Donald Rumsfeld Quotes

Americans like to think of their country as the most powerful in the world, and so it has been for three-quarters of a century. But being the most powerful is a far cry from being omnipotent.

Talleyrand once said to the first Napoleon that the United States is a giant without bones. Since that time our gristle has been rapidly hardening.

I'm not so sure the role of the United States is going around the world saying this is the way its gotta be.

It’s not a dictatorship in the United States. But it is dictatorial to the rest of the world. Who’s going to say no?

The United States is pursuing a series of goals (spreading democracy, asserting its hegemony, securing oil supplies) that are ultimately incompatible.

No nation has ever ridden to superpower status except on a tide of war and that includes the United States.

The reasons for disliking diplomacy are legion. Engaging in serious diplomacy would mean reviewing the way Washington advocates for and deploys its principles. It might necessitate a glance in the mirror and asking why the United States believes it is uniquely empowered to interpret the Creator's higher purpose for people in other lands.

Americans do not recognize the effect of American power in the world. … People all over the world ask, “Why can’t Americans see how American power affects us?”

Anyone who tells you that America is in decline or that our influence has waned doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

The United States is as weak as the Soviet Union. If enough pressure is applied to them, they will pull out of the Middle East.

We can and we will solve our problems for ourselves. We know how. We can, and we will.

It is difficult for an American of today to realize that less than twenty-five years ago the United States was not taken seriously as a world power.

Let us build a navy as big as hers and do as we please.

Britain’s governments in the 1920s again and again found themselves confronting the painful fact that the United States was a power unlike any other. It had emerged, quite suddenly, as a novel kind of ‘super-state’, exercising a veto over the financial and security concerns of the other major states of the world”.

America stands alone as the world’s indispensable nation.

If you got a stuntman that can do it better than me, go do it. But if they can't do it better than me, I'm doing it myself - plain and simple.

That's the problem with the United States. It believes it can control everybody's behavior.

Not like other countries, we will never ask anyone to fight for us.

I can look after myself and my own.

I can take care of myself.

I'm a very self-sufficient person, much like a lot of people I work with.

I'm not a violent person, but I'm a capable person. I'm never looking for a fight. But I'm always ready for one.

I'm confident in my own ability, and if I'm called upon to play on the right, the left, or as the main striker, then I can play there.

I feel confident matching up with anybody.

I take pleasure in discovering resourcefulness inside me.