Quotes from Robert M. Gates

Obama answered, "Yes. I'm no peacenik.

As in the spring with "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," I felt that agreements with the Obama White House were good for only as long as they were politically convenient.

How you make people more efficient and productive, more effective, more responsive, more open-minded, better at their jobs, is little affected by the placement of their organization on the chart. There is one exception to this general proposition: getting rid of boxes on the chart—reducing layering—is almost always a good thing.

After all, one wouldn't want facts and reality—not to mention the national interest—to intrude upon partisan politics, would one?

Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hanged.

One tactic of bureaucracies is to so fill the boss's time with meetings that he or she has no time to meddle in their affairs or create problems for them.

Presidents and Congress expect senior military leaders to provide their personal and professional military opinions candidly and honestly. There is no requirement for them to do so through the news

cooperative, inter-agency and intra-agency effort in which all points of view are represented and have a hearing, and where people and institutions have a say in shaping the future structure, we can in fact bring about real change.

I had done it stupid, early in my career at CIA, by trying to impose significant change by edict from the top.

I just couldn't understand the lack of political awareness by senior officers of the impact at the White House of their remarks to the press.

As I look back, there is a parallel theme to my four and a half years at war: love. By that I mean the love—there is no other word for it—I came to feel for the troops, and the overwhelming sense of personal responsibility I developed for them.

Disclosure of details in the CIA budget, for example, could reveal major new allocations for a covert operation or new investments in satellites. Too much transparency by a company could expose investments in new products or changes in strategy that would provide advantages to competitors.

The president said he would think about what I had said. Then he shocked me as the breakfast ended by saying that he wished he'd made the change in secretary of defense "a couple of years earlier." It was the only thing I ever heard him say even indirectly critical of Rumsfeld.

People around the world must know that America stands on the side of liberty and human dignity, despite whatever compromises we make to protect our interests. If we abandon that role, we will lose that which makes us historically unique. We will lose some piece of our national soul.

It tempted Clinton, Bush, and even Obama to think we could change other countries, despite history and culture, and make them more like us. Contrary to Machiavelli's warning, they misjudged our power and our resources.

I was seething. I told him that "the clock is ticking" and that our patience with their lack of political progress was running out. I angrily told him that every day that we bought them for reconciliation was being paid for with American blood and that we had to see some real progress soon.

Americans, I think, understand the value of allies and how they are a unique asset for the United States, especially compared to both Russia and China, neither of which have any. At the same time, those allies are expected to pull their weight.

We must not be the world's policeman, and we must be very cautious about deploying our military forces to resolve others' internal problems. But we must also use every nonmilitary instrument of power we possess to promote freedom and encourage reform, with friends as well as rivals, because these objectives serve our national interest.

Joe is a man of integrity, incapable of hiding what he really thinks, and one of those rare people you know you could turn to for help in a personal crisis. Still, I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.

President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), announced in 1983 and calling for a nationwide missile defense using very sophisticated technology, both angered and, I believe, terrified the Soviets. As I joked at the time, there appeared to be only two people on the planet who actually thought SDI would work—Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. The Soviets were under enormous economic pressure by that time and knew they could not compete with such a system.

All together, funding for taking care of our troops and their families was increased by $3 billion.

The historian Max Hastings wrote in his book Inferno that "it is characteristic of all conflicts that until enemies begin to shoot, ships to sink and loved ones—or at least comrades—begin to die, even professional warriors often lack urgency and ruthlessness.

To be successful agents of change—of reform—leaders not only must be able to envision a new way forward but also must be practical, with the skill to build broad support for and implement their vision.

Never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricane he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that, once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events." I