George Tenet Quotes

The pressure of time, is the overwhelming challenge for policymakers who must act on assessments that cannot be proved at the time and whose mistakes are irretrievable.

Part of my job is to make the tough calls.

Tom Clarke is dead. He has not our responsibilities. Nobody will ever know what he would do for the situation did not arise for him. But is has risen for us and we must face it with our intelligence and conscious of our responsibility.

The statesman must weigh the rewards of success against the penalties of failure. And he is permitted only one guess.

What I'm saying is it is our responsibility to exercise due diligence, to ask the tough questions, to get the evidence before we make those very costly decisions about how and when and where our military is used.

Policymakers have to make judgments based on the best intelligence they get.

Leaders are responsible not for running public opinion polls but for the consequences of their actions.

If victory has a hundred fathers, it also brings forth a hundred advisors.

To govern is to chose.

There are a lot of smart people in politics and government, but character matters ... it is terribly important that the two be melded.

The great problem now is that we don’t know what to do.

As an intelligence analyst you have to tell the president what you know, what you think you know and what you don’t know.

Think well before selecting your leader, and when you have selected him, follow him. But in case you find his policy detrimental to your interests, kick him out.

Anyone who has actually had to take responsibility for consequences by running any kind of enterprise whether economic or academic, or even just managing a sports team is likely at some point to be chastened by either the setbacks brought on by his own mistakes or by seeing his successes followed by negative consequences that he never anticipated.

The only real difference between a wise man and a fool, Moore knew, was that the wise man tended to make more serious mistakes—and only because no one trusted a fool with really crucial decisions; only the wise had the opportunity to lose battles, or nations.

Great power involves great responsibility

We have to make the right decisions.

In the first rule of politics, you know, Harry Truman, the buck stops here. Take responsibility. What I've learned over the years is that people will give people in politics a lot of rope if they just take responsibility.

And I argued with that intelligence estimate and I think it is a responsibility of policymakers to use their best judgment on the basis of the intelligence they've received.

I don't think we've asked the right questions, the tough questions, at the right time, in Washington.

You know, one of the things I think you understand as president is you're held responsible for everything, but you don't always have control of everything, right?

Every decision you make in life, not just on the sporting field - a lot of time and energy goes into it. You think things through before you make decisions and you always think the decision you make at the time is going to be the right one.

You never want to be the director who dropped the ball, you know?

Once you put human life in human hands, you have started on a slippery slope that knows no boundaries.