Donald Rumsfeld

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

Arguments of convenience lack integrity and inevitably trip you up.

When cutting staff at the Pentagon, don’t eliminate the thin layer that assures civilian control.

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.

In politics, every day is filled with numerous opportunities for serious error. Enjoy it.

Be yourself. Follow your instincts. Success depends, at least in part, on the ability to carry it off.

I love to go to Washington, if only to be nearer my money.

Let’s not talk about Communism. Communism was just an idea, just pie in the sky.

Think of the feudal system. You had kings and princes and bishops and lords and so on. They for the most part did not want power to be totally concentrated, they didn’t want total tyrants.

I believe that the presidential term should be limited.

Just talk to me as a father – not what the Constitution says. What do you feel?

The idea that workers are only interested in horse-racing [odds] is an absurdity that cannot withstand even a superficial look at labour history or the lively and independent working class press that flourished in many places, including the manufacturing towns of New England…

Most politicians would have gone to a meeting like the one Don jr attended in order to get info on an opponent. That’s politics!

When you look at a corporation, just like when you look at a slave owner, you want to distinguish between the institution and the individual. So slavery, for example, or other forms of tyranny, are inherently monstrous. The individuals participating in them may be the nicest guys you can imagine.

Some of the most moving experiences I’ve had are just in black churches in the South, during the Civil Rights Movement, where people were getting beaten, killed, really struggling for the most elementary rights.

Gaiety is the most outstanding feature of the Soviet Union.

[Republicans] have turned to mobilizing sectors of the population that have always been there, but not as an organized coalitional political force: evangelicals, nativists, racists and the victims of the forms of globalization…Every candidate that has emerged from the base — such as [Michele] Bachmann, [Herman] Cain or [Rick] Santorum — has been so extreme that the Republican establishment had to use its ample resources to beat them down. The difference in 2016 is that the establishment failed, much to its chagrin, as we have seen..

The big transnationals want to reduce freedom by undermining the democratic functioning of the states in which they’re based, while at the same time ensuring the government will be powerful enough to protect and support them.

It is natural that we should always expect an Israeli attack, even when it does not threaten.

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.

People are always teaching us democracy but the people who teach us democracy don’t want to learn it themselves.