Robert McNamara Quotes

I could not conceive of any President engaging in all-out nuclear war unless we were in danger of all-out devastation ourselves.

There is only one thing worse than one nation having the atomic bomb -- that's two nations having it.

Nuclear weapons are the greatest national security risk to the United States, and they are the most important weapons in our arsenal.

You probably don't need more weapons than what's required to destroy every city on earth. There's only 2,300 cities. So, the United States, by that criteria, only needs 2,300 nuclear weapons - well, we've got more than 25,000!

We are told that the possession of nuclear weapons - in some cases even the testing of these weapons - is essential for national security. But this argument can be made by other countries as well.

As long as some of us choose to rely on nuclear weapons, we continue to risk that these same weapons will become increasingly attractive to others.

Firing off 1,000 or 500 or 2,000 nuclear warheads on a few minutes' consideration has always struck me as an absurd way to go to war.

Israel has a sizeable nuclear arsenal and could retaliate if it were attacked.

In 1960 I published a book that attempted to direct attention to the possibility of a thermonuclear war, to ways of reducing the likelihood of such a war, and to methods for coping with the consequences should war occur despite our efforts to avoid it.

It would be our policy to use nuclear weapons wherever we felt it necessary to protect our forces and achieve our objectives.

No country without an atom bomb could properly consider itself independent.

If we are to assume that North Korea becomes a nuclear-power state, of course the danger of having an all-out nuclear war, that possibility is very slim.

Nuclear weapons are what make us a great power.

If an SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative) system were to keep out ninety percent of incoming nuclear missiles, it would be a ninety percent success and most Americans would be dead.

A nuclear weapon is not just a football that you can use at will.

To be a major power, a country must have nuclear weapons.

Every thinking person fears nuclear war, and every technological nation plans for it.

The way to win an atomic war is to make sure it never starts.

I would not recommend the use of any atomic weapon, no matter how small, when both sides have the power to destroy the world.

I say in all sincerity that the nuclear arms race has no military purpose. Wars cannot be fought with nuclear weapons; their existence only adds to our perils because of the illusions which they have generated.

I think we have to get rid of nuclear weapons. The idea that somehow by having nuclear weapons you make the world a safer place is essentially insane.

We do not believe that a nuclear war should be fought and we do not believe that a nuclear war can be won.

The Soviet Union will not produce an atomic bomb for at least another 4 years

Most of our thinking about nuclear weapons is a hangover from different era …. Much about war, peace and global security changed after Hiroshima and changed again … with the end of the Cold war. It is high time our thinking changed as well.

Dwight Eisenhower… supported the nuclearization of the military and the militarization of nuclear weapons as a cost saving way of deterring the Soviets. Under Eisenhower, custody or nuclear weapons shifted from the civilian Atomic Energy Commission to the military.