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

— Robert McNamara Charles E. Miller (2010)

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Character

More quotes by 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 (1967)

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

Charles A. Stevenson (2006)

Is it right and proper that today there are 7500 strategic offensive nuclear warheads, of which 2500 are at 15 minute alert to be launched by the decision of one human being?

The Fog of War (2003)

Kennedy would have ordered nuclear retaliation on Cuba —and perhaps the Soviet Union— if nuclear weapons had been fired at United States forces.

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

Herbert Y. Schandler (1975)

All Robert McNamara quotes →

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Men accept servility in order to acquire wealth; as if they could acquire anything of their own when they cannot even assert that they belong to themselves.

Étienne de La Boétie Discourse on Voluntary Servitude (1548)

The confusion of marriage with morality has done more to destroy the conscience of the human race than any other single error.

George Bernard Shaw Man and Superman (1903)

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.

C. S. Lewis God in the Dock (1970)

Affectation hides three times as many virtues as charity does sins.

Horace Mann Thoughts Selected from the Writings of Horace Mann (1867)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Robert McNamara (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.