Donald Rumsfeld

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.

If the staff lacks policy guidance against which to test decisions, their decisions will be random.

Reduce the layers of management. They put distance between the top of an organization and the customers.

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.

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.

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

History proves that all dictatorships, all authoritarian forms of government are transient. Only democratic systems are not transient. Whatever the shortcomings, mankind has not devised anything superior.

The Best Way to teach your kids about taxes is by eating 30% of their ice cream!

When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.

Many people would like to see Nigel Farage represent Great Britain as their Ambassador to the United States. He would do a great job!

Worry does not mean fear, but readiness for the confrontation.

Stalinism is linked with a cult of personality and massive violations of the law, with repression and camps. There is nothing like that in Russia and, I hope, will never again be.

In the middle of a recession, where we’re just climbing out of it, where the economy -unemployment is still at 9.7 percent, the idea of raising taxes and reducing spending is a prescription for disaster.

I said on the Department of Justice, I would stay uninvolved. Now I may get involved at some point if it gets worse.

[The Americans] should accept their part of the blame. Let them say so. We talked to them all the time, we were telling them that we want Afghanistan to be an independent country, that we are leaving, we are withdrawing from that country. But at that same time, our partners were working in secret with those forces with whom they are now fighting. It’s called the historical and political boomerang. I think God has some mechanism that he uses to punish those that make mistakes.

I am never guided by a possible assessment of my work.

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.

The point of advertising is to destroy markets.

Despite all the achievements of civilisation, the human being is still one of the most vulnerable creatures on earth.

It’s not a very big thing to say, ‘I made a mistake’ on the war, and typical of Hillary Clinton that she can’t.

To pay more is the easy way. In fact, the solution possibilities to the problem are many.