Donald Rumsfeld

I can’t tell you if the use of force in Iraq today will last five days, five weeks or five months, but it won’t last any longer than that.

Arguments of convenience lack integrity and inevitably trip you up.

Enjoy your time in public service. It may well be one of the most interesting and challenging times of your life.

One of your tasks is to separate the “personal” from the “substantive.” The two can become confused, especially if someone rubs the President wrong.

Look for what’s missing. Many advisors can tell a President how to improve what’s proposed or what’s gone amiss. Few are able to see what isn’t there.

Our task, your task… is to try to connect the dots before something happens. People say, ‘Well, where’s the smoking gun?’ Well, we don’t want to see a smoking gun from a weapon of mass destruction.

The ecological crisis, in short, is the population crisis. Cut the population by 90% and there aren’t enough people left to do a great deal of ecological damage.

An animating vision must rest on some conception of human nature, of what’s good for people, of their needs and rights, of the aspects of their nature that should be nurtured, encouraged and permitted to flourish for their benefit and that of others.

We won the Electoral College by a lot: 306 to 223, I believe. And that was a well-fought — that was a well-fought battle. We did a great job.

I’ve had a beautiful, I’ve had a flawless campaign. You’ll be writing books about this campaign.

I think in defeat you grope for things that are happy, and it’s hard.

Well, if I ever ran for office, I’d do better as a Democrat than as a Republican – and that’s not because I’d be more liberal, because I’m conservative. But the working guy would elect me. He likes me. When I walk down the street, those cabbies start yelling out their windows.

I think our Russian Football Union must play an active part in this… and develop a new generation of sportsmen and soccer players.

We do not want a single foot of foreign territory; but of our territory we shall not surrender a single inch to anyone.

We don’t appreciate what we have until it’s gone. Freedom is like that. It’s like air. When you have it, you don’t notice it.

I’m a history buff, and I know that big changes take time. But I also know that, setting politics aside, usually things are never as good as you think they are or as bad as you think they are. And that has served me well temperamentally.

Europe has not been a heterogenous society to anything like the extent that the United States has. Nor has it been as mobile a society as the United States. These matters have been a bit under the cover, but they’re harder to keep under the cover.

We will not allow the past to drag us down and stop us from moving ahead. We understand where we should move.

I do not want to be controlled by any superpower. I myself consider myself the most powerful figure in the world, and that is why I do not let any superpower control me.

For those who stubbornly seek freedom, there can be no more urgent task than to come to understand the mechanisms and practices of indoctrination. These are easy to perceive in the totalitarian societies, much less so in the system of ‘brainwashing under freedom’ to which we are subjected and which all too often we serve as willing or unwitting instruments.

Why did the U.S. decide to normalize relations with Cuba?…Not a magnanimous gesture of courage to bring Cuba-to protect Cuba from its isolation, to save them from their isolation; quite the opposite, it was to save the U.S. from its isolation with the rest of the world.