A healthy and fully functioning society must allocate its resources among a variety of competing interests, all of which are more or less valid but none of which should take precedence over national security.
- Herman Kahn Quote

A surprising number of government committees will make important decisions on fundamental matters with less attention than each individual would give to buying a suit.
- Herman Kahn Quote

Because of new technologies, new wealth, new conditions of domestic life and of international relations, unprecedented criteria and issues are coming up for national decision.
- Herman Kahn Quote

Deterrence itself is not a preeminent value; the primary values are safety and morality.
- Herman Kahn Quote

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.
- Herman Kahn Quote

For some years I have spent my time on exactly these questions - both in thinking about ways to prevent war, and in thinking about how to fight, survive, and terminate a war, should it occur.
- Herman Kahn Quote

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.
- Herman Kahn Quote

Human and moral factors must always be considered. They must never be missing from policies and from public discussion.
- Herman Kahn Quote

I am against the whole cliche of the moment.
- Herman Kahn Quote

I'm against fashionable thinking.
- Herman Kahn Quote

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.
- Herman Kahn Quote

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.
- Herman Kahn Quote

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.
- Herman Kahn Quote

My guess is that nuclear weapons will be used sometime in the next hundred years, but that their use is much more likely to be small and limited than widespread and unconstrained.
- Herman Kahn Quote

New developments in weapon systems during the 1950s and early 1960s created a situation that was most dangerous, and even conducive to accidental war.
- Herman Kahn Quote

Nuclear war is such an emotional subject that many people see the weapons themselves as the common enemy of humanity.
- Herman Kahn Quote

Only those who are ideologically opposed to military programs think of the defense budget as the first and best place to get resources for social welfare needs.
- Herman Kahn Quote

Projecting a persuasive image of a desirable and practical future is extremely important to high morale, to dynamism, to consensus, and in general to help the wheels of society turn smoothly.
- Herman Kahn Quote

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.
- Herman Kahn Quote
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.
- Herman Kahn Quote

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.
- Herman Kahn Quote