Donald Rumsfeld Quotes
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The price of being close to the President is delivering bad news. You fail him if you don't tell him the truth. Others won't do it.
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Be yourself. Follow your instincts. Success depends, at least in part, on the ability to 'carry it off.'
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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.
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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.
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If it were a fact, it wouldn't be called intelligence.
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When asked for your views, by the press or others, remember that what they really want to know is the President's views.
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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.
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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.
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Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war.
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Treat each federal dollar as if it was hard earned; it was - by a taxpayer.
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The Federal Government should be the last resort, not the first. Ask if a potential program is truly a federal responsibility or whether it can better be handled privately, by voluntary organizations, or by local or state governments.
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There are a lot of people who lie and get away with it, and that's just a fact.
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You're thinking of Europe as Germany and France. I don't. I think that's old Europe.
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I don't know what the facts are but somebody's certainly going to sit down with him and find out what he knows that they may not know, and make sure he knows what they know that he may not know, and that's a good thing.
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Pieces of intelligence, scraps of intelligence…you run down leads and you run down leads, and you hope that sometimes it works.
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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.
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You and a few other critics are the only people I've heard use the phrase immediate threat. I didn't, the president didn't. And it's become kind of folklore that that's what's happened.
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I can't tell you if the use of force in Iraq today will last five days, five weeks or five months, but it won't last any longer than that.
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Department of Defense news briefing (12 February 2002)
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I don't do quagmires.
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Don't think of yourself as indispensable or infallible. As Charles De Gaulle said, the cemeteries of the world are full of indispensable men.
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Reduce the number of lawyers. They are like beavers - they get in the middle of the stream and dam it up.
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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.
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Make decisions about the President's personal security. He can overrule you, but don't ask him to be the one to counsel caution.