Donald Rumsfeld

Let your family, staff, and friends know that you’re still the same person, despite all the publicity and notoriety that accompanies your position.

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

Don’t say “the White House wants.” Buildings can’t want.

If a prospective Presidential approach can’t be explained clearly enough to be understood well, it probably hasn’t been thought through well enough. If not well understood by the American people, it probably won’t “sail” anyway. Send it back for further thought.

Your performance depends on your people. Select the best, train them and back them. When errors occur, give sharper guidance. If errors persist or if the fit feels wrong, help them move on. The country cannot afford amateur hour in the White House.

Don’t be a bottleneck. If a matter is not a decision for the President or you, delegate it. Force responsibility down and out. Find problem areas, add structure and delegate. The pressure is to do the reverse. Resist it.

How some of the writers I come across get through their books without dying of boredom is beyond me.

Water, taken in moderation, cannot hurt anybody.

If the desire to kill and the opportunity to kill came always together, who would escape hanging?

Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.

Let a man then know his worth, and keep things under his feet. Let him not peep or steal, or skulk up and down with the air of a charity-boy, a bastard, or an interloper.

Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience.

Believe that each day that shines on you is your last.

There’s nothing you can know that isn’t known.

Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.

One lesson we learn early, that in spite of seeming difference, men are all of one pattern. We readily assume this with our mates, and are disappointed and angry if we find that we are premature, and that their watches are slower than ours. In fact, the only sin which we never forgive in each other is difference of opinion.

Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.

Fine manners need the support of fine manners in others.

God is better served in resisting a Temptation to Evil, than in many formal Prayers.

We meet on the broad pathway of good faith and good will; no advantage shall be taken on either side, but all shall be openness and love. I will not call you children, — for parents sometimes chide their children too severely; nor brothers only, — for brothers differ. The friendship between me and you I will not compare to a chain; for that the rains might rust, or the falling tree might break. We are the same as if one man’s body were to be divided into two parts, we are all one flesh and blood.