Robert M. Gates Quotes

48 quotes in 690 categories

• We should never lose sight of the ethos that has made the Marine Corps - where 'every Marine is a rifleman' - one of America's…
• There will be boots on the ground if there's to be any hope of success in the strategy.
• America's civilian institutions of diplomacy and development have been chronically undermanned and underfunded for far too long.
• Future U.S. political leaders, those for whom the Cold War was not the formative experience that it was for me, may not consider the return…
• If there's ever an example that military power alone cannot be successful in Afghanistan, I think it was the Soviet experience.
• Congress is best viewed from a distance—the farther the better—because up close, it is truly ugly. I saw most of Congress as uncivil, incompetent at…
• In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle…
• What I know concerns me. What I don't know concerns me even more. What people aren't telling me worries me the most.
• Development is a lot cheaper than sending soldiers.
• Congress is best viewed from a distance—the farther the better—because up close, it is truly ugly,
• And so the greatest of American triumphs... became a peculiarly joyless victory. We had won the Cold War, but there would be no parades.
• I consider myself a Republican.
• I don't think any president that I worked with has ever said 'pretty please.
• I had no difficulty as Secretary of Defense moving from the Bush administration to the Obama administration.
• 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 read in the press, and therefore it must be true, that no secretary of defense had ever been quoted as arguing for a bigger…
• I think that Iran with a nuclear weapon is extremely destabilizing. I think it could precipitate a nuclear arms race in the region.
• I will always be an advocate in terms of wars of necessity. I am just much more cautious on wars of choice.
• I wish I could set deadlines for the Congress, but that's just not the way the Constitution is written.

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