Donald Rumsfeld

Work continuously to trim the White House staff from your first day to your last. All the pressures are to the contrary.

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.

I don’t do quagmires.

Listening to both sides does not necessarily bring about a correct judgment.

Let your family, staff, and friends know that you’re still the same person, despite all the publicity and notoriety that accompanies your position.

Learn to say “I don’t know.” If used when appropriate, it will be often.

Covetousness is the greatest of monsters, as well as the root of all evil.

A man’s true delight is to do the things he was made for.

Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions.

Principles aren’t of much account anyway, except at election time. After that you hang them up to let them season.

A man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner.

The power of man has grown in every sphere, except over himself.

Let a man find himself, in distinction from others, on top of two wheels with a chain – at least in a poor country like Russia – and his vanity begins to swell out like his tires. In America it takes an automobile to produce this effect.

Responsibilities are given to him on whom trust rests. Responsibility is always a sign of trust.

Always stay true to yourself and never let what somebody else says distract you from your goals.

No man is much regarded by the rest of the world. He that considers how little he dwells upon the condition of others, will learn how little the attention of others is attracted by himself. While we see multitudes passing before us, of whom perhaps not one appears to deserve our notice or excites our sympathy, we should remember, that we likewise are lost in the same throng, that the eye which happens to glance upon us is turned in a moment on him that follows us, and that the utmost which we can reasonably hope or fear is to fill a vacant hour with prattle, and be forgotten.

One of the lessons that I grew up with was to always stay true to yourself, and never let what somebody else says distract you from your goals.

The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow; there is no humor in Heaven.

There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times.

Our instructed vagrancy, which has hardly time to linger by the hedgerows, but runs away early to the tropics, and is at home with palms and banyans –which is nourished on books of travel, and stretches the theatre of its imagination to the Zambesi.

You can tell a lot about a person by listening to the way they talk about someone they once loved.