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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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Robert M. Gates
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: September 25
Air Force Officer
Politician
Wichita
Kansas
Robert Michael Gates
People
Harm
Matters
Balance
Policy
Disruptive
Risk
Figuring
Side
Spontaneous
Strong
Damage
Around
Foreign
More quotes by Robert M. Gates
I don't think any president that I worked with has ever said 'pretty please.
Robert M. Gates
Soviet foreign ministers would come in to see the president all the time, routinely. Jimmy Carter stopped that after the invasion of Afghanistan. Ronald Reagan resumed it in 1984, I think. And so the fact of a meeting like that I think is not that big a deal.
Robert M. Gates
Things have gotten so nasty in Washington.
Robert M. Gates
I consider myself a Republican.
Robert M. Gates
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
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
Congress is best viewed from a distance - the farther the better - because up close, it is truly ugly.
Robert M. Gates
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
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
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
What I know concerns me. What I don't know concerns me even more. What people aren't telling me worries me the most.
Robert M. Gates
And so the greatest of American triumphs... became a peculiarly joyless victory. We had won the Cold War, but there would be no parades.
Robert M. Gates
One of the big changes in the Congress since I first came to Washington is that all of these folks go home every weekend. They used to play golf together their families got to know each other, go to dinner at each other's homes at weekends - and these would be people who were political adversaries.
Robert M. Gates
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
Well, I've ruffled a few feathers at all the institutions I've led. But I think that's part of leadership.
Robert M. Gates
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
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
I'm a big advocate of drones.
Robert M. Gates
I think, on the foreign policy side, that there is a need for disruption. We've had three administrations follow a pretty consistent policy toward North Korea, and it really hasn't gotten us anywhere.
Robert M. Gates
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
