Top 35 Secretary Of Defense Quotes
#1. I had no difficulty as Secretary of Defense moving from the Bush administration to the Obama administration.
Robert M. Gates
#2. You do not export democracy through the Defense Department or the Defense Secretary. You do it through trade agreements, through the Department of Commerce and favorable agreements with our friends and neighbors across the globe.
Stephen F. Lynch
#3. 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
#4. Clearly the Secretary of Defense, my boss, would like nothing better than to get Osama bin Laden and to get ... to ensure the complete defeat of al-Qaida, because we know that al-Qaida is planning operations against the United States even as we speak here.
John Abizaid
#5. Harry Truman, after all, in conjunction with Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson, radically cut back American arms following the end of the Second World War. Johnson himself wished to dismantle the Marine Corps and felt nuclear weapons had made all such conventional arms unnecessary.
Victor Davis Hanson
#6. Don Rumsfeld is the finest secretary of defense the nation has ever had.
Dick Cheney
#7. Eighty percent of the problems that beset unification immediately disappeared when the President signed the bill increasing the authority and the responsibility of the Secretary of Defense.
Louis A. Johnson
#8. My job is to give the president and secretary of defense military advice before they know they need it.
John W. Vessey Jr.
#9. I was the principal negotiator for the Department of Defense, when I was secretary of the Navy, on the issue of Toshiba technology concerns with American submarines.
Jim Webb
#10. 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
#11. In fact, in 2002, the Secretary of Defense authorized such support on a reimbursable basis to organizations formerly components of the Department of Justice and Department of the Treasury and currently components of the Department of Homeland Security.
Solomon Ortiz
#12. And we will win the war, and there will be costs. But the military folks understand that, and so do I, and so does the Secretary of Defense.
George W. Bush
#13. You know, one thing I've learned over 40 years is that when you have jobs in Washington, you do it day by day and that's what I'm doing as secretary of defense.
Leon Panetta
#14. Secretary of Defense once said, "You go to the zombie apocalypse with the tech you have not the tech you want." Of course Donald Rumsfeld didn't say exactly that, but the meaning is similar.
Perry Kivolowitz
#15. I did not grope the wife of Defense Secretary Ashton Carter or the daughter of Sen. Christopher Coons. I don't put drugs in drinks or give drinks to underage females. And all those photos about me inappropriately touching girls, they are blown-up.
Joe Biden
#16. As a former secretary of defense, I think Donald Rumsfeld is the best secretary of defense the United States has ever had.
Dick Cheney
#17. For those of you who were critical that nobody paid enough attention to the generals at the beginning of the war, has it occurred to you that you don't want to make that mistake at the end of the war?
Secretary Robert Gates
Bob Woodward
#18. In all, the future secretary of defense and wartime vice president[, Dick Cheney,] would receive five deferments during the Vietnam War, protecting him from service during his draft-eligible years.
Charlie Savage
#19. 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.
Donald Rumsfeld
#20. These soldiers deserve a better defense secretary than the one we have.
William Kristol
#21. New Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said that he is open to letting transgender people serve in the military. He said there's no reason to prevent people from being generals just because of their privates.
Jimmy Fallon
#22. There are now reports that President Obama will name Massachusetts Senator John Kerry to be the next secretary of defense. Apparently this is part of America's new defense strategy to bore our enemies to death.
Jay Leno
#23. In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should 'have his head examined,' as General MacArthur so delicately put it.
Robert M. Gates
#24. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, assessing a Polish crisis in 1984, said: "There's continuing ground for serious concern and the situation remains serious. The longer it remains serious, the more ground there is for serious concern.
William Zinsser
#25. The stunning part was that one time Neil McElroy the Secretary of Defense who was the father of one of our classmates spoke and basically at commencement, he told us all that our job after graduation was to get married and have interesting sons ... and we all found that hard to believe.
Madeleine Albright
#26. By nominating Chuck Hagel to be his Defense secretary, President Obama is putting forward an aloof contrarian who doesn't suffer fools - a striving politician who considers himself above politics.
Ron Fournier
#27. During my time as CIA Director and Secretary of Defense, Hillary was a strong supporter of our efforts to protect our homeland, decimate al-Qaeda, and bring Osama bin Laden to justice.
Leon Panetta
#28. I believe myself that the secretary of state, secretary of defense and - you have to make your own decisions as to what the president knows - (know) this war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything as indicated by the extreme violence in Iraq yesterday,
Harry Reid
#29. I had learned many years ago in private business never to take responsibility without adequate authority; and the new Secretary of Defense, as budgets were sharply cut, quickly found that out.
Stuart Symington
#30. Democrats are committed to mapping a new direction in Iraq, and we will work with the President and the new Defense Secretary to ensure that the will of the American people guides our future actions.
Jim Clyburn
#31. Every time the Secretary of Defense tries to get a hand on his many intelligence programs, we hear warnings about the dire consequences to liberty. When you look behind those warnings, what you really see is the CIA trying to preserve its perks.
Mark Riebling
#32. Brainy folks were also present in Lyndon Johnson's administration, especially in the Pentagon, where Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara's brilliant 'whiz kids' tried to micro-manage the Vietnam war, with disastrous results.
Thomas Sowell
#33. Bob Gates has unusual standing in the debate about the Obama administration's foreign policy: He was defense secretary for both a hawkish President George W. Bush and a wary President Obama. He understood Bush's desire to project power and Obama's skepticism.
David Ignatius
#34. I read in the press, and therefore it must be true, that no secretary of defense had ever been quoted as arguing for a bigger budget for State.
Robert M. Gates
#35. Well, he keeps saying that, and as defense secretary, of course he has to think of a lot of potential enemies. I do not think it's a wise course to articulate this or to base our policy on it. And I do not see under modern circumstances what we would be fighting about.
Henry A. Kissinger
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