Donald Rumsfeld

When cutting staff at the Pentagon, don’t eliminate the thin layer that assures civilian control.

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

If in doubt, move decisions up to the President.

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.

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 price of being close to the President is delivering bad news. You fail him if you don’t tell him the truth. Others won’t do it.

International terrorism is throwing down a challenge, and not just to Russia.

Thus, the twentieth century marks the turning-point from the old capitalism to the new, from the domination of capital in general to the domination of finance capital.

He who votes does not have power. He who counts the votes has power.

As a marketing society, the US is to an unusual degree based on propaganda. The public relations industry, which is a huge industry, is a US-invented industry which spends billions of dollars on what they call ‘controlling the public mind’.

Conflict is not inevitable, but disarmament is… everyone now accepts that if there is a default by Saddam the international community must act to enforce its will.

Under the Rule of Law…the individual is free to pursue his personal ends and desires, certain that the powers of government will not be used deliberately to frustrate his efforts.

Discovery is the ability to be puzzled by simple things.

[The Americans] should accept their part of the blame. Let them say so. We talked to them all the time, we were telling them that we want Afghanistan to be an independent country, that we are leaving, we are withdrawing from that country. But at that same time, our partners were working in secret with those forces with whom they are now fighting. It’s called the historical and political boomerang. I think God has some mechanism that he uses to punish those that make mistakes.

We challenge the narrative that only the individual matters, and the collective is irrelevant, instead we say the common good is the aspiration of all of us.

I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And do you know what? When I need something from them two years later, three years later, I call them, they are there for me.

We shouldn’t be looking for heroes, we should be looking for good ideas.

A figure who receives money from abroad for his political work, and thus serves some foreign interest, cannot be a politician in Russia.

While maintaining our nuclear potential at the proper level, we need to devote more attention to developing the entire range of means of information warfare.

The unjustified swelling of the budgetary deficit and the accumulation of public debts are just as destructive as adventurous stock-jobbing.

The United States is not only the strongest, but also the most terrified country.