Top 35 Herman Kahn Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Risk-taking is the essence of innovation.”

— Herman Kahn

2. “Deterrence itself is not a preeminent value; the primary values are safety and morality.”

— Herman Kahn

3. “As for total disarmament, there are almost 50,000 nuclear weapons in the world today; even if they were banned, not all would be destroyed.”

— Herman Kahn

4. “Authority is not power; that’s coercion. Authority is not knowledge; that’s persuasion, or seduction. Authority is simply that the author has the right to make a statement and to be heard.”

— Herman Kahn

5. “World War I broke out largely because of an arms race, and World War II because of the lack of an arms race.”

— Herman Kahn

6. “Many people believe that the current system must inevitably end in total annihilation. They reject, sometimes very emotionally, any attempts to analyze this notion.”

— Herman Kahn

7. “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.”

— Herman Kahn

8. “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

9. “A total nuclear freeze is counterproductive – especially now, when technology is rapidly changing and the Soviets have some important strategic advantages.”

— Herman Kahn

10. “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

11. “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

12. “Nuclear war is such an emotional subject that many people see the weapons themselves as the common enemy of humanity.”

— Herman Kahn

13. “Clearly, the first task is to gain acceptance of a more reasonable view of the future, one that opens possibilities rather than forecloses them.”

— Herman Kahn

14. “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

15. “Nuclear weapons are intrinsically neither moral nor immoral, though they are more prone to immoral use than most weapons.”

— Herman Kahn

16. “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

17. “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.”

— Herman Kahn

18. “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

19. “Anything that reduces war-related destruction should not be considered altogether immoral.”

— Herman Kahn

20. “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

21. “I’m against ignorance.”

— Herman Kahn

22. “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

23. “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

24. “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

25. “It may literally turn out that a Hottentot, an educated and literate Hottentot it is true, but one who is a member of a relatively primitive society, would be able to make bombs.”

— Herman Kahn

26. “I’m against fashionable thinking.”

— Herman Kahn

27. “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

28. “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

29. “I am against the whole cliche of the moment.”

— Herman Kahn

30. “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

31. “Human and moral factors must always be considered. They must never be missing from policies and from public discussion.”

— Herman Kahn

32. “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

33. “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

34. “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

35. “The common contaminated foods which would be the major source of Sr-90 might be classified into five grades- A, B, C, D, and E... The A food would be restricted to children and to pregnant women. The B food would be a high-priced food available to everybody. The C food would be a low priced food also available to everybody. Finally, the D food would be restricted to people over age forty or fifty... Most of these people would die of other causes before they got cancer.”

— Herman Kahn

36. “Nevertheless, during the sixty years of the twentieth century many problems have come increasingly into the realm of acceptable public discussion.”

— Herman Kahn

37. “Hopefully, nations will refuse to accept a situation in which nuclear accidents actually do occur, and, if at all possible, they will do something to correct a system which makes them likely.”

— Herman Kahn