Donald Rumsfeld

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.

Presidential leadership needn’t always cost money. Look for low- and no-cost options. They can be surprisingly effective.

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.

Plan backwards as well as forward. Set objectives and trace back to see how to achieve them. You may find that no path can get you there. Plan forward to see where your steps will take you, which may not be clear or intuitive.

Reduce the number of lawyers. They are like beavers – they get in the middle of the stream and dam it up.

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.

Politics in the true sense, have to do with the prosperity, peace and security of the people.

The United States is unusual among the industrial democracies in the rigidity of the system of ideological control – ‘indoctrination’, we might say – exercised through the mass media.

To those who oppose us, we say, ‘Strike the woman, and you strike the rock.’

Look, part of the whole technique of disempowering people is to make sure that the real agents of change fall out of history, and are never recognized in the culture for what they are. So it’s necessary to distort history and make it look as if Great Men did everything – that’s part of how you teach people they can’t do anything, they’re helpless, they just have to wait for some Great Man to come along and do it for them.

We will make America strong again. We will make America proud again. We will make America safe again. And we will make America great again.

My parents told me that children were taken from their families in 1941, and my mother had a child taken from her – with the goal of saving him.

April Thesis, S and R the most radical things Lenin ever wrote, almost anarchist. My view is that it was basically opportunism. I don’t think he believes a word of it. It seems to me that he was trying to associate himself, become the leader of the revolutionary popular forces.

Democracy is the wholesome and pure air without which a socialist public organization cannot live a full-blooded life.

The threat of mutual destruction has always restrained participants of the international arena, prevented leading military powers from making hasty moves, and compelled participants to respect each other. U.S. withdrawal from treaties on anti-ballistic missiles is an attempt to put an end to strategic parity, but we will respond to this.

America will start winning again, winning like never before.

I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves. And I watch my daughters, two beautiful, intelligent, black young women playing with their dogs on the White House lawn.

Because when you have the nuclear codes at your fingertips and the military in your command, you can’t make snap decisions. You can’t have a thin skin or a tendency to lash out. You need to be steady and measured and well-informed.

It is only when all black groups, join hands and speak with one voice that we shall be a bargaining force which will decide its own destiny.

Debt is a social and ideological construct, not a simple economic fact.

It is better to discuss things, to argue and engage in polemics than make perfidious plans of mutual destruction.