Donald Rumsfeld Quotes

I wouldn't want to be President now!

Being president looks like the worst job in the world.

No man will ever carry out of the Presidency the reputation which carried him into it.

To be a politician must not be a pleasure always.

There’s a lot of pressure to demonstrate to the public that you’re up to the task, even though you are literally pulling the levers of something while you’re still trying to figure out how it works.

Everyone congratulates me on being ordered to the White House, seeming to think it an exceptional honour ... but I am not over enthusiastic .... many people will try to pump one dry of White House news ...

The presidency is not about easy choices.

[Describing the vice presidency:] ... inside work with no heavy lifting.

Being president is like being a jackass in a hailstorm. There's nothing to do but stand there and take it.

The presidency is worse than being in jail.

The curiosity of the public took the greatest toll on me of anything in politics

No man knows, when the Presidential grub gets to gnawing at him, just how deep it will get until the has tried it.

[Describing the presidency:] No one in the country is more assailed by divergent advice and clamorous counsel.

The Presidency, even to the most experienced politicians, is no bed of roses; and Gen. Taylor like others, found thorns within it. No human being can fill that station and escape censure.

First Ladies have been through a lot by the time their husbands get to the Presidency.

If I were now presiding in the Supreme Court of the United States as Chief Justice, I should feel entirely at home, but with the troubles of selecting a Cabinet and the difficulties in respect to the revision of the tariff, I feel just a bit like a fish out of water.

Presidents fall into second-term slumps for different reasons.

I did not expect to encounter what has beset me since my elevation to the presidency. God knows, I have endeavored to fulfill what I considered to be an honest duty, but I have been mistaken; my motives have been misconstrued and my feelings grossly betrayed.

Being manager means living in the middle of the media attention, through praise and critics. This is something I live with. It's intense and very demanding.

Being president does seem a lot more stressful than being vice president.

The White House is a serious place, with serious people, doing serious work. If you're not careful, it can grind you down.

Being President is a little like being the grounds-keeper at a cemetery: there's plenty of people below you but no one's listening.

Will somebody please tell me what they do with all the Vice-Presidents a bank has? Why the United States is the biggest business institution in the world, and they got only one Vice-President and nobody has ever found anything for him to do.

I'm not interested in being Donald Trump or anybody else's vice president, that's not what I'm aiming at.

I don't want to be president. Like, "Today your job is Libya, Japan, unemployment, the government shutdown - oh, and by the way, Yemen, Syria and Jordan. That's your job today. And you'd better get it right."