Plan backwards as well as forward. Set objectives and trace back to see how to achieve them. You may find that no path can get you there. Plan forward to see where your steps will take you, which may not be clear or intuitive.
A president has to provide leadership to gain support.
Your performance depends on your people. Select the best, train them and back them. When errors occur, give sharper guidance. If errors persist or if the fit feels wrong, help them move on. The country cannot afford amateur hour in the White House.
Be able to resign. It will improve your value to the President and do wonders for your performance.
When you’re skiing, if you’re not falling you’re not trying.
Most of the 50 or so invitations you receive each week come from people inviting the President’s Chief of Staff, not you. If you doubt that, ask your predecessor how many he received last week.
Don’t ‘over-control’ like a novice pilot. Stay loose enough from the flow that you can observe it, modify, and improve it.
A terrorist can attack any time, any place using any technique and you can’t defend everywhere against every technique at every moment.
It’s a difficult thing today to be informed about our government even without all the secrecy.
When business accepts help from the government, it can be like going to bed with a hippopotamus. It’s nice and warm for the moment, but then your bedmate rolls over and crushes you.
Now, settle down, settle down. Hell, I’m an old man, it’s early in the morning and I’m gathering my thoughts here.
Look at me! I’m sweet and lovable!
I think we ought to have a new rule: You can ask two questions, and then we can pick the one we want to answer.
Any country on the face of the Earth with an active intelligence program knows that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction.
I suppose the implication of that is the president and the vice president and myself and Colin Powell just fell off a turnip truck to take these jobs.
I cannot give any assurances. I’m not in that business. I haven’t been, and I don’t intend to get into it. People who try to make predictions about things or assurances often find they’re wrong.
There will be good moments, and there will be less good moments.
The natural state of man is to want to be free. To have opportunities. To have choices.
After the German abstention at the UN, Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle commented that Germany doesn’t always have to stand on the side of its traditional allies. Berlin can look for new partners all over the world.
And there is, I am certain, among the Iraqi people a respect for the care and the precision that went into the bombing campaign.