Donald Rumsfeld

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

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

Test ideas in the marketplace. You learn from hearing a range of perspectives. Consultation helps engender the support decisions need to be successfully implemented.

If in doubt, move decisions up to the President.

Be able to resign. It will improve your value to the President and do wonders for your performance.

Listening to both sides does not necessarily bring about a correct judgment.

Nothing does more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise.

If a man could say nothing against a character but what he can prove, history could not be written.

Life is tough, my darling, but so are you.

Pain is less subject than pleasure to careless expression.

Why do you hasten to remove anything which hurts your eye, while if something affects your soul you postpone the cure until next year?

Your own safety is at stake when your neighbor’s wall is ablaze.

Science does not know its debt to imagination.

Fierce eagles do not produce timorous doves.

To inherit property is not to be born – it is to be still-born, rather.

Rituals are important. Nowadays it’s hip not to be married. I’m not interested in being hip.

That which builds is better than that which is built.

Man is the only animal which esteems itself rich in proportion to the number and voracity of its parasites.

On with dance, let joy be unconfined, is my motto; whether there’s any dance to dance or any joy to unconfined.

There is still vitality under the winter snow, even though to the casual eye it seems to be dead.

The search after the great men is the dream of youth, and the most serious occupation of manhood.