A Quote by Robert McNamara

They'll be no learning period with nuclear weapons. Make one mistake and you're going to destroy nations.

Robert McNamara

Quote Topics

Destroy Going Learning Make Mistake Nations Nuclear Nuclear Weapons One Mistake Period Weapons

Quote Author

Robert McNamara
American - Public Servant
June 9, 1916 - July 6, 2009

What is the only provocation that could bring about the use of nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. What is the priority target for nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. What is the only established defense against nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. How do we prevent the use of nuclear weapons? By threatening to use nuclear weapons. And we can't get rid of nuclear weapons, because of nuclear weapons. The intransigence, it seems, is a function of the weapons themselves.

Martin Amis

The invasion of Iraq will surely go down in history as one of the most cowardly wars ever fought. It was a war in which a band of rich nations, armed with enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world several times over, rounded on a poor nation, falsely accused it of having nuclear weapons, used the United Nations to force it to disarm, then invaded it, occupied it, and are now in the process of selling it.

Arundhati Roy

I don't want to use the term "nuclear weapons" because those people in Iran who have authority say they are not building nuclear weapons. I make an appeal to the countries who do have nuclear weapons. They don't consider them a nuclear threat. But let's say a country that doesn't have nuclear weapons gets involved in building them, then they are told by those that already have nuclear weapons that they oppose [such a development]. Where is the justice in that?

Recep Tayyip Erdogan

No single nation should pick and choose which nations holds nuclear weapons. And that's why I strongly reaffirmed America's commitment to seek a world in which no nations hold nuclear weapons.

Barack Obama

The worst part of what we heard Donald [trump] say has been about nuclear weapons. He has said repeatedly that he didn't care if other nations got nuclear weapons, Japan, South Korea, even Saudi Arabia. It has been the policy of the United States, Democrats and Republicans, to do everything we could to reduce the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Hillary Clinton

I, who had been in favour of nuclear energy for generating electricity ... I suddenly realised that anybody who has a nuclear reactor can extract the plutonium from the reactor and make nuclear weapons, so that a country which has a nuclear reactor can, at any moment that it wants to, become a nuclear weapons power. And I, right from the beginning, have been terribly worried by the existence of nuclear weapons and very much against their use.

Mark Oliphant

All mankind is now learning that these nuclear weapons can only serve to destroy, never become beneficial.

Alva Myrdal

It is a measure of the arrogance of nations - but especially of the nuclear-weapon states - to assert that a nuclear-weapons-free world is impossible when, in fact, ninety-five percent of the nations of the world already are nuclear free.

George Lee Butler

We have a legal and moral obligation to rid our world of nuclear tests and nuclear weapons. When we put an end to nuclear tests, we get closer to eliminating all nuclear weapons. A world free of nuclear weapons will be safer and more prosperous.

Ban Ki-moon

Iran is not about building nuclear weapons. We don't wanna build nuclear weapons. We don't believe that nuclear weapons bring security to anybody, certainly not to us.

Mohammad Javad Zarif

If we are really anxious not to have nuclear weapons in Iran, the first thing is to call an international conference on abolishing all nuclear weapons, including Israeli nuclear weapons.

Bruce Kent

Today we are rightly in an era of disarmament and dismantlement of nuclear weapons. But in some countries nuclear weapons development still continues. Whether and when the various Nations of the World can agree to stop this is uncertain. But individual scientists can still influence this process by withholding their skills.

Hans Bethe

Yes, I think lots of people are eager to obtain weapons of mass destruction. But there's no evidence that he has weapons of mass destruction. There's been no evidence of him testing nuclear weapons. We have people that are in our face with nuclear weapons. We've got Iran and North Korea. We've got a problem with Pakistan. You know, I don't know what to say about that. There's a whole lot of people that are going nuclear. And I think that Saddam Hussein is actually, with the evidence, the least able to use nuclear weapons and the least obvious offender in that area at this moment.

Janeane Garofalo

A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. The only value in our two nations possessing nuclear weapons is to make sure they will never be used. But then would it not be better to do away with them entirely?

Ronald Reagan

When people know we are ready to use nuclear weapons, they're going to back off if we do something aggressive. So basically, nuclear weapons are always being used.