Frasi di Robert McNamara

“Con le armi nucleari, non ci sarà tempo per imparare. Un solo errore basta a distruggere nazioni intere.”

Origine: Citato in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

“Credo che la razza umana debba riflettere sulle uccisioni. Quanto male occorre compiere per poter far del bene.”

“Ormai vediamo il nostro pianeta come una nave spaziale. Ma non dimentichiamoci che un quarto dei passeggeri viaggia in classe di lusso mentre gli altri tre quarti affollano la stiva; e questo non contribuisce a fare di una nave un luogo felice, nello spazio o altrove.”

“Qualsiasi onesto comandante militare ammetterà di commettere degli errori nell'applicazione del proprio potere militare.”

Origine: Citato in Selezione dal Reader's Digest, giugno 1974.

“Se non riusciamo a convincere le nazioni dei meriti della nostra causa, forse dovremmo riesaminarla.”

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

Robert McNamara: Frasi in inglese

“You can never substitute emotion for reason.”

Origine: Herbert Y. Schandler (1975), US Policy on the Use of Nuclear Weapons, 1945-1975. p. 55

“Management is the gate through which social and economic and political change, indeed change in every direction, is diffused through society.”

Origine: Henry L. Trewhitt (1971) McNamara, p. 119
Contesto: You can never substitute emotion for reason. I still would allow a place for intuition in this process, but not emotion. They say I am a power gabber. But knowledge is power, and I am giving them knowledge, so they will have more power. Can't they see that?

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

Robert McNamara (1967); quoted in: Bruce Rich (1994) Mortgaging the Earth: The World Bank, Environmental Impoverishment and the Crisis of Development, p. 83

“I must say I don't object to its being called McNamara's War. I think it is a very important war and I am pleased to be identified with it and do whatever I can to win it.”

Quoted in: Charles A. Stevenson (2006), SECDEF: The Nearly Impossible Job of Secretary of Defense http://books.google.com/books?id=2NXbS5AG_8QC&pg=PA28, p. 28

“Lesson #7: Belief and seeing are both often wrong.
Lesson #8: Be prepared to reexamine your reasoning.
Lesson #9: In order to do good, you may have to engage in evil.
Lesson #10: Never say never.
Lesson #11: You can't change human nature…”

Origine: United States. Congress. Senate (1964) Hearings, Vol. 4, p. 177: Of the Vietnam War

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

Robert S. McNamara (2004), Official Teacher's Guide for The Fog of War, p. 5