Donald Rumsfeld

If you try to please everybody, somebody’s not going to like it.

Visit with your predecessors from previous Administrations. They know the ropes and can help you see around some corners. Try to make original mistakes, rather than needlessly repeating theirs.

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

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.

You’re thinking of Eurpoe as Germany and France. I don’t. I think that’s old Europe.

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.

Let us not look east and west for materials of conversation, but rest in presence and unity. A just feeling will fast enough supply fuel for discourse, if speaking be more grateful than silence. When people come to see us, we foolishly prattle, lest we be inhospitable. But things said for conversation are chalk eggs. Don’t say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary. A lady of my acquaintance said, I don’t care so much for what they say as I do for what makes them say it.

When a man says money can do anything, that settles it: he hasn’t got any.

Already know you that which you need.

If a madman were to come into this room with a stick in his hand, no doubt we should pity the state of his mind; but our primary consideration would be to take care of ourselves. We should knock him down first, and pity him afterwards.

Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

We’re comic. We’re all comics. We live in a comic time. And the worse it gets the more comic we are.

Failure is an important part of your growth and developing resilience. Don’t be afraid to fail.

The basis of good manners is self-reliance.

All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.

As long as I can conceive something better than myself I cannot be easy unless I am striving to bring it into existence or clearing the way for it.

The hues of the opal, the light of the diamond, are not to be seen if the eye is too near.

Sometimes too much to drink is barely enough.

To have in general but little feeling, seems to be the only security against feeling too much on any particular occasion.

The avarice person is ever in want; let your desired aim have a fixed limit.