Donald Rumsfeld Quotes

You can turn your back but you can never really walk away.

And having once chosen, never to seek to return to the crossroads of that decision-for even if one chooses wrongly, the choice cannot be unmade.

She went on because there was no going back.

You always have to finish what you start and I learned that some of life's greatest lessons come with disappointment.

Once you've started to dig a hole, you can't get out of it.

If you must begin then go all the way, because if you begin and quit, the unfinished business you have left behind begins to haunt you all the time.

I've seen what commitment leads to. Going in is the easy part. It's the ending that sucks! -Remy

Duty, though set about by thorns, may still be made a staff supporting even while it tortures. Cast it away, and, like the prophet's wand, it changes to a snake.

I do or die, but I never cancel out.

As many people have chronicled, the decision to fight in Vietnam was a years-long accretion of step-by-step choices, each of which could be rationalized at the time. Invading Iraq was an unforced, unnecessary decision to risk everything on a 'war of choice' whose costs we are still paying.

You're either in it for the long haul or you're not.

This ain't fun. But you watch me, I'll get it done.

Anyone Who throws their lot in with the United States has to be taken care of. Loyalty works both ways… It’s a matter of morality.

The Iraq War is an incredibly strategic blunder of enormous proportions …. There was not an exit strategy because the people planning this war didn’t intend to leave.

I've always had a thing where, if I start something, it's gotta get finished. No matter how long it takes, I've gotta see it to fruition.

To be stronger, you finish everything you start. You can't take a break.

I can't take anything back. I've just kept grinding and kept working.

When you had to do something, you had to do it. And eventually, if you were lucky, you did it well.

Whenever we give up, leave behind, and forget too much, there is always the danger that the things we have neglected will return with added force

After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. I can rest only for a moment, for with freedom come responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not yet ended.

You can't give up on me. If you give up, then I'm going to break into a million pieces. I'm here. I'll give you everything I've got.

If you're going to try, go all the way. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives, jobs and maybe your mind.

But it seems to me that once you begin a gesture it's fatal not to go through with it.

Duty has a trick of behaving unexpectedly -- something like a heavy friend whom we have amiably asked to visit us, and who breaks his leg within our gates.