Donald Rumsfeld

One of your tasks is to separate the “personal” from the “substantive.” The two can become confused, especially if someone rubs the President wrong.

Arguments of convenience lack integrity and inevitably trip you up.

The way to do well is to do well.

See that the President, the Cabinet and staff are informed. If cut out of the information flow, their decisions may be poor, not made, or not confidently or persuasively implemented.

First rule of politics: you can’t win unless you’re on the ballot. Second rule: If you run, you may lose. And, if you tie, you do not win.

Many people around the President have sizeable egos before entering government, some with good reason. Their new positions will do little to moderate their egos.

You can never really live anyone else’s life, not even your child’s. The influence you exert is through your own life, and what you’ve become yourself.

Repartee is something we think of twenty-four hours too late.

Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are.

It is in these acts called trivialities that the seeds of joy are forever wasted, until men and women look round with haggard faces at the devastation their own waste has made, and say, the earth bears no harvest of sweetness – calling their denial knowledge.

The way you think, the way you behave, the way you eat, can influence your life by 30 to 50 years.

Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

There are charms made only for distance admiration.

The one who cannot restrain their anger will wish undone, what their temper and irritation prompted them to do.

I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.

Attention and respect give pleasure, however late, or however useless. But they are not useless, when they are late, it is reasonable to rejoice, as the day declines, to find that it has been spent with the approbation of mankind.

If you are always trying to be normal you will never know how amazing you can be.

This is no time for ease and comfort. It is the time to dare and endure.

The lofty pine is oftenest shaken by the winds; High towers fall with a heavier crash; And the lightning strikes the highest mountain.

The envious man grows lean at the success of his neighbor.

To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.