Robert McNamara Quotes

War is so complex; human nature is so complex. There's no filmmaker who has ever figured it out perfectly.

War is complicated and intense, and it takes time and thoughts to understand what it was.

There have been only 268 of the past 3,421 years free of war.

We have a tendency to think of war as this quasi-mystical thing, and that interpretation flattens the experience - by using different perspectives, I wanted to open a place for readers to compare and contrast, to make judgments, to engage.

War is not some sort of Nintendo video game.

I want to tell you that I think this war is a great mistake.

That's what wars are: Poor people killing other poor people.

War is uncertain, precisely because it is political and human.

Politics and war are remarkably similar situations.

Let us recollect that peace or war will not always be left to our option; that however moderate or unambitious we may be, we cannot count upon the moderation, or hope to extinguish the ambition of others.

It's an important fact of life, war.

I have seen enough of one war never to wish to see another.

Strategic thinkers were naturally rattled to find this outsider fooling around with their work. They had been thinking strategically when Reagan was just another movie actor playing opposite a chimpanzee, for heaven's sake. They think Reagan is too naive, too innocent, to grasp the intellectual complexities of cold war strategy.

Politics are very much like war. We may even have to use poison gas at times.

War and preparations for war have acquired a kind of legitimacy.

There has never been a protracted war from which a country has benefited.

Each particular society begins to feel its strength, whence arises a state of war between different nations.

War is just one more big government program.

Well, I asked him who would start the war first.

To me, all war is failure for humanity, though it often is a bounty for commerce.

It is easy to get into war, not so easy to get out.

The military don't start wars. Politicians start wars.

Nations make wars; states make wars; and cultures make wars. We tend to conflate the three, but they are very different wars.

War is the most serious of the complicated relationships of humankind.

Word War III is about to start and we cannot change the position on Vietnam.