Top 100 Quotes About Donald Rumsfeld
#1. Napoleon was asked, "Who do you consider to be the greatest generals?" He responded saying, "The victors.
Donald Rumsfeld
#2. Learn to say 'I don't know.' If used when appropriate, it will be often.
Donald Rumsfeld
#4. Reduce the number of lawyers. They are like beavers - they get in the middle of the stream and dam it up.
Donald Rumsfeld
#5. Politics is human beings; it's addition rather than subtraction.
Donald Rumsfeld
#6. I'm glad you asked. It has nothing to do with oil, literally nothing to do with oil.
Donald Rumsfeld
#7. Sausage making and policy-making shouldn't be seen close-up.
Donald Rumsfeld
#8. Don't do or say things you would not like to see on the front page of The Washington Post.
Donald Rumsfeld
#9. Arguments of convenience lack integrity and inevitably trip you up.
Donald Rumsfeld
#10. We do know of certain knowledge that he [Osama Bin Laden] is either in Afghanistan, or in some other country, or dead.
Donald Rumsfeld
#12. I cannot give any assurances. I'm not in that business. I haven't been, and I don't intend to get into it. People who try to make predictions about things or assurances often find they're wrong.
Donald Rumsfeld
#13. The implication that there was something wrong with the war plan is amusing.
Donald Rumsfeld
#14. Amidst all the clutter, beyond all the obstacles, aside from all the static, are the goals set. Put your head down, do the best job possible, let the flak pass, and work towards those goals.
Donald Rumsfeld
#15. Don't automatically obey Presidential directives if you disagree or if you suspect he hasn't considered key aspects of the issue.
Donald Rumsfeld
#16. General Boykin has requested that an inspector general review this matter. And I have indicated that if that's his request, I think it's appropriate.
Donald Rumsfeld
#17. Oh my goodness gracious, what you can buy off the Internet in terms of overhead photography. A trained ape can know an awful lot of what is going on in this world, just by punching on his mouse, for a relatively modest cost.
Donald Rumsfeld
#18. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said this week there's a good chance we never get bin Laden. bin Laden! We couldn't even get O.J.!
Jay Leno
#19. Simply because you do not have evidence that something exists does not mean that you have evidence that it doesn't exist.
Donald Rumsfeld
#20. We know where they are. They are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad.
Donald Rumsfeld
#21. When I served as US Ambassador to NATO in the 1970s, the center of gravity in Europe was France and Germany.
Donald Rumsfeld
#22. No. That's someone else's business. Quagmire is - I don't do quagmires.
Donald Rumsfeld
#23. Every country should be tired of going to war. War is a terrible thing. If I had been in Congress, as much as I would be inclined naturally to be supportive of a president, any president, I would have voted no, had the issue come to a vote.
Donald Rumsfeld
#24. One thing appears reasonably certain, and that's that those who make allegations of a culture of deception, of intimidation or cover-up need to be extremely careful about such accusations.
Donald Rumsfeld
#25. 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.
Donald Rumsfeld
#26. A few ... critics are the only people I ever heard use the phrase 'imminent threat.' I didn't, the president didn't.
Donald Rumsfeld
#27. When you're skiing, if you're not falling you're not trying.
Donald Rumsfeld
#28. Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war.
Donald Rumsfeld
#30. You might be a cunning linguist, but I am a master debater.
Donald Rumsfeld
#31. Being Vice President is difficult. Don't make it tougher.
Donald Rumsfeld
#32. Pieces of intelligence, scraps of intelligence ... you run down leads and you run down leads, and you hope that sometimes it works.
Donald Rumsfeld
#33. Be able to resign. It will improve your value to the President and do wonders for your performance.
Donald Rumsfeld
#34. There are a lot of people who lie and get away with it, and that's just a fact.
Donald Rumsfeld
#35. 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.
Donald Rumsfeld
#36. Well, so be it. Nothing's perfect in life, so you have an election that's not quite perfect. Is it better than not having an election? You bet.
Donald Rumsfeld
#37. 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.
Donald Rumsfeld
#38. It is very difficult to spend "federal (the taxpayers') dollars" so that the intended result is achieved.
Donald Rumsfeld
#39. Members of the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate are not there by accident. Each managed to get there for some reason. Learn what it was and you will know something important about them, about our country and about the American people.
Donald Rumsfeld
#40. When someone with a rural accent says, "I don't know much about politics," zip up your pockets.
Donald Rumsfeld
#41. Our task, your task ... is to try to connect the dots before something happens. People say, 'Well, where's the smoking gun?' Well, we don't want to see a smoking gun from a weapon of mass destruction.
Donald Rumsfeld
#42. One of your tasks is to separate the 'personal' from the 'substantive.' The two can become confused, especially if someone rubs the President wrong.
Donald Rumsfeld
#43. A large number of people to begin crawling through those tunnels and caves looking for the bad folks.
Donald Rumsfeld
#44. You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.
Donald Rumsfeld
#45. If you foul up, tell the President and correct it fast. Delay only compounds mistakes.
Donald Rumsfeld
#46. Donald Rumsfeld is the most ruthless man I have ever met? and I mean that as a compliment.
Henry A. Kissinger
#47. Don't say 'the White House wants.' Buildings can't want.
Donald Rumsfeld
#48. Reduce the layers of management. They put distance between the top of an organization and the customers.
Donald Rumsfeld
#49. 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.
Donald Rumsfeld
#50. Let your family, staff, and friends know that you're still the same person, despite all the publicity and notoriety that accompanies your position.
Donald Rumsfeld
#51. When starting at the bottom, be willing to learn from those at the top.
Donald Rumsfeld
#52. Test ideas in the marketplace. You learn from hearing a range of perspectives. Consultation helps engender the support decisions need to be successfully implemented.
Donald Rumsfeld
#53. President Bush cruelly manipulated the grief of the American people - and the sympathy of the rest of the world - to introduce a 'world order' dreamed up by a clutch of fantasists advising the Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld.
Robert Fisk
#54. Don't be a bottleneck. If a matter is not a decision for the President or you, delegate it. Force responsibility down and out. Find problem areas, add structure and delegate. The pressure is to do the reverse. Resist it.
Donald Rumsfeld
#55. Donald Rumsfeld should not just be impeached. He should be tried as a war criminal. As for Bush, he can be dispatched by the electorate while we are still a democracy.
Robert Kuttner
#56. Look for what's missing. Many advisors can tell a President how to improve what's proposed or what's gone amiss. Few are able to see what isn't there.
Donald Rumsfeld
#57. I suppose the implication of that is the president and the vice president and myself and Colin Powell just fell off a turnip truck to take these jobs.
Donald Rumsfeld
#58. At 78 years old, I am not surprised at much anymore. Germany has taken divergent positions before, so has France, so has England, so has the US.
Donald Rumsfeld
#59. There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know.
Donald Rumsfeld
#60. Leave the President's family business to him. You will have plenty to do without trying to manage the First Family. They are likely to do fine without your help.
Donald Rumsfeld
#61. The most underestimated risk for a politician is overexposure.
Donald Rumsfeld
#62. Walk around. If you are invisible, the mystique of the President's office may perpetuate inaccurate impressions about you or the President, to his detriment. After all, you may not be as bad as they're saying.
Donald Rumsfeld
#63. When cutting staff at the Pentagon, don't eliminate the thin layer that assures civilian control.
Donald Rumsfeld
#64. They may have had time to destroy them, and I don't know the answer.
Donald Rumsfeld
#65. There are known knowns, things we know that we know; and there are known unknowns, things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns, things we do not know we don't know.
Donald Rumsfeld
#66. We need a smaller and elite military, as [Donald]Rumsfeld said - and also a smaller and elite foreign policy.
Ron Paul
#68. Treat each federal dollar as if it was hard earned; it was - by a taxpayer.
Donald Rumsfeld
#69. You will launch many projects, but have time to finish only a few. So think, plan, develop, launch and tap good people to be responsible. Give them authority and hold them accountable. Trying to do too much yourself creates a bottleneck.
Donald Rumsfeld
#70. It's a difficult thing today to be informed about our government even without all the secrecy.
Donald Rumsfeld
#71. 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.
Donald Rumsfeld
#72. I tend over the years to have developed a certain hesitancy about believing that headlines tell the whole story.
Donald Rumsfeld
#73. I have met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is that Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps the better to target those guns.
George Galloway
#74. A president has to provide leadership to gain support.
Donald Rumsfeld
#75. 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.
Donald Rumsfeld
#76. There are a lot of things that are said by people in the military, or civilian life, or in the Congress, or in the Executive Branch, that are their views. And that's the way we live. We're a free people. And that's the wonderful thing about our country.
Donald Rumsfeld
#77. In the execution of Presidential decisions work to be true to his views, in fact and tone.
Donald Rumsfeld
#78. Don't speak ill of your predecessors or successors. You didn't walk in their shoes.
Donald Rumsfeld
#79. The press always wants to know how many people will be killed or how much it will cost, but the answers to those questions are not knowable.
Donald Rumsfeld
#80. There is no question but that when one is engaged militarily that there are going to be unintended loss of life.
Donald Rumsfeld
#81. After Princeton, the years seem like a blur, but the days seem more like rapid fire. - Donald Rumsfeld in Year of Magical Thinking
Joan Didion
#82. Then there are three or four countries that have said they won't do anything. I believe Libya, Cuba and Germany are ones that have indicated they won't help in any respect.
Donald Rumsfeld
#83. Public servants are paid to serve the American people. Do it well.
Donald Rumsfeld
#85. After he saw what happened to Saddam Hussein, he ( Gaddafi ) did not want to be Saddam Hussein. He gave up his nuclear program.
Donald Rumsfeld
#86. Any country on the face of the Earth with an active intelligence program knows that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction.
Donald Rumsfeld
#87. Those who think that they know, but are mistaken, and act upon their mistakes, are the most dangerous people to have in charge. - Margaret Thatcher
Donald Rumsfeld
#88. I find George Bush and Dick Cheney frightening, Donald Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft frightening.
Barbra Streisand
#89. [ Osama bin Laden is] either alive and well or alive and not too well or not alive.
Donald Rumsfeld
#91. Be yourself. Follow your instincts. Success depends, at least in part, on the ability to 'carry it off.'
Donald Rumsfeld
#92. Keep your sense of humor. As General Joe Stillwell said, 'The higher a monkey climbs, the more you see of his behind'.
Donald Rumsfeld
#94. If we're going to preach about democracy we're going to have to make difficult decisions. We're not going to sell our values out for basing rights, particularly when (Defense) Secretary (Donald) Rumsfeld himself noted that there were options to the base in Uzbekistan
Bill Delahunt
#95. The purpose of terrorism is to terrorize. It's to change the behavior of the people that are being terrorized.
Donald Rumsfeld
#96. If a person is determined to fight to the death, then they may very well have that opportunity.
Donald Rumsfeld
#97. 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.
Donald Rumsfeld
#98. NATO member states vary dramatically in their capability and in their political steadfastness.
Donald Rumsfeld
#99. Listening to both sides does not necessarily bring about a correct judgment.
Donald Rumsfeld
#100. You're thinking of Eurpoe as Germany and France. I don't. I think that's old Europe.
Donald Rumsfeld
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
