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You know, if I were an - if I were a Taliban, I'd say, 'What did al-Qaida ever do for me except get me kicked out of Afghanistan?'

Robert M. Gates

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Robert M. Gates
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: September 25
Air Force Officer
Politician
Wichita
Kansas
Robert Michael Gates
Ever
Kicked
Als
Afghanistan
Except

More quotes by Robert M. Gates

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On the foreign policy side, there's the risk of being too spontaneous and too disruptive where you end up doing more harm than damage. And figuring out that balance is where having strong people around you matters.
Robert M. Gates
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I have tried to maintain civil relationships with everyone I meet - and, even if I violently disagree with them, try to be respectful.
Robert M. Gates
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A wild and crazy weekend involves sitting on the front porch, smoking a cigar, reading a book.
Robert M. Gates
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The reality is, the United States has global interests. Our defense budget is about the same as the defense budgets or military budgets of every other country in the world put together.
Robert M. Gates
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I will always be an advocate in terms of wars of necessity. I am just much more cautious on wars of choice.
Robert M. Gates
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Even when I was at CIA, I'd go to visit foreign leaders and I'd say, 'You know, I'm not a diplomat. I'm just an old CIA guy'... I said, 'If I wanted to be diplomatic, I'd have been a diplomat.'
Robert M. Gates
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I've seen, all too often in my career, people coming in to lead agencies and organizations and trying to impose change from the top down. Never works. You never have enough time.
Robert M. Gates
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Development is a lot cheaper than sending soldiers.
Robert M. Gates
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I think in the policies that have been followed since the president Donald Trump came into office, there really hasn't been any slack cut for the Russians. And I think one of the things that has surprised people has been that the relationship between the United States and Russia has in fact deteriorated since the election.
Robert M. Gates
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Things have gotten so nasty in Washington.
Robert M. Gates
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I don't think any president that I worked with has ever said 'pretty please.
Robert M. Gates
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I think that Iran with a nuclear weapon is extremely destabilizing. I think it could precipitate a nuclear arms race in the region.
Robert M. Gates
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One of the toughest battles in intelligence is combating conventional wisdom.
Robert M. Gates
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I didn't think this whole business with Director James Comey was handled well. So there are sort of day-to-day aspects of the operation that I think are really troublesome. And I know that there are a lot of people in the country who have lots of issues with decisions that Donald Trump has making on the domestic side.
Robert M. Gates
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I think when it comes to the issues, I'd advise him to stick to the script. But, I mean, Donald Trump is going to have some very tough conversations and he's going to be talking about some very tough and complicated issues in all of the places that he visits.I think anytime a president does things that are humanizing, I think it's - it's good.
Robert M. Gates
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I consider myself a Republican.
Robert M. Gates
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I think Donald Trump has gotten China's attention to a degree that his predecessors have not that this is a very serious matter for the United States.
Robert M. Gates
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I've been very sensitive for a long time to the repeated pattern, during economic hard times or after a war, of the United States' essentially unilaterally disarming.
Robert M. Gates
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No president is well-served by groupthink or by everybody singing from the same sheet of music they think he's on.
Robert M. Gates
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Well, what I've said is that the war in Iraq will always be clouded by how it began, which was a wrong premise, that there were in fact no weapons of nuclear - weapons of mass destruction.
Robert M. Gates