Donald Rumsfeld

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

With the press there is no ‘off the record’.

Let your family, staff, and friends know that you’re still the same person, despite all the publicity and notoriety that accompanies your position.

Reduce the layers of management. They put distance between the top of an organization and the customers.

Don’t say “the White House wants.” Buildings can’t want.

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.

Cultivate kindness today and always.

Everything that enlarges the sphere of human powers, that shows man he can do what he thought he could not do, is valuable.

Responsibilities are given to him on whom trust rests. Responsibility is always a sign of trust.

In the morning a man walks with his whole body; in the evening, only with his legs.

Why should I be unhappy? Every parcel of my being is in full bloom.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and all time.

Distance has the same effect on the mind as on the eye.

All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.

What drives me to be who I am, to do all that I do, is not what words will be engraved for my epitaph. What drives me to be who I am, to do what I do, is not vanity, is not for adulation in the eyes of others. What drives me is my own desire to be better; to be happy. When I am dead and buried, the words above will not bring me back to life, I choose to live out my epitaph, and not just for it to be a collection of words someone has chosen to define me.

If a man is alive, there is always danger that he may die, though the danger must be allowed to be less in proportion as he is dead-and-alive to begin with. A man sits as many risks as he runs.

I hate the irreverent rabble and keep them far from me.

Think of and look at your work as though it were done by your enemy. I you look at it to admire it, you are lost.

I simply want to live; to cause no evil to anyone but myself.

Best friends that pick wedgies together stay besties for life!

A man’s personal defects will commonly have with the rest of the world precisely that importance which they have to himself. If he makes light of them, so will other men.