Robert M. Gates Quotes

Most governments lie to each other. That's the way business gets done.

If there's ever an example that military power alone cannot be successful in Afghanistan, I think it was the Soviet experience.

If Poindexter made a comment to me like that, it would have been in the context of once the authorized program is approved there would be no point in having any of these private benefactors any longer.

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'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.

I've seen, all too often in my career, people coming in to lead agencies and organizations and trying to impose change from the top down. Never works. You never have enough time.

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'm a big advocate of drones.

I wish I could set deadlines for the Congress, but that's just not the way the Constitution is written.

I will always be an advocate in terms of wars of necessity. I am just much more cautious on wars of choice.

I think that Iran with a nuclear weapon is extremely destabilizing. I think it could precipitate a nuclear arms race in the region.

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 mean, when you get down to very low numbers of nuclear weapons, and you contemplate going to zero, how do you deal with the reality of that technology being available to almost any country that seeks to pursue it? And what conditions do you put in place?

I have tried to maintain civil relationships with everyone I meet - and, even if I violently disagree with them, try to be respectful.

I have instincts.

I have always voted for who I believed was the best person.

I have always that there ought to be some kind of mandatory national service, not necessarily in the military but to show everybody that freedom isn't free, that everybody has an obligation to the nation as a community.

I had no difficulty as Secretary of Defense moving from the Bush administration to the Obama administration.

I had no concerns - I had no reason to have concerns based on what was available to me about North's contacts with the private sector people, but I didn't think a CIA person should do it.

I don't think any president that I worked with has ever said 'pretty please.'

I consider myself a Republican.

Health care costs are eating the Defense Department alive.

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.'

Defense is not like other discretionary spending.

A wild and crazy weekend involves sitting on the front porch, smoking a cigar, reading a book.