Top 227 Quotes & Sayings by Donald Rumsfeld - Page 2

Don't do or say things you would not like to see on the front page of The Washington Post.

Imagine, a September 11 with weapons of mass destruction. It's not 3,000. It's tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children.

With the press there is no 'off the record.'

See that the President, the Cabinet and staff are informed. If cut out of the information flow, their decisions may be poor, not made, or not confidently or persuasively implemented.

The way to do well is to do well.

Work continuously to trim the White House staff from your first day to your last. All the pressures are to the contrary.

If a prospective Presidential approach can't be explained clearly enough to be understood well, it probably hasn't been thought through well enough. If not well understood by the American people, it probably won't 'sail' anyway. Send it back for further thought.

Make decisions about the President's personal security. He can overrule you, but don't ask him to be the one to counsel caution.

Secretary Powell and I agree on every single issue that has ever been before this administration except for those instances where Colin's still learning.

In politics, every day is filled with numerous opportunities for serious error. Enjoy it.

Let your family, staff, and friends know that you're still the same person, despite all the publicity and notoriety that accompanies your position.

The Secretary of Defense is not a super General or Admiral. His task is to exercise civilian control over the Department for the Commander-in-Chief and the country.

Congress, the press, and the bureaucracy too often focus on how much money or effort is spent, rather than whether the money or effort actually achieves the announced goal.

If you develop rules, never have more than ten.

Test ideas in the marketplace. You learn from hearing a range of perspectives. Consultation helps engender the support decisions need to be successfully implemented.

Many people around the President have sizeable egos before entering government, some with good reason. Their new positions will do little to moderate their egos.

Strive to make proposed solutions as self-executing as possible. As the degree of discretion increases, so too does bureaucracy, delay, and expense.

Never hire anyone you can’t fire.

Listening to both sides does not necessarily bring about a correct judgment.

The success of an organization will depend on the people you surround yourself with.

Now, settle down, settle down. Hell, I'm an old man, it's early in the morning and I'm gathering my thoughts here.

If you can't solve a problem, make it bigger.

The purpose of terrorism is to terrorize. It's to change the behavior of the people that are being terrorized.

When business accepts help from the government, it can be like going to bed with a hippopotamus. It's nice and warm for the moment, but then your bedmate rolls over and crushes you.

I don't believe anyone that I know in the administration ever said that Iraq had nuclear weapons.

The country cannot afford amateur hour in the White House.

The worst mistake is to have the best ladder and the wrong wall.

Most US presidents since World War II have led military actions without a declaration of war by Congress, though most, if not all, have properly consulted and sought support from Congress. That is the wise thing to do.

We know where they are. They are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad.

Watch the growth of middle level management. Don't automatically fill vacant jobs. Leave some positions unfilled for 6-8 months to see what happens. You will find you won't need to fill some of them.

What is needed [to combat terrorism], in my view, is resolve, not retreat; courage, not concession. Rather than thinking in terms of an exit strategy, focus on a strategy for success.

Keep your sense of humor. As General Joe Stillwell said, 'The higher a monkey climbs, the more you see of his behind'.

We [the USA] do have a big nation's problem. We have the problem of a nation that's got two oceans, oceans on either side. People come from all across the globe and want to live here and they want to work here and they want to invest here. And that's a good thing. And they make up this country. But as a people, we [americans] are not highly skilled in languages. We're not highly skilled in knowledge of other cultures. And that's a problem.

You can have a broad popular democracy movement and have it end being taken over by the most vicious people and the result is you don't end up with free political systems or free economic systems, you end up with a handful of radicals controlling the country.

I believe what I said yesterday. I don't know what I said, but I know what I think and I assume it's what I said.

You might be a cunning linguist, but I am a master debater.

The United States isn't going to do anything that it's not capable of doing. And if we do something, we'll be capable of doing it.

It is very difficult to spend "federal (the taxpayers') dollars" so that the intended result is achieved.

Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.

Never assume the other fellow will not do something you wouldn't do.

In unanimity there may well be either cowardice or uncritical thinking.

Those who made the decisions with imperfect knowledge will be judged in hindsight by those with considerably more information at their disposal and time for reflection.

The coalition did not act in Iraq because we had discovered dramatic new evidence of Iraq's pursuit. We acted because we saw the evidence in a dramatic new light - through the prism of our experience on 9/11.

The reality is that terrorists can attack any time at any minute, 24 hours a day, using a variety of techniques, in any place at all. And it's not possible to defend in every place, against every technique, against every conceivable approach. It means that you can't stop every terrorist attack. Innocent men, women and children are going to be killed if terrorists are determined to do it.

The United States, as all you know, did not come to Iraq for oil, not to occupy. We came here only to help.

If I look at the really important questions in [Middle East] region, I see Iran, where there is a strong desire for a freer society and where people are repressed by a small group of ayatollahs. I see Syria, where we can see a similar desire of the people to be free. These two countries fund Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations and are hurting our efforts in Afghanistan and have been extremely harmful in Iraq. Then I also see large, important countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

I would not say that the future is necessarily less predictable than the past. I think the past was not predictable when it started.

Oh, Lord. I didn't mean to say anything quotable.

You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.

Success tends to go not to the person who is error-free, because he also tends to be risk-averse. Rather it goes to the person who recognizes that life is pretty much a percentage business. It isn't making mistakes that's critical; it's correcting them and getting on with the principal task.

The absence of evidence is not necessarily the evidence of absence

There are things that we know, and there are things that we don't know. Then there are the things that we don't even know that we don't know. Those are the things that are the hardest.

When you're skiing, if you're not falling you're not trying.

[on Osama bin Laden] He is either alive and well or alive and not too well or not alive.

Napoleon was asked, "Who do you consider to be the greatest generals?" He responded saying, "The victors.

Have a deputy and develop a successor. Don't be consumed by the job or you'll risk losing your balance. Keep your mooring lines to the outside world - family, friends, neighbors, people out of government, and people who may not agree with you.

We'll have to deal with the networks. One of the ways to do that is to drain the swamp they live in. And that means dealing not only with the terrorists, but those who harbor terrorists. This will take a long, sustained effort. It will require the support of the American people as well as our friends and allies around the world.

There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know.

There's another way to phrase that and that is that the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. It is basically saying the same thing in a different way. Simply because you do not have evidence that something does exist does not mean that you have evidence that it doesn't exist.

The dead-enders are still with us, those remnants of the defeated regimes who'll go on fighting long after their cause is lost.