Donald Rumsfeld Quotes

Whatever your position, reach out to those who know more than you do, and have been around longer than you have. Find those people. Listen carefully. And learn.

"There are no "knowns." There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don't know."

Some might ask, how in the world could the Secretary of Defense attack the Pentagon in front of its people? To them I reply, Today, I have no desire to attack the Pentagon; I want to liberate it. We need to save it from itself.

Pieces of intelligence, scraps of intelligence...you run down leads and you run down leads, and you hope that sometimes it works.

Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see. — Arthur Schopenhauer

This war [in Vietnam] has been marked by so many lies and evasions... that it is not right to have the war end with one last lie.

There will be good moments, and there will be less good moments.

It is easier to get into something than to get out of it.

The natural state of man is to want to be free. To have opportunities. To have choices.

I'm not into this detail stuff. I'm more concepty.

Today we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror. Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?

A new idea ignored may be the next threat overlooked. A person employed in a redundant task is one who could be countering terrorism or nuclear proliferation.

Bank, NATO, the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, and the Organization of American States,

Oh, Lord. I didn't mean to say anything quotable.

As you know, you go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time. Since the Iraq conflict began, the Army has been pressing ahead to produce the armor necessary at a rate that they believe -- it's a greatly expanded rate from what existed previously, but a rate that they believe is the rate that is all that can be accomplished at this moment.