Donald Rumsfeld

Be yourself. Follow your instincts. Success depends, at least in part, on the ability to carry it off.

Preserve the President’s options. He may need them.

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.

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.

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.

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.

If you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way.

That is what we are put in the world for, to get experience and to help others get it. It is the one thing no one can take away from us.

The gifted man bears his gifts into the world, not for his own benefit, but for the people among whom he is placed; for the gifts are not his, he himself is a gift to the community.

I cannot discover that anyone knows enough to say what is and what is definitely not possible.

A day wasted on others is not wasted on one’s self.

The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.

You either get it or you don’t. Become one of those who get it.

A person who trusts no one can’t be trusted.

When you allow a person’s words to upset you, you’re giving away your power.

It is just good practice to do a situational scan and have situational awareness when you are out in the world.

This morning I woke with my ear pressed between shoulder blades. Every inhale, every drum, every pump, thump of your heartbeat said one thing – home, home, home.

I had learned one of the bitter lessons of life: never try to regain the past, the fire will have become ashes.

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius.

If what you’re doing isn’t working, change it.

I’ve been trying for some time to develop a lifestyle that doesn’t require my presence.