The top 10 most inspiring quotes by Robert McNamara
- Measure what is important, don’t make important what you can measure.
- 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.
- I want to say, and this is very important: at the end we lucked out. It was luck that prevented nuclear war. We came that close to nuclear war at the end. Rational individuals: Kennedy was rational; Khrushchev was rational; Castro was rational. Rational individuals came that close to total destruction of their societies. And that danger exists today.
- One must take draconian measures of demographic reduction against the will of the populations. Reducing the birth rate has proved to be impossible or insufficient. One must therefore increase the mortality rate. How? By natural means. Famine and sickness.
- Never answer the question that is asked of you. Answer the question that you wish had been asked of you.
- We do not have the God-given right to shape every nation in our image or as we choose.
- 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.
- Poor planning or poor execution of plans is simply to let some force other than reason shape reality.
- To this day we seem to act in the world as though we know what’s right for everybody.
- The indefinite combination of human fallibility and nuclear weapons will lead to the destruction of nations.
Robert S. McNamara (1916-2009) was a prominent American business executive and the U.S. Secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1968 under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. Born in San Francisco, he graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, and earned an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he later taught.
McNamara joined Ford Motor Company in 1946, becoming its first president outside the Ford family in 1960. As Secretary of Defense, he played a crucial role in the Vietnam War, advocating for increased U.S. involvement, which later made him a controversial figure. He implemented the strategy of “flexible response” and initiated significant organizational reforms within the Pentagon.
After leaving public office, McNamara served as President of the World Bank from 1968 to 1981, focusing on poverty reduction and development. His later years were marked by reflections on the Vietnam War, including his memoir “In Retrospect,” where he expressed regret over his wartime decisions.
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