Donald Rumsfeld

Many people around the President have sizeable egos before entering government, some with good reason. Their new positions will do little to moderate their egos.

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.

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.

If you foul up, tell the President and correct it fast. Delay only compounds mistakes.

If in doubt, move decisions up to the President.

When you raise issues with the President, try to come away with both that decision and also a precedent. Pose issues so as to evoke broader policy guidance. This can help to answer a range of similar issues likely to arise later.

I don’t respond in any way to personal abuse that is thrown at me.

[After Communism succeeds] …then, there will come a peace across the earth.

I have a great relationship with Kim Jong Un. He gave us back our hostages. I didn’t pay $1.8 billion. I paid nothing. But it was very smart that he did it.

Our military might is the guarantor of Russia’s security and independence.

As long as people are marginalized and distracted [they] have no way to organize or articulate their sentiments, or even know that others have these sentiments. People assume that they are the only people with a crazy idea in their heads.

The most repressive countries in the Middle East are the ones we support. By comparison to Saudi Arabia, Iran looks like Norway…As far as violence in the Middle East is concerned, the Saudi Arabian [and] UAE actions in Yemen, which we’re supporting, are much worse than anything.

The leaders come and go, but the people remain. Only the people are immortal.

This transformation of competition into monopoly is one of the most important-if not the most important-phenomena of modern capitalist economy.

I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government other than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.

Everyone who is critical of Israeli policy is deluged by crazed messages intended to flood their email system or, more insidiously, passwords are accessed and messages sent out under their name! I’m sure it’s illegal. It’s also an effort to undermine free speech.

If what you have done yesterday still looks big to you, you haven’t done much today.

Marx analysed what was happening in a quite brilliant way, if we are investing in infrastructure then we the public should get the benefit of it.

An ‘extremely credible source’ has called my office and told me that Barack Obama’s birth certificate is a fraud

The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations.

While Trump’s antics occupy the attention of the media, his associates in Congress have been working intensively to advance the interests of their actual constituency-extreme wealth and corporate power-while dismantling what is of value to the general population andfuture generations.