Donald Rumsfeld Quotes

Steve Jobs was a great friend as well as a trusted advisor. His legacy will extend far beyond the products he created or the businesses he built. It will be the millions of people he inspired, the lives he changed, and the culture he defined.

Your goal as a leader isn't to be indispensable to the people you lead; it is to leave your people something that is indispensable to them.

As a president, my job is not to promote a religion, my job is to call people to serve our country.

When I look out from my own business career, I tried to learn from some of the best people, regardless of the industry.

A talented executive would be somebody who knows how to surround themselves with a lot of people that will make him look good. You could say that about a politician or you could say that about a head of a major corporation or what have you. The people you surround yourself with it's very important.

I think it's extremely important to speak to the role of friendship in business. There's enough people talking about funding and capital. I want to talk about how important it is to surround yourself with people that have more experience than you, but also people that have different experience and interests than you.

I've worked on jobs where there are almost 200 people on set... you always make an effort to have a relationship but you can't really when there's 200.

I am inspired by working professionals who find lots of time for family and friends. It is easy to get caught up in a career, and I personally aspire to maintain strong connections with the people who matter most to me.

A leader who develops people adds; a leader who develops leaders multiplies.

Always associate yourself with people who are better than you.

Whatever vocation you decide on, track down the best people in the world at doing it and surround yourself with them. Aim high and be ridiculously persistent. Your happiness is at the intersection of your passions and learning from great people. Working at a big company sucks--avoid it. Smaller companies are 10 times better for learning. Be generous with your time and money--it has an amazingly fast payback. Be in the moment with everyone you love--and this frequently means tuning out work completely. And drive slow in parking lots.

Not ever having been an agent myself, my sense is that upper-level agents who have the most power, who can move people through the system more easily, are less willing to take on the volume of work to break somebody new. And then lower-level people, if they are willing to take on somebody new, they don't necessarily have as much sway, and it's harder for them to push somebody through.

When you're dealing with younger people, if you start acting like the leader or the expert or the elder statesman, 'well, let me tell you how this is...,' that's a great way to alienate young people and make them hate you.

This is very important -- to take leisure time. Pace is the essence. Without stopping entirely and doing nothing at all for great periods, you're gonna lose everything...just to do nothing at all, very, very important. And how many people do this in modern society? Very few. That's why they're all totally mad, frustrated, angry and hateful.

I like getting older and being the person who people ask for help.

I definitely isolate, but I also always have people in front of me, and I have to be OK with that. I'm in a business where, on the set, you're around two hundred people every day, and if you're high on the call sheet, you sort of set the tone for the set. And you want people to feel appreciated, and you want to ask them how their kids are. You want to talk to people and invest in them and let them know that they're appreciated and heard. But then I do like to just kind of withdraw.

And again, this connection that you get: I meet Joe at church. Joe's connected to a whole network of people I don't know. Joe likes me. He invites me over to his son's birthday party, and I meet his whole family. I meet his friends. I get to know his neighborhood. That happens all the time.

I don't expect to be a ‘leader’ with this thing. I'd rather be a builder. I'd like to build a way for people doing good work to connect, to learn from each other, protect each other, and then I want to get out of their way.

I don't think we do a great job in America any more of distinguishing between campaigns and governance. We live in an environment that's all campaign all of the time and it's helpful, now that we've moved beyond a campaign and an election to get into a governance posture.

You meet people who say, "Oh, I'd like to do such-and-such, but I don't have the time." But it always seemed to me like you make the time. And if you have a wife or a job, if you have kids or whatever, you find a way. If you really want to do it, you make the time.

You get work however you get work. People keep working, in a freelance world, and more and more of today's world is freelance, because their work is good, and because they are easy to get along with, and because they deliver the work on time. And you don't even need all three. Two out of three is fine. People will tolerate how unpleasant you are if your work is good and you deliver it on time. They'll forgive the lateness of the work if it's good, and if they like you. And you don't have to be as good as the others if you're on time and it's always a pleasure to hear from you.

I know I touch a lot of people. I don't call myself a role model. But I am a leader. Leaders are always watched by team members & outsiders

If you really want to be a successful leader, you must develop other leaders around you. You must establish a team.

There's no downside to traveling the world and making money. I'm doing something I love. A lot of people have sucky jobs, but I have a good one, and I'm not trying to lose it any time soon.

I'm not always thinking and working ... I think a leader has to really be a balanced, whole and healthy person personally in order to be the best leader on the job.