Donald Rumsfeld: Doing

“Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.
The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, or vice versa.”

Donald Rumsfeld

Department of Defense news briefing (12 February 2002)
Variant:
Now what is the message there? The message is that there are no "knowns." There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don't know. So when we do the best we can and we pull all this information together, and we then say well that's basically what we see as the situation, that is really only the known knowns and the known unknowns. And each year, we discover a few more of those unknown unknowns.
:It sounds like a riddle. It isn't a riddle. It is a very serious, important matter.
:There's another way to phrase that and that is that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. It is basically saying the same thing in a different way. Simply because you do not have evidence that something exists does not mean that you have evidence that it doesn't exist. And yet almost always, when we make our threat assessments, when we look at the world, we end up basing it on the first two pieces of that puzzle, rather than all three.
:* Extending on his earlier comments in a press conference at NATO Headquarters, Brussels, Belgium (6 June 2002) http://www.nato.int/docu/speech/2002/s020606g.htm
2000s

History , Country

“Let's hear it for the essential daily briefing, however hollow and empty it might be. We'll do it.”

Donald Rumsfeld

Meeting with Media Pool Bureau Chiefs October 18, 2001 http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2001/t10192001_t1018bc.html
2000s

“We do have a saying in America: if you're in a hole, stop digging ….. erm, I'm not sure I should have said that.”

Donald Rumsfeld

http://www.guardian.co.uk/quiz/questions/0,,1943315,00.html
http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/europe/09/24/schroeder.blair/index.html
http://web.archive.org/web/20030621143902/http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/bbing/stories/s865620.htm
2000s

“Be able to resign. It will improve your value to the President and do wonders for your performance.”

Donald Rumsfeld

"Rumsfeld's Rules" January 12, 1974 http://library.villanova.edu/vbl/bweb/rumsfeldsrules.pdf
1970s

“I shouldn't get into … this is diplomacy, and I don't do diplomacy.”

Donald Rumsfeld

http://www.guardian.co.uk/quiz/questions/0,,1943315,00.html
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0304/30/se.01.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/news/bh/rumsfeld.shtml
2000s

“Then there are three or four countries that have said they won't do anything. I believe Libya, Cuba and Germany are ones that have indicated they won't help in any respect.”

Donald Rumsfeld

"Threats And Responses: Germany; Rumsfeld Faces Tense Greeting and Antiwar Rallies in Munich" by Thom Shanker, in The New York Times (8 February 2003) http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/08/world/threats-responses-germany-rumsfeld-faces-tense-greeting-antiwar-rallies-munich.html
2000s

Help , Country

“I picked up a newspaper today and I couldn't believe it. I read eight headlines that talked about chaos, violence, unrest. And it just was Henny Penny -- "The sky is falling." I've never seen anything like it! And here is a country that's being liberated, here are people who are going from being repressed and held under the thumb of a vicious dictator, and they're free. And all this newspaper could do, with eight or 10 headlines, they showed a man bleeding, a civilian, who they claimed we had shot —one thing after another.
From the very beginning, we were convinced that we would succeed, and that means that that regime would end. And we were convinced that as we went from the end of that regime to something other than that regime, there would be a period of transition. And, you cannot do everything instantaneously; it's never been done, everything instantaneously. We did, however, recognize that there was at least a chance of catastrophic success, if you will, to reverse the phrase, that you could in a given place or places have a victory that occurred well before reasonable people might have expected it, and that we needed to be ready for that; we needed to be ready with medicine, with food, with water. And, we have been.
Freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things. They're also free to live their lives and do wonderful things. And that's what's going to happen here.”

Donald Rumsfeld

DOD news briefing following the fall of Baghdad (11 April 2003) http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2003/tr20030411-secdef0090.html

People , Food , Freedom , Water

“And the only way there’s going to be followers, is if the leader is doing things that have merit, that are persuasive to others. Why else would someone follow somebody if they didn’t think the individual was doing something worthwhile, going in the right direction?”

Donald Rumsfeld

As quoted in "My Date With Rummy: Now 84, The Former Secretary Of Defense Is As Wily As Ever" https://taskandpurpose.com/donald-rumsfeld-secretary-defense (12 June 2017), by Adam Linehan, Task & Purpose
2010s

Way , Thinking