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Short of nuclear war itself, population growth is the gravest issue the world faces. If we do not act, the problem will be solved by famine, riots, insurrection and war.

Robert McNamara

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Robert McNamara
Age: 92 †
Born: 1916
Born: September 6
Died: 2009
Died: July 6
Banker
Economist
Former United States Secretary Of Defense
Military Personnel
Politician
Writer
San Francisco County
California
McNamara
Robert Strange McNamara
Robert S. McNamara
War
Issue
Problem
Nuclear
Gravest
World
Population
Insurrection
Short
Overpopulation
Poverty
Riots
Growth
Riot
Issues
Famine
Faces
Solved

More quotes by Robert McNamara

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General, you don't have a war plan! All you have is a kind of horrible spasm!
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Kennedy was trying to keep us out of war. I was trying to help him keep us out of war. And General Curtis LeMay, whom I served under as a matter of fact in World War II, was saying Let's go in, let's totally destroy Cuba.
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The war in Vietnam is going well and will succeed.
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Belief and seeing are both often wrong.
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Management is the gate through which social and economic and political change, indeed change in every direction, is diffused though society.
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The indefinite combination of human fallibility and nuclear weapons will lead to the destruction of nations.
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We do not have the God-given right to shape every nation in our image or as we choose.
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It would be our policy to use nuclear weapons wherever we felt it necessary to protect our forces and achieve our objectives.
Robert McNamara
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Elimination of nuclear weapons, so naive, so simplistic, and so idealistic as to be quixotic? Some may think so. But as human beings, citizens of nations with power to influence events in the world, can we be at peace with ourselves if we strive for less? I think not.
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To this day we seem to act in the world as though we know what's right for everybody.
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One solitary God-centered, God-intoxicated man can do more to keep God's love alive and His presence felt in the world than a thousand half-hearted, talkative busy men living frightened, fragmented lives of quiet desperation.
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I formed the hypothesis that each of us could have achieved our objectives without the terrible loss of life. And I wanted to test that by going to Vietnam.
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Action should be founded on contemplation, and those of us who act don't put enough time, don't give enough emphasis, to contemplation.
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If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals. And I think he's right. He, and I'd say I, were behaving as war criminals.
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What makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?
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It was a perfectly beautiful night, as fall nights are in Washington. I walked out of the president's Oval Office, and as I walked out, I thought I might never live to see another Saturday night.
Robert McNamara
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We see what we want to believe.
Robert McNamara
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A computer does not substitute for judgment any more than a pencil substitutes for literacy. But writing without a pencil is no particular advantage.
Robert McNamara
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At my age, 85, I'm at age where I can look back and derive some conclusions about my actions. My rule has been try to learn, try to understand what happened. Develop the lessons and pass them on.
Robert McNamara
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The picture of the world's greatest superpower killing or seriously injuring 1,000 noncombatants a week, while trying to pound a tiny backward nation into submission on an issue whose merits are hotly disputed, is not a pretty one.
Robert McNamara