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If you develop rules, never have more than ten.

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
Develop
Ten
Rules
Never

More quotes by Donald Rumsfeld

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When I served as US Ambassador to NATO in the 1970s, the center of gravity in Europe was France and Germany.
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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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A large number of people to begin crawling through those tunnels and caves looking for the bad folks.
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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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The worst mistake is to have the best ladder and the wrong wall.
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Don't speak ill of your predecessors or successors. You didn't walk in their shoes.
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There will be good moments, and there will be less good moments.
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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.
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A few. . . critics are the only people I ever heard use the phrase 'imminent threat.' I didn't, the president didn't.
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Let your family, staff, and friends know that you're still the same person, despite all the publicity and notoriety that accompanies your position.
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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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The purpose of terrorism is to terrorize. It's to change the behavior of the people that are being terrorized.
Donald Rumsfeld
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Don't necessarily avoid sharp edges. Occasionally they are necessary to leadership.
Donald Rumsfeld
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Every country should be tired of going to war. War is a terrible thing. If I had been in Congress, as much as I would be inclined naturally to be supportive of a president, any president, I would have voted no, had the issue come to a vote.
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If you try to please everybody, somebody's not going to like it.
Donald Rumsfeld
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Preserve the President's options. He may need them.
Donald Rumsfeld
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There's another way to phrase that and that is that the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. It is basically saying the same thing in a different way. Simply because you do not have evidence that something does exist does not mean that you have evidence that it doesn't exist.
Donald Rumsfeld
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If in doubt, don't. If still in doubt, do what's right.
Donald Rumsfeld
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Work continuously to trim the White House staff from your first day to your last. All the pressures are to the contrary.
Donald Rumsfeld
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Members of the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate are not there by accident. Each managed to get there for some reason. Learn what it was and you will know something important about them, about our country and about the American people.
Donald Rumsfeld