Donald Rumsfeld

If you develop rules, never have more than ten.

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.

If the staff lacks policy guidance against which to test decisions, their decisions will be random.

Leave the President’s family business to him. You will have plenty to do without trying to manage the First Family. They are likely to do fine without your help.

Know that the amount of criticism you receive may correlate somewhat to the amount of publicity you receive.

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

O imitators, you slavish herd!

There are times when one would like to hang the whole human race, and finish the farce.

Many of the phenomena of Winter are suggestive of an inexpressible tenderness and fragile delicacy. We are accustomed to hear this king described as a rude and boisterous tyrant; but with the gentleness of a lover he adorns the tresses of Summer.

Man – a creature made at the end of the week’s work when God was tired.

Would not love see returning penitence afar off, and fall on its neck and kiss it?

Never do anything by halves if you want to get away with it. Be outrageous. Go the whole hog. Make sure everything you do is so completely crazy it’s unbelievable.

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.

No one has a prosperity so high and firm that two or three words can’t dishearten it.

The wretched have no compassion, they can do good only from strong principles of duty.

When any calamity has been suffered, the first thing to be remembered is how much has been escaped.

There is a sort of jealousy which needs very little fire; it is hardly a passion, but a blight bred in the cloudy, damp despondency of uneasy egoism.

The depth and strength of a human character are defined by its moral reserves. People reveal themselves completely only when they are thrown out of the customary conditions of their life, for only then do they have to fall back on their reserves.

The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading, in order to write; a man will turn over half a library to make one book.

Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial “we.”

The most beautiful woman is the one who is never divulging, she knows what she is and everything else is worth her.