Donald Rumsfeld

I don’t do quagmires.

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

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

In our system leadership is by consent, not command. To lead a President must persuade. Personal contacts and experiences help shape his thinking. They can be critical to his persuasiveness and thus to his leadership.

Don’t divide the world into “them” and “us.” Avoid infatuation with or resentment of the press, the Congress, rivals, or opponents. Accept them as facts. They have their jobs and you have yours.

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.

The sea, washing the equator and the poles, offers its perilous aid, and the power and empire that follow it… Beware of me, it says, but if you can hold me, I am the key to all the lands.

For everything you have missed, you have gained something else; and for everything you gain, you lose something else.

While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth?

The power of love, as the basis of a State, has never been tried.

So many objections may be made to everything, that nothing can overcome them but the necessity of doing something.

A man’s interest in the world is only an overflow from his interest in himself.

Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under differing conditions.

Shallow people believe in luck and in circumstances; Strong people believe in cause and effect.

Beauty without expression is boring.

Every thought which genius and piety throw into the world alters the world.

The masses have no habit of self reliance or original action.

I simply want to live; to cause no evil to anyone but myself.

I dislike feeling at home when I am abroad.

If it is not beautiful for someone, it does not exist.

A monarch, when good, is entitled to the consideration which we accord to a pirate who keeps Sunday School between crimes; when bad, he is entitled to none at all.