Quote

Don't think of yourself as indispensable or infallible. As Charles De Gaulle said, the cemeteries of the world are full of indispensable men.

Donald Rumsfeld

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Donald Rumsfeld
Age: 88 †
Born: 1932
Born: July 9
Died: 2021
Died: June 29
Author
Businessperson
Diplomat
Former U.S. Secretary Of Defense
Military Officer
Politician
Chicago
Illinois
Donald Henry Rumsfeld
Charles
Indispensable
Full
Men
Think
Gaulle
Thinking
Cemeteries
World
Cemetery
Infallible

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Don't automatically obey Presidential directives if you disagree or if you suspect he hasn't considered key aspects of the issue.
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Pieces of intelligence, scraps of intelligence...you run down leads and you run down leads, and you hope that sometimes it works.
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Plan backwards as well as forward. Set objectives and trace back to see how to achieve them. You may find that no path can get you there. Plan forward to see where your steps will take you, which may not be clear or intuitive.
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You might be a cunning linguist, but I am a master debater.
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Now, settle down, settle down. Hell, I'm an old man, it's early in the morning and I'm gathering my thoughts here.
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In our system leadership is by consent, not command. To lead a President must persuade. Personal contacts and experiences help shape his thinking. They can be critical to his persuasiveness and thus to his leadership.
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We have an orientation that tends to make us think that everything is our responsibility and that we should be doing this. It is the Iraqis' country, 28 million of them. They are perfectly capable of running that country.
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Never assume the other fellow will not do something you wouldn't do.
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It is unknowable how long that conflict [the war in Iraq] will last. It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months.
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Reduce the layers of management. They put distance between the top of an organization and the customers.
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I didn't advocate invasion...I wasn't asked.
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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.
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