Donald Rumsfeld Quotes - Page 2

The success of an organization will depend on the people you surround yourself with.

If you try to please everybody, somebody's not going to like it.

To gain support in U.S. Congress and from other nations requires clarity, an acceptable mission and an explicit outcome.

Think ahead. Don't let day-to-day operations drive out planning.

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.

Don't speak ill of your predecessors or successors. You didn't walk in their shoes.

Keep your sense of humor. As General Joe Stillwell said, 'The higher a monkey climbs, the more you see of his behind'.

When business accepts help from the government, it can be like going to bed with a hippopotamus. It's nice and warm for the moment, but then your bedmate rolls over and crushes you.

[on Osama bin Laden] He is either alive and well or alive and not too well or not alive.

In unanimity there may well be either cowardice or uncritical thinking.

The United States isn't going to do anything that it's not capable of doing. And if we do something, we'll be capable of doing it.

It isn't making mistakes that's critical; it's correcting them and getting on with the principal task.

Those who made the decisions with imperfect knowledge will be judged in hindsight by those with considerably more information at their disposal and time for reflection.

Reduce the number of lawyers. They are like beavers - they get in the middle of the stream and dam it up.

Never hire anyone you can’t fire.

I would not say that the future is necessarily less predictable than the past. I think the past was not predictable when it started.

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

The reality is that terrorists can attack any time at any minute, 24 hours a day, using a variety of techniques, in any place at all. And it's not possible to defend in every place, against every technique, against every conceivable approach. It means that you can't stop every terrorist attack. Innocent men, women and children are going to be killed if terrorists are determined to do it.

If you are working from your inbox, you are working on other people’s priorities.

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 in doubt, don't. If still in doubt, do what's right.

Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.

Now, settle down, settle down. Hell, I'm an old man, it's early in the morning and I'm gathering my thoughts here.

We'll have to deal with the networks. One of the ways to do that is to drain the swamp they live in. And that means dealing not only with the terrorists, but those who harbor terrorists. This will take a long, sustained effort. It will require the support of the American people as well as our friends and allies around the world.

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.