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[W]ar is so complex, it’s beyond the ability of the human mind to comprehend allthe variables. Our judgement, our understanding, are not adequate.

— Robert McNamara

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Source, in full

in The Fog of War - Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, by Errol Morris (director), Columbia Tristar, 2004; as quoted in Antoine Bosquet, “Cyberneticizing the American War Machine: Science and Computers in the Cold War”, p. 95.

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War

More quotes by Robert McNamara

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

Charles E. Miller (2010)

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.

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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.