A wild and crazy weekend involves sitting on the front porch, smoking a cigar, reading a book.
AUTHOR QUOTES
Quotes by Robert M. Gates
Explore 25 verified and sourced quotes attributed to Robert M. Gates. Open any quote for its dedicated page, source details and related topics.
EXPLORE BY TOPIC
Selected quotes by Robert M. Gates
One of my favorite little sayings is, 'To avoid criticism, say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.'
There is no international problem that can be addressed or solved without the engagement and leadership of the United States and everybody in the world knows that, its just fact of life. So sometimes I think we could conduct ourselves with a little more humility.
Well, I've ruffled a few feathers at all the institutions I've led. But I think that's part of leadership.
I've been very sensitive for a long time to the repeated pattern, during economic hard times or after a war, of the United States' essentially unilaterally disarming.
I read in the press, and therefore it must be true, that no secretary of defense had ever been quoted as arguing for a bigger budget for State.
I've spent my entire adult life with the United States as a superpower and one that had no compunction about spending what it took to sustain that position. And it didn't have to look over its shoulder because our economy was so strong.
One of the big changes in the Congress since I first came to Washington is that all of these folks go home every weekend. They used to play golf together; their families got to know each other, go to dinner at each other's homes at weekends - and these would be people who were political adversaries.
Even when I was at CIA, I'd go to visit foreign leaders and I'd say, 'You know, I'm not a diplomat. I'm just an old CIA guy'... I said, 'If I wanted to be diplomatic, I'd have been a diplomat.'
If Iraq and Afghanistan have taught us anything in recent history, it is the unpredictability of war and that these things are easier to get into than to get out of, and, frankly, the facile way in which too many people talk about, 'Well, let's just go attack them.'
I have always voted for who I believed was the best person.
I have tried to maintain civil relationships with everyone I meet - and, even if I violently disagree with them, try to be respectful.
I wish I could set deadlines for the Congress, but that's just not the way the Constitution is written.
Health care costs are eating the Defense Department alive.
I don't think any president that I worked with has ever said 'pretty please.'
Most governments lie to each other. That's the way business gets done.
The United States has been a global power since late in the 19th century.
Things have gotten so nasty in Washington.
The reality is, the United States has global interests. Our defense budget is about the same as the defense budgets or military budgets of every other country in the world put together.
When I was the director of Central Intelligence in the early '90s, I tried to get the Air Force to partner with us in building drones. And they didn't want to, because they had no pilots.
If there's ever an example that military power alone cannot be successful in Afghanistan, I think it was the Soviet experience.
No president is well-served by groupthink or by everybody singing from the same sheet of music they think he's on.
Well, Israel, obviously, thinks of the Iranian nuclear program as an existential threat to Israel.
Well, what I've said is that the war in Iraq will always be clouded by how it began, which was a wrong premise, that there were in fact no weapons of nuclear - weapons of mass destruction.
More quotes attributed to Robert M. Gates are available across the Mayalines library.
Related author collections
Explore authors represented in the same topics.