Donald Rumsfeld

Secretary Powell and I agree on every single issue that has ever been before this administration except for those instances where Colin’s still learning.

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.

You will launch many projects, but have time to finish only a few. So think, plan, develop, launch and tap good people to be responsible. Give them authority and hold them accountable. Trying to do too much yourself creates a bottleneck.

There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.

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

El Chapo and the Mexican drug cartels use the border unimpeded like it was a vacuum cleaner, sucking drugs and death right into the U.S.

Bureaucrats write memoranda both because they appear to be busy when they are writing and because the memos, once written, immediately become proof that they were busy.

How do you expect the Germans to revolt when they don’t even dare walk on the grass?

The media system protects itself with indignation against a challenge to the right of deceit in the service of power, and the very idea of subjecting the ideological system to rational inquiry elicits incomprehension or outrage, though it is often masked in other terms.

Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re really in favor of free speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech.

…the Pentagon has been the primary Keynesian mechanism whereby the government intervenes to maintain what is ludicrously called the health of the economy by inducing production, that means production of waste and destruction

In accordance with the Constitution of the Russian Federation, the issues of foreign policy and defense are fully in the hands of the president.

If we speak calmly, in a businesslike fashion, let me draw your attention to the fact that Russia supplies arms to the legitimate government of Syria in full compliance with the norms of international law. We are not breaching any rules and norms.

You have no right to criticise Russia over Chechnya.

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.

Everywhere the Europeans went, whether it was the Portuguese or the Spanish or the English or the Dutch, they fought with a level of violence which appalled the natives. They had never seen anything like it. That was true virtually over the entire world, with very few exceptions.

The more you can increase fear of drugs and crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all the people.

You know we’re going to control the insurance companies.

Jeb said, ‘we were safe with my brother. We were safe.’ Well, the World Trade Center just fell down! Now, am I trying to blame him? I’m not blaming anybody. But the World Trade Center came down. So when he said, we were safe, that’s not safe.

Nowadays wars are not declared. They simply start.