Robert McNamara

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

A computer does not substitute for judgment any more than a pencil substitutes for literacy. But writing without a pencil is no particular advantage.

Coercion, after all, merely captures man. Freedom captivates him.

One cannot fashion a credible deterrent out of an incredible action.

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

We burned to death 100,000 Japanese civilians in Tokyo - men, women and children. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?