Here, we’ve compiled a list of the best Herman Kahn Quotes. Let’s look at these pieces of wisdom. We definitely have something to learn from them!
1
The widespread diffusion of nuclear weapons would make many nations able, and in some cases also create the pressure, to aggravate an on-going crisis, or even touch off a war between two other powers for purposes of their own.
2
Human and moral factors must always be considered. They must never be missing from policies and from public discussion.
3
It is immoral from almost any point of view to refuse to defend yourself and others from very grave and terrible threats, even as there are limits to the means that can be used in such defense.
4
Nuclear weapons are intrinsically neither moral nor immoral, though they are more prone to immoral use than most weapons.
5
There was no race – but to the extent that there was an arms competition, it was almost entirely on the Soviet side, first to catch up and then to surpass the Americans.
6
From a scientific perspective there is some indication that a nuclear war could deplete the earth’s ozone layer or, less likely, could bring on a new Ice Age – but there is no suggestion that either the created order or mankind would be destroyed in the process.
7
I am against the whole cliche of the moment.
8
To the extent that these advanced weapons or their components are treated as articles of commerce, perhaps for peaceful uses as in the Plowshare program, their cost would be well within the resources available to many large private organizations.
9
World War I broke out largely because of an arms race, and World War II because of the lack of an arms race.
10
For if enough people were really convinced that growth should be halted, and if they acted on that conviction, then billions of others might be deprived of any realistic hope of gaining the opportunities now enjoyed by the more fortunate.
11
New developments in weapon systems during the 1950s and early 1960s created a situation that was most dangerous, and even conducive to accidental war.
12
I’m against fashionable thinking.
13
Nuclear war is such an emotional subject that many people see the weapons themselves as the common enemy of humanity.
14
The objective of nuclear-weapons policy should not be solely to decrease the number of weapons in the world, but to make the world safer – which is not necessarily the same thing.
15
In 1960 I published a book that attempted to direct attention to the possibility of a thermonuclear war, to ways of reducing the likelihood of such a war, and to methods for coping with the consequences should war occur despite our efforts to avoid it.
16
I’m against sloppy, emotional thinking.
17
In a world which is armed to its teeth with nuclear weapons, every quarrel or difference of opinion may lead to violence of a kind quite different from what is possible today.
18
Failures of perspective in decision-making can be due to aspects of the social utility paradox, but more often result from simple mistakes caused by inadequate thought.
