species are quite slight.

There are nine countries in the world that have nuclear weapons. There are about 27,000 nuclear weapons total on the planet. The countries that have nuclear weapons deploy them ready for use and have doctrines saying that they would use them in certain circumstances.

We call upon the nuclear-weapon states to immediately cease their plans to further invest in modernizing and extending the life span of their nuclear weapons and related facilities.

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

Our immediate striving must be aimed at preventing what, in the present situation, is the greatest threat to the very survival of mankind, the nuclear threat.

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

It is such a supreme folly to believe that nuclear weapons are deadly only if they're used. The fact that they exist at all, their presence in our lives, will wreak more havoc than we can begin to fathom. Nuclear weapons pervade our thinking. Control our behavior. Administer our societies. Inform our dreams. They bury themselves like meat hooks deep in the base of our brains. They are purveyors of madness. They are the ultimate colonizer. Whiter than any white man that ever lived. The very heart of whiteness.

By far the single greatest danger facing humankind - in fact, all living beings on our planet - is the threat of nuclear destruction.

I'd be the last one to use the nuclear weapons, because that's sort of like the end of the ballgame.

The nuclear bomb is the most useless weapon ever invented. It can be employed to no rational purpose. It is not even an effective defense against itself.

We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.

There isn’t going to be any learning curve for nuclear weapons. An administration makes one mistake and the result can destroy entire nations.

The existence of nuclear weapons presents a clear and present danger to life on Earth.

Donald Trump believes that the world will be safer if more nations have nuclear weapons. And he's said Saudi Arabia should get them, Japan should get them, Korea should get them. And when he was confronted with this, and told, wait a minute, terrorists could get those, proliferation could lead to nuclear war, here's what Donald Trump said, and I quote: "Go ahead, folks, enjoy yourselves."

Generation after generation can't just be loaded with more and more nuclear weapons and not ultimately dance to that music.

It is such a supreme folly to believe that nuclear weapons are deadly only if they're used.

With regard to nuclear weapons, it's kind of hard to say. [Donald Trump] is said lots of things. The national security experts are terrified. But they're more terrified by his personality than by his statements.

The single greatest problem the world has is nuclear armament, nuclear weapons, not global warming.

Nuclear weapons can be dismantled, but they cannot be uninvented.

Donald Trump is a person who has been very cavalier, even casual about the use of nuclear weapons.

In fact, [Donald's Trump] cavalier attitude about nuclear weapons is so deeply troubling.

There's a very simple reason for focusing on the nuclear issue. Many, many issues are of supreme importance in one way or another, but if we blow ourselves up with nuclear weapons, no other issue is really going to matter. Quite possibly there would be no other human beings left to be concerned about anything else.

[Nuclear war]... may not be desirable.