178 quotes found
"It's a difficult thing today to be informed about our government even without all the secrecy."
"Congress, the press, and the bureaucracy too often focus on how much money or effort is spent, rather than whether the money or effort actually achieves the announced goal."
"It is easier to get into something than to get out of it."
"Be able to resign. It will improve your value to the President and do wonders for your performance."
"This war [in Vietnam] has been marked by so many lies and evasions... that it is not right to have the war end with one last lie."
"Pearl Harbor Post-Mortem: In some future hearing, I am going to say that I do not want to be sitting before this panel in a modern day version of a Pearl Harbor post-mortem as to who didn't do what, when, where and why. None of us would want to have to be back here going through that agony."
"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."
"I can't tell you if the use of force in Iraq today would last five days, or five weeks, or five months, but it certainly isn't going to last any longer than that."
"And it is not knowable if force will be used, but if it is to be used, it is not knowable how long that conflict would last. It could last, you know, six days, six weeks. I doubt six months."
"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."
"Now, you're thinking of Europe as Germany and France. I don't. I think that's old Europe. If you look at the entire NATO Europe today, the center of gravity is shifting to the east. And there are a lot of new members. And if you just take the list of all the members of NATO and all of those who have been invited in recently -- what is it? Twenty-six, something like that? -- you're right. Germany has been a problem, and France has been a problem. But you look at vast numbers of other countries in Europe. They're not with France and Germany on this, they're with the United States."
"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."
"I don't believe anyone that I know in the administration ever said that Iraq had nuclear weapons."
"Today we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror. Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?"
"You and a few other critics are the only people I've heard use the phrase immediate threat. I didn't, the president didn't. And it's become kind of folklore that that's what's happened."
"I'm not into this detail stuff. I'm more concepty."
"Look at me! I'm sweet and lovable!"
"[ Osama bin Laden is] either alive and well or alive and not too well or not alive."
"I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to four hours?"
"We're so conditioned as a people to think that a military campaign has to be cruise missiles and television images of airplanes dropping bombs, and that's just false. This is a totally different war. We need a new vocabulary. We need to get rid of old think and start thinking about this thing the way it really is."
"We know where they Iraq's WMD] are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south, and north somewhat....I would also add, we saw from the air that there were dozens of trucks that went into that facility after the existence of it became public in the press and they moved things out. They dispersed them and took them away. So there may be nothing left. I don't know that. But it's way too soon to know. The exploitation is just starting."
"I didn't advocate invasion...I wasn't asked."
"...it seems to me that it's up to all of us to try to tell the truth, to say what we know, to say what we don't know, and recognize that we're dealing with people that are perfectly willing to, to lie to the world to attempt to further their case and to the extent people lie of, ultimately they are caught lying and they lose their credibility and one would think it wouldn't take very long for that to happen dealing with people like this."
"As you know, you go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time. Since the Iraq conflict began, the Army has been pressing ahead to produce the armor necessary at a rate that they believe — it's a greatly expanded rate from what existed previously — but a rate that they believe is the rate that is all that can be accomplished at this moment."
"I shouldn't get into ... this is diplomacy, and I don't do diplomacy."
"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."
"What we are seeing is not the war in Iraq. What we're seeing is slices of the war in Iraq."
"Well, so be it. Nothing's perfect in life, so you have an election that's not quite perfect. Is it better than not having an election? You bet."
"It recalls to mind the statement by Winston Churchill, something to the effect that: I have benefited greatly from criticism, and at no time have I suffered a lack thereof."
"It is pretty clear that the coalition can win in Afghanistan and Iraq in one way or another, but it will be a long, hard slog."
"Those who follow orders to commit such crimes will be found and they will be punished. War crimes will be prosecuted. And it will be no excuse to say, 'I was just following orders.' Any official involved in such crimes will forfeit hope of amnesty or leniency with respect to past action."
"Oh, Lord. I didn't mean to say anything quotable."
"Let's hear it for the essential daily briefing, however hollow and empty it might be. We'll do it."
"There will be good moments, and there will be less good moments."
"I don't know what the facts are but somebody's certainly going to sit down with him and find out what he knows that they may not know, and make sure he knows what they know that he may not know, and that's a good thing."
"Pieces of intelligence, scraps of intelligence...you run down leads and you run down leads, and you hope that sometimes it works."
"And there is, I am certain, among the Iraqi people a respect for the care and the precision that went into the bombing campaign."
"Stuff happens."
"I suppose the implication of that is the president and the vice president and myself and Colin Powell just fell off a turnip truck to take these jobs."
"The topic today is an adversary that poses a threat, a serious threat, to the security of the United States of America. This adversary is one of the world's last bastions of central planning. The adversary is closer to home. It's the Pentagon bureaucracy. Not the people, but the processes. Not the civilians, but the systems. Not the men and women in uniform, but the uniformity of thought and action that we too often impose on them."
"The technology revolution has transformed organizations across the private sector, but not ours, not fully, not yet. We are, as they say, tangled in our anchor chain. Our financial systems are decades old. According to some estimates, we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions. We cannot share information from floor to floor in this building because it's stored on dozens of technological systems that are inaccessible or incompatible. To that end, we're announcing today a series of steps the Department of Defense will take to shift our focus and our resources from bureaucracy to battlefield, from tail to tooth."
"Some might ask, how in the world could the Secretary of Defense attack the Pentagon in front of its people? To them I reply, Today, I have no desire to attack the Pentagon; I want to liberate it. We need to save it from itself."
"A new idea ignored may be the next threat overlooked. A person employed in a redundant task is one who could be countering terrorism or nuclear proliferation."
"But keep in mind the story about the donkey, the burro, and the ass. The man and the boy were walking down the street with the donkey and people looked and laughed at them and said, "Isn't that foolish—they have a donkey and no one rides it." So the man said to the boy, "Get on the donkey; we don't want those people to think we're foolish." So they went down the road and people looked at the boy on the donkey and the man walking alongside -- "Isn't that terrible, that young boy is riding the donkey and the man's walking." So they changed places, went down the road, people looked and said, "Isn't that terrible, that strong man is up there on the donkey and making the little boy walk." So they both got up on the donkey, the donkey became exhausted, came to a bridge, fell in the river and drowned. And of course the moral of the story is, if you try to please everybody, you're going to lose your donkey."
"It's about professionalism, and it's also about our respect for ourselves, about how we feel about seeing GAO reports describing waste and mismanagement and money down a rat hole. We need your help. I ask for your help. I thank all of you who are already helping. I have confidence that we can do it. It's going to be hard. There will be rough times. But it's also the best part of life to be engaged in doing something worthwhile."
"After he saw what happened to Saddam Hussein, he (Gaddafi) did not want to be Saddam Hussein. He gave up his nuclear program."
"The natural state of man is to want to be free. To have opportunities. To have choices."
"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?"
"At the same time, Kissinger, Carter and détente were condemned as weakening the West by a group of conservative Democrats led by Henry (Scoop) Jackson, a critic of SALT, as well as by key Republicans who were influential in the Ford administration (1974–7), notably his Chief of Staff, Richard (Dick) Cheney, and the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. They drew on advice from commentators such as Richard Perle, Richard Pipes and Paul Wolfowitz who warned about Soviet intentions. The continuity of this group, through 1990s’ opposition to Clintonian liberal internationalism, to the neo-conservative activism of the early 2000s, especially against Iraq, is notable."
"About 10 days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon, and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the joint staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in. He said, “Sir, you’ve got to come in and talk to me a second.” I said, “Well, you’re too busy.” He said, “No, no.” He says, “We’ve made the decision we’re going to war with Iraq.” This was on or about the 20th of September. I said, “We’re going to war with Iraq? Why?” He said, “I don’t know.” He said, “I guess they don’t know what else to do.” So I said, “Well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda?” He said, “No, no.” He says, “There’s nothing new that way. They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq.” He said, “I guess it’s like we don’t know what to do about terrorists, but we’ve got a good military and we can take down governments... I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail.”... he said, “This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.” I said, “Is it classified?” He said, “Yes, sir.” I said, “Well, don’t show it to me.”"
"Mohammed al-Qahtani's torture, which was directly authorized by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, included forcing him to urinate on himself, months of isolation, sleep deprivation, and blaring loud music, even when he was in the hospital. "They strip-search him and briefly make him stand nude," the interrogation log recounts matter-of-factly. "They tell him to bark like a dog and growl at pictures of terrorists."
"Cheney and Rumsfeld were inveterate schemers whose cynicism about going to war was exceeded only by their ineptitude in conducting it."
"The warfare in Syria is a follow-on to the attacks on Iraq and Libya. We may recall General Wesley Clark’s claim in March 2007 that shortly after 9/11 a Pentagon official had shown him a Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz list of seven Middle East and North African countries that were scheduled for attack and regime change. Iraq and Libya, both on that list, have been attacked and transformed into U.S.-destroyed states with new or unsettled leadership. The United States has been supporting regime change forces in Syria as far back as 2011, but the job has not been completed, in part because of Russian support for president Assad. Truce efforts by the U.S. and Russia have regularly broken down because the U.S. still aims at regime change and supports the rebel forces that Russia targets, many or most of which are Al Qaeda- or ISIS-related and whose victory would mean another Libya-like failed state."
"He's a ruthless little bastard. You can be sure of that."
"In the Vietnam War, the leaders of the White House claimed at the time that it was a necessary and crucial war, and during it, Donald Rumsfeld and his aides murdered two million villagers. And when Kennedy took over the presidency and deviated from the general line of policy drawn up for the White House and wanted to stop this unjust war, that angered the owners of the major corporations who were benefiting from its continuation. And so Kennedy was killed, and al-Qaida wasn't present at that time, but rather, those corporations were the primary beneficiary from his killing. And the war continued after that for approximately one decade. But after it became clear to you that it was an unjust and unnecessary war, you made one of your greatest mistakes, in that you neither brought to account nor punished those who waged this war, not even the most violent of its murderers, Rumsfeld."
"We are paying a very heavy price for the mismanagement — that's the kindest word I can give you — of Donald Rumsfeld, of this war. The price is very, very heavy and I regret it enormously. I think that Donald Rumsfeld will go down in history as one of the worst secretaries of defense in history."
"Here's what I can tell you about Don Rumsfeld. You're never going to get any credit. And you'll only know how well you're doing if he gives you more work. If that happens, you're doing fine."
"Donald Rumsfeld said that his mission in the War Against Terror was to persuade the world that Americans must be allowed to continue their way of life. When the maddened king stamps his foot, slaves tremble in their quarters. So, standing here today, it's hard for me to say this, but The American Way of Life is simply not sustainable. Because it doesn't acknowledge that there is a world beyond America."
"Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk was on the mark... in November 2002, he wrote, “Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with 11 September. If the United States invades Iraq, we should remember that.” On many psychological levels, the Bush team was able to manipulate post-9/11 emotions well beyond the phantom of Iraqi involvement in that crime against humanity. The dramatic changes in political climate after 9/11 included a drastic upward spike in the attitude—fervently stoked by the likes of Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and the president—that our military should be willing to attack potential enemies before they might attack us. Few politicians or pundits were willing to confront the reality that this was a formula for perpetual war, and for the creation of vast numbers of new foes who would see a reciprocal logic in embracing such a credo themselves. President Bush’s national security adviser “felt the administration had little choice with Hussein,” reporter Bob Woodward recounted in mid-November 2002. A quote from Condoleezza Rice summed up the approach. “Take care of threats early.” Determining exactly what constitutes a threat—and how to “take care” of it—would be up to the eye of the beholder in the Oval Office."
"Rumsfeld told a group of senior Pentagon aides, “I never again want our army to arrive somewhere and meet the CIA on the ground.” To a gathering of top generals in “the tank,” the Joint Chiefs' secure conference room, he was even more succinct: “Every CIA success,” he told them, “is a DoD failure.”"
"George W. Bush... his national-security advisers have consolidated control over the military and intelligence communities’ strategic analyses and covert operations to a degree unmatched since the rise of the post-Second World War national-security state... The C.I.A. will continue to be downgraded, and the agency will increasingly serve, as one government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon put it, as “facilitators” of policy emanating from President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney... The President’s decision enables Rumsfeld to run the operations off the books — free from legal restrictions imposed on the C.I.A."
"Bush and Cheney may have set the policy, but it is Donald Rumsfeld|Rumsfeld who has directed its implementation ... [Rumsfeld's] reappointment as Defense Secretary was never in doubt... In interviews with past and present intelligence and military officials, I was told that the agenda had been determined before the Presidential election, and much of it would be Rumsfeld’s responsibility. The war on terrorism would be expanded, and effectively placed under the Pentagon’s control. The President has signed a series of findings and executive orders authorizing secret commando groups and other Special Forces units to conduct covert operations against suspected terrorist targets in as many as ten nations in the Middle East and South Asia."
"The President’s decision enables Rumsfeld to run the operations off the books—free from legal restrictions imposed on the C.I.A. Under current law, all C.I.A. covert activities overseas must be authorized by a Presidential finding and reported to the Senate and House intelligence committees. (The laws were enacted after a series of scandals in the nineteen-seventies involving C.I.A. domestic spying and attempted assassinations of foreign leaders.) “The Pentagon doesn’t feel obligated to report any of this to Congress,” the former high-level intelligence official said. "...They’re not even going to tell... the regional American military commanders-in-chief. (The Defense Department and the White House did not respond to requests for comment on this story.)"
"Rumsfeld will no longer have to refer anything through the government’s intelligence wringer,” the former official went on. “The intelligence system was designed to put competing agencies in competition. What’s missing will be the dynamic tension that insures everyone’s priorities—in the C.I.A., the D.O.D., the F.B.I., and even the Department of Homeland Security—are discussed. The most insidious implication of the new system is that Rumsfeld no longer has to tell people what he’s doing"
"Politics is a substitute for violence."
"This president is a miserable failure on foreign policy and on the economy and he's got to be replaced."
"The greatest American who ever lived has been shot down and killed."
"White people don't need a law against rape, but if you fill this room up with your normal black bucks, you would, because niggers are basically primitive animals."
"Our clear goal must be the advancement of the white race and separation of the white and black races. This goal must include freeing of the American media and government from subservient Jewish interests."
"What we really want to do is to be left alone. We don't want Negroes around. We don't need Negroes around. We're not asking— you know, we don't want to have them, you know, for our culture. We simply want our own country and our own society. That's in no way exploitive at all. We want our own society, our own nation…."
"Did you ever notice how many survivors they have? Did you ever notice that? Everybody — every time you turn around, 15,000 survivors meet here; 400 survivors convention there. I mean, did you ever notice? Nazis sure were inefficient, weren't they? Boy, boy, boy!...You almost have no survivors that ever say they saw a gas chamber or saw the workings of a gas chamber.... they'll say these preposterous stories that anybody can check out to be a lie, an absolute lie."
"I won my constituency. I won 55% of the white vote."
"As for America and the rest of European world, I want to live in a nation that reflects my traditions and values, and I do not want my people to become a minority in the nations my own forefathers built. Interestingly, that is same goal that most Israelis and most Jews who support Israel endorse for the Jewish state."
"I don’t want to see this country resemble or look like or become like Mexico. Mexico is great to visit, I’ve been there a few times. I respect all peoples of the world."
"I’m often called, so often called in the media, it’s like a part of my name “white supremacist” or whatever. I’m not one. I don’t want white people to be supreme. I don’t believe, in fact, that we should even have bases in 65 countries of the world I don’t think we should be in Iraq. I don’t believe we should try to control politics of the South American countries or the Southeast Asia or in Africa, or anywhere else in the world. But I do think we have a right to preserve our own culture, own heritage in our own country."
"I don’t see any moral difference between a suicide bomber and somebody in a F-16 fighter jet who fires a missile into an apartment complex and then kills 10 or 15 little girls and boys. I don’t see much difference there. In fact, I think the pilot is a greater offender, you know, he’s getting medals, while the suicide bomber is sacrificing his life for what he believes in. But I don’t agree with either approach. I’m absolutely opposed to any sort of terrorism. (…) But if you call Hezbollah a terrorist organization, then you must call Israel a terrorist organization."
"I am opposed to globalism, I am opposed to colonialism, I am opposed to any sort of complusion of one nation over another. (...) I also deeply believe in human rights."
"I don't consider myself a racist, I don't hate other peoples, but I certainly want to preserve my own. And I think that's true of all people."
"I am not opposed to all Jews. That's how they do with me, they distort everything I say, but I'm certainly opposed to Jewish extremism. Just as I am opposed to certain Islamic fundamentalism. I'm opposed to terrorism, I'm opposed to oppression of individuals. But the media, because of the incredible Jewish extremist domination in the media, especially American media and the Hollywood media, we seldom hear about Jewish fundamentalism, we seldom hear about Jewish extremism. (...) We don't hear this in the media, because they in fact dominate the media."
"Terrorism does not happen in a vacuum. And we would not be subject to and endangered by so-called terrorism within our own countries if we in fact kept our countries as our own heritage, our own value system. The recent terror plot in Britain, for instance was launched mostly, almost entirely by Muslims of non-European descent, who were born in Britain. Born in Britain, because of the immigration policies of our countries."
"I have spoken all over the world and I have great respect for Muslims, I have great respect for the African people, I have respect for the other races. Even back home in Louisiana, I'm called a racist, but I have respect for the Black people of my country and I want them to have their own life, too, and I want them to be able to pursue their own destiny and not be controlled, and not be damaged."
"I would say it's a flip side of Barack Obama. He was a community activist or a black activist. He's been in the church for 20 years that — and one of the first principles of that church is that they are, quote, "true to Africa," loyal to Africa. There is nothing wrong with Barack Obama working and having a long career advancing what he sees as the black community interests or the black perceived interests as a group, collective interest, but I did see it as kind of odd that a man of that stripe would become president of the United States. It seems like — I think I should endorse him for president."
"Ilhan Omar is NOW the most important Member of the US Congress!"
"If you think our countries could never elect an Adolf Hitler to power, note that David Duke would have become governor of Louisiana if it had just been up to the white voters in the state. Many people vote for extraordinarily High RWA candidates today. Many more would want one during a crisis. About a quarter of American state legislators are already poised to "stomp out the rot." And if you think a North American dictator could not find the people he needed to kill Jews, or professors, or Communists, or trade union leaders, or defiant clergy, or religious minorities, or the mentally "unsuitable," whomever he wanted to eliminate, then you might want to look at what Milgram found."
"Many of Duke's voters steadfastly denied that the former Klan leader was a racist. The St. Petersburg Times reported in 1990 that Duke supporters "are likely to blame the media for making him look like a racist." The paper quoted G. D. Miller, a "59-year-old oil-and-gas lease buyer," who said, "The way I understood the Klan, it's not anti-this or anti-that.""
"Well, looks like I pissed off David Duke. Good. He's a piece of shit."
"The guy does deserve a bullet. I mean, these aren’t good people. These are horrible people."
"A guy like David Duke is disgusting. But this is the MO of the DNC and in fact, we go back to the Podesta emails from May/June, there’s an email where he’s saying, ‘Listen, we think Trump has an amazing movement going and we want to make him, the only way we think we can best stop is to make him look like a bigot, racist, xenophobic, this and that.’"
"The key to David Duke's worldview turns out to be the Aryan Invasion Theory and its caste-Apartheid annexe... This is the face of white racism saying in so many words that he wouldn't have embarked on his political struggle but for his first-hand acquaintance with what he believes to be the effect of racial mixing in India."
"Admit it-the world is mighty wacky. Dan Quayle is a heartbeat away from bravely leading us into the New World Order. Our intelligentsia are running around declaring that we have reached both the End of History and the apex of political evolution-we're the kings of the global jungle. At the same time, sensing new opportunities, the forces of reptilian nationalism-from Pat Robertson to militant mullahs, from David Duke to the ancient reactionary movements of Eastern Europe-are crawling out from under their rocks, getting facelifts, and learning how to use teleprompters and Stinger missiles. Meanwhile, back in the cradle of democracy, the "opposition" response to all this is to offer a choice between Jerry Brown and None of the Above."
"Constitutionally, gentlemen, you have the president, the vice president and the secretary of state, in that order, and should the president decide he wants to transfer the helm to the vice president, he will do so. As for now, I'm in control here, in the White House, pending the return of the vice president and in close touch with him. If something came up, I would check with him, of course."
"Israel is the largest American aircraft carrier in the world that cannot be sunk, does not carry even one American soldier, and is located in a critical region for American national security. The Ettinger Report, 2005-05-11."
"That's not a lie, it's a terminological inexactitude."
"Let them march all they want as long as they continue to pay their taxes."
"From the liberal atmosphere of the Notre Dame campus to the dominated life of a West Point Plebe proved to be a step tinged with reluctance to Alex. As ever, unchanged, he has glided through the years with a gay sincerity that has won him an abundance of loyal friends. His pleasures lean toward the athletic and social. Consequently, he has developed a skill in both. Strong convictions and even stronger ambitions mingled with a deep understanding of his fellow soldier should form a "Warrior's Chariot" to carry Alex to the top."
"When two of his companies were engaged by a large hostile force, Colonel Haig landed amid a hail of fire, personally took charge of the units, called for artillery and air fire support and succeeded in soundly defeating the insurgent force ... the next day a barrage of 400 rounds was fired by the Viet Cong, but it was ineffective because of the warning and preparations by Colonel Haig. As the barrage subsided, a force three times larger than his began a series of human wave assaults on the camp. Heedless of the danger himself, Colonel Haig repeatedly braved intense hostile fire to survey the battlefield. His personal courage and determination, and his skillful employment of every defense and support tactic possible, inspired his men to fight with previously unimagined power. Although his force was outnumbered three to one, Colonel Haig succeeded in inflicting 592 casualties on the Viet Cong ... HQ US Army, Vietnam, General Orders No. 2318 (May 22, 1967)"
"That guy was a homo — as sure as you're alive."
"Just like what Nazi Germany did to the Jews, so liberal America is now doing to the evangelical Christians! It's no different! It is the same thing! It is happening all over again! It is the Democratic Congress, the liberal-based media and the homosexuals who want to destroy the Christians! Wholesale abuse and discrimination and the worst bigotry directed toward any group in America today! More terrible than anything suffered by any minority in history! … And it is happening here and now! Same thing, but directed against Christians by the liberal government and media! Send money today or these liberals will be putting Christians like you and me in concentration camps!"
"[After Ariel Sharon's severe stroke] Ladies and Gentlemen I said last year that Israel was entering into the most dangerous periods of its entire existence as a nation. That is intensifying this year with the loss of Sharon. Sharon was personally a very likeable person, and I am sad to see him in this condition, but I think we need to look at the Bible and the Book of Joel. The prophet Joel makes it very clear that God has enmity against those who "divide my land." God considers this land to be His. You read the Bible and He says "this is my land" and for any Prime Minister of Israel who decides he is going to carve it up and give it away, God says "no, this is mine." I had a wonderful meeting with Yitzhak Rabin in 1974. He was tragically assassinated, it was a terrible thing that happened but nevertheless he was dead. And now Ariel Sharon who again was a very likeable person, a delightful person to be with, I prayed with him personally, but here he's at the point of death. He was dividing God's land and I would say woe unto any Prime Minister of Israel who takes a similar course to appease the EU, the United Nations, or the United States of America. God says "this land belongs to me. You'd better leave it alone.""
"The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians." — 1992 Iowa fundraising letter opposing a state equal-rights amendment ("Equal Rights Initiative in Iowa Attacked", Washington Post, 23 August 1992); it is sometimes claimed that this statement appeared in Robertson's 1992 GOP convention speech, but this is not the case (see also transcript)"
""If I could just get a nuclear device inside Foggy Bottom, I think that's the answer." (talking about the United States State Department)"
""If you go all the way back to the days just following creation, men lived nine hundred years or more." — Answers to 200 of Life's most Probing Questions"
""It is clear that God is saying, 'I gave man dominion over the earth, but he lost it. Now I desire mature sons and daughters who will in My name exercise dominion over the earth and subdue Satan, the unruly, the rebellious. Take back My world from those who would loot it and abuse it. Rule as I would rule.'" — The Secret Kingdom"
""I'm not necessarily saying it's going to be nuclear. The Lord didn't say nuclear. But I do believe it will be something like that." -- Pat Robertson, speaking about an upcoming "mass killing," on The 700 Club January 2, 2007"
"Planned Parenthood] "is teaching kids to fornicate, teaching people to have adultery, every kind of bestiality, homosexuality, lesbianism – everything that the Bible condemns." (The 700 Club, variously dated as 9 Apr. 1991 or 14 Jan. 1991)."
"Presbyterians are "the spirit of the Antichrist." (Greg Palast, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, p. 239)"
""Satan is a tool of God's love in the sense that he forces us to see God's loving patience." — Answers to 200 of Life's most Probing Questions"
"The Islamic people, the Arabs, were the ones who captured Africans, put them in slavery, and sent them to America as slaves. Why would the people in America want to embrace the religion of slavers."
"The media challenged me. `You're not going to bring atheists into the government? How dare you maintain that those who believe the Judeo-Christian values are better qualified to govern America than Hindus and Muslims?' My simple answer is, `Yes, they are.'"
"They have kept us in submission because they have talked about separation of church and state. There is no such thing in the Constitution. It's a lie of the Left, and we're not going to take it anymore."
"[Hugo Chávez is] going to make Venezuela a launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism all over the continent... he is an out-of-control dictator... a dangerous enemy to our south, controlling a huge pool of oil that could hurt us very badly."
"We're importing Hinduism into America. The whole thought of your karma, of meditation, of the fact that there's no end of life and there's this endless wheel of life, this is all Hinduism. Chanting too. Many of those chants are to Hindu Gods — Vishnu, Hare Krishna. The origin of it is all demonic. We can't let that stuff come into America. We've got the best defense, if you will — a good offense."
"“You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if [President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela] thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It’s a whole lot cheaper than starting a war. And I don’t think any oil shipments will stop. [...] We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability. We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator. It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with.” — 22 August 2005, in a broadcast of his Christian Broadcasting Network's program, The 700 Club [http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2005/s1444849.htm"
""You say you're supposed to be nice to the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians and the Methodists and this, that, and the other thing. Nonsense, I don't have to be nice to the spirit of the Antichrist." — Pat Robertson, The 700 Club, January 14, 1991"
"I want to say it again, and again, and again: Islam is not a religion, it's a political system meant on — bent on world domination, not a religion. It masquerades as a religion, but the religion covers a worldwide attempt to exercise power and to subjugate the world into their way of thinking."
"They were under the heel of the French, you know Napoleon the third and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said 'We will serve you if you will get us free from the prince.' True story. And so the devil said, 'Ok it’s a deal.' And they kicked the French out. The Haitians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since they have been cursed by one thing after another."
"What is this "mac and cheese"? Is that a black thing?"
"People who are atheists, they hate God, they hate the expression of God, and they are angry with the world, angry with themselves, angry with society and they take it out on innocent people who are worshiping God. And whether it's a Sikh temple, or a Baptist church, or a Catholic church, or a Muslim mosque – whatever it is – I just abhor this kind of violence, and it's the kind of thing that we should do something about. But what do you do?"
"Pat Robertson: He's going to have a second term. He's going to win. Romney will win the election. Benny Hinn: You believe that. Pat Robertson: I absolutely believe that. Benny Hinn: What makes you believe that? Pat Robertson: 'Cause the Lord told me."
"So, can demonic spirits attach themselves to inanimate objects? The answer is yes. But I don't think every sweater you get from Goodwill has demons in it. But, in a sense, you're mother's just being super cautious, so hey, it isn't going to hurt you to rebuke any spirits that happen to have attached themselves to those clothes."
"God is going to supply a million dollars, somebody is praying right now, right this second, you’re praying for a million dollars and God said, "I have heard your prayer, I know your need, and I'm going to supply the need that you requested," it's done, in Jesus' name."
"Those people overseas didn't go to Ivy League schools... Well, we're so sophisticated, we think we've got everything figured out. We know about evolution, we know about Darwin, we know about all these things that says God isn't real, we know about all this stuff. And if we've been in many schools, in the most advanced schools, we have been inundated with skepticism and secularism. And, uh, overseas they're simple, humble. You tell 'em God loves 'em and they say, "Okay, he loves me". You say God will do miracles and they say, "Okay, we believe him". That's what God's looking for, that's why they have miracles."
"You've got a couple of same-sex guys kissing, do you "like" that? Well, that makes me want to throw up. To me, I would punch "vomit" not "like", but they don't give you that option on Facebook."
"I don't think there is any harm in it, but I tell you, there are demons and there are evil people in the world, and you post a picture like that and some cultist gets hold of it or a coven and they begin muttering curses against an unborn child. [...] You never know what somebody's going to do."
"As far as God's concerned, he knows the end from the beginning and He sees a little baby and that little baby could grow up to be Adolf Hitler, he could grow up to be Joseph Stalin, he could grow up to be some serial killer, or he could grow up to die of a hideous disease. God sees all of that, and for that life to be terminated while he's a baby, he's going to be with God forever in Heaven so it isn't a bad thing."
"Of all of India’s problems, one stands out from the rest. That problem is idol worship. It is said there are hundreds of millions of Hindu deities. All this has put a nation in bondage to spiritual forces that have deceived many for thousands of years."
"Hinduism and many of the occult activities that come out of the Orient are inspired by demons and demon worship. . . . There’s this concept that all religions are the same and all are good. That is not true. The worship of the Devil is not good."
"Fear ignites authoritarian aggression more than anything else. From the crime-fixated Six O’clock News, to the Bush administration’s claim that “We fight ‘em there or else we fight ‘em here,” to Pat Robertson’s recurring predictions of catastrophe the day-after-tomorrow, lots of people have been filling America to the brim with fear. It would undoubtedly help things if the fear-mongers ratcheted down their mongering. But don’t hold your breath; they have their reasons for trying to scare the pants off everybody."
"Pat Robertson at a national convention, equipped with delegates, certainly remains a terrible sight. He is a charlatan of Chaucerian dimensions."
"I listened to a man called Pat Robertson, who runs a right-wing born-again Christian evangelical movement. It was such a hair-raising programme that it undid all the optimism that I had begun to feel when I came to this conference. This guy Pat Robertson, who looked like a business executive of about forty-five with one of those slow, charming American smiles, was standing there with a big tall black man beside him, his side-kick, and he talked continuously about the Reagan administration, about the defeat of the liberals, about Reagan's commitment to the evangelical movement. He had a blackboard showing what in the nineteenth century "liberal" meant. He then wiped that from the blackboard and said that today the liberals are Marxists, fascists, leftists and socialists. Then he showed an extract of Reagan saying, "We want to keep big government out of our homes, and out of our schools, and out of our family life." He went on and on for an hour like this. At the end, he said, "Let us pray", and, his face contorted with fake piety, pleaded with Jesus to protect America, "our country". I couldn't switch it off. It was so frightening, the feeling that we are now entering a holy war between that type of reactionary Christianity and communism. It is a thoroughly wicked and evil interpretation of Christianity."
"This guy obviously wants to be a prophet so bad. I wonder if he walks around at home dressed up in a bedsheet, talking Aramaic, maybe parting the waters in the bathtub occasionally, just to keep in practice?"
"Even as with the American rejection of the League of Nations, our failure to live up to our obligations to the United Nations is led by a handful of willful senators who choose to pursue their narrow, selfish political objectives at the cost of our nation's conscience. They pander to and are supported by the Christian Coalition and the rest of the religious right wing. Their leader, Pat Robertson, has written that we should have a world government but only when the messiah arrives. Any attempt to achieve world order before that time must be the work of the Devil! This small but well-organized group, has intimidated both the Republican Party and the Clinton administration. It has attacked each of our Presidents since FDR for supporting the United Nations. Robertson explains that these Presidents were and are the unwitting agents of Lucifer. The only way we who believe in the vision of a democratic world federal government can effectively overcome this reactionary movement is to organize a strong educational counteroffensive stretching from the most publicly visible people in all fields to the humblest individuals in every community. That is the vision and the program of the World Federalist Association."
"Moreover, the largest single organised faction in the Republican Party today is the so-called Christian Coalition led by Pat Robertson. The key text of this movement, Robertson’s own tract on the New World Order, can be demonstrated to be a line-by-line plagiarism from classic European anti-semitism. In Robertson’s world view, it is the Warburg and Rothschild families, the Freemasons and the Illuminati, all over again."
"The post-1972 primary system was especially vulnerable to a particular kind of outsider: individuals with enough fame or money to skip the “invisible primary.” In other words, celebrities. Although conservative outsiders Pat Robertson, Pat Buchanan, and Steve Forbes did not manage to overcome the effects of the invisible primary during the 1980s and 1990s, their relative success provided clues into how it might be done. Forbes, an extraordinarily wealthy businessman, was able to buy name recognition, while Robertson, a televangelist who founded the Christian Broadcasting Network, and Buchanan, a television commentator (and early Republican proponent of white nationalism), were both colorful figures with special media access. Although none of them won the nomination, they used massive wealth and celebrity status to become contenders."
"Setbacks and defeats become part of such stories, rather than challenges to their truth. If the faithful have suffered, that is because of the plots and conspiracies of their enemies. For Hitler, of course, that meant the Jews. They had started World War I and created the Bolshevik Revolution, and they had ensured that Germany suffered under the Treaty of Versailles. He had warned them, Hitler said repeatedly, that if they dared to start another war he would destroy them, “the vermin of Europe.” World War II was the fault of the Jews, and the time had come to deal with them once and for all. If any one person was responsible for that war, it was Hitler himself, but logic and reason do not enter into closed systems of viewing the world. In 1991, the American television evangelist Pat Robertson warned that Bush Senior's victory over Iraq was not what it appeared. It was paving the way not for peace but for the triumph of evil. It was all so clear to Robertson. Ever since the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, a secret conspiracy had been pushing the world toward socialism and the triumph of the Anti-Christ. The European Union was clearly part of the plot and so was the United Nations. The Gulf War and the missiles that Saddam Hussein had fired on Israel were yet more steps toward the final reckoning."
"Pat Buchanan has not a clue about any solution to the problems facing the working class. But all he does do is tap on the anger. So he wants us to hate everybody, and that will be the solution to our economic problems...[People] are furious. And then Buchanan comes along, and it is a reactionary, racist, sexist, homophobic way. Well, the problem must be gays in America, must be Blacks in America, must be Japanese, Jews. You got the people, we’ll hate them...Pat Buchanan talk about raising the minimum wage? Of course not. Does Pat Buchanan talk about growing the trade union movement, helping workers organize? Of course not. Does he talk about a single-payer national healthcare system? Of course not...He’s a phony anti-corporate. In other words, the only thing — let’s be clear about this, okay? What Buchanan has a right point on — I was one of the leaders in Congress against NAFTA. I think NAFTA has been a disaster. I think when we have a $160 billion trade deficit, I think we have to be terribly concerned about making radical changes in our trade policy. But Buchanan does not go further than that. A lot of his anti-trade policy has to do with being anti-foreigner."
"Beam me up, Mr. Speaker."
"Mr. Speaker, we are here now in chapter 11. Members of Congress are official trustees presiding over the greatest reorganization of any bankrupt entity in world history, the U.S. government."
"Mr. Speaker, Kodak is laying off 10,000 workers. Now if that is not enough to overexpose your most recent negative, Fruit of the Loom is cutting 3,000 jobs and moving to Mexico. Unbelievable. It is getting easier to find Charlie Trie and Elvis than it is to find a good factory job here in America. Beam me up. I think it is time for Congress to ask themselves a very simple little commonsense question: If our trade program is so great, why does Japan not do it? Think about that. I yield back all the balance of jobs and say one last thing here. From snapshots to long johns, American workers just keep getting their assets kicked."
"Beam me up. The IRS does not need more workers. The IRS does not need more money. These stumbling, fumbling, bumbling mistake-prone nincompoops have got to go."
"Many of them are so dumb they could throw themselves at the ground and miss."
"Conservatives define compassion not by the number of people who receive some kind of government aid but rather by the number of people who no longer need it."
"I think it is important for all those young out there, who someday hope to play real football, where you throw it and kick it and run with it and put it in your hands, a distinction should be made that football is democratic, capitalism, whereas soccer is a European socialist sport."
"This is a quality that has appeared often enough in American history — and outside America as well. Senators like Ted Kennedy have been prominent before, bearing names like Henry Clay or Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, Robert Taft, Barry Goldwater and Hubert Humphrey. Governors like New York Republican Nelson Rockefeller or Alabama Democrat George Wallace. A Congressman like Jack Kemp. Non-office holders like Martin Luther King in the United States or Mohandas Gandhi in India or Nelson Mandela in South Africa (who later became president of his country) can, through sheer force of personality, come to dominate the political scene of the day without ever bearing a single official title."
"As long as there are only 3 to 4 people on the floor, the country is in good hands. It's only when you have 50 to 60 in the Senate that you want to be concerned."
"I mean, there's always somebody in somebody's administration who jumps out early, sells a book, and goes after the guy who hired him, … I don't know if that's good. It may be good business; it's not good politics."
"If something happened along the route and you had to leave your children with Bob Dole or Bill Clinton, I think you would probably leave them with Bob Dole."
"Something is wrong with America. I wonder sometimes what people are thinking about or if they're thinking at all."
"At least she's the president of something, which is more than I can say."
"I, Robert Joseph Dole, do solemnly swear... Sorry. Wrong speech."
"If Lincoln had an affair with a slave woman, it would be an outrage, but when Clinton does it with one of his staff, everyone is okay with it."
"If we had known we were going to win control of the Senate, we'd have run better candidates."
"I once called Carter a chicken fried McGovern and I take that back because I've come to respect McGovern."
"He lost the election, and I regret that he did, but they did. He had Rudy Giuliani running all over the country, claiming fraud. He never had one bit of fraud in all those lawsuits he filed and statements he made."
"I'm a Trumper. ... I'm sort of Trumped out, though."
"I don't like to second-guess, but I do believe we've lost something. I can't get my hand on it, but we're just not quite where we should be, as the greatest democracy in the world. And I don't know how you correct it, but I keep hoping that there will be a change in my lifetime."
"Even more distressing is how insignificant many of the subjects I wrote about look in retrospect. I spent months covering Senator Bob Dole’s run for president. I traveled on Dole’s plane, jockeyed to interview him, followed him across the country like a teenaged Led Zeppelin groupie. In 1996, Bob Dole was a big deal. It’s hard now to understand why. That’s true for so many people I covered. We thought they were important. Now they’re forgotten. A surprising number of them are dead, though I guess that shouldn’t be surprising. Death and irrelevance are coming for all of us. That’s the one certain thing. Repeat that to yourself every morning, and things fall into perspective. Most of what we think matters really doesn’t."
"Dole, like many from his generation, presumably did not know how to handle LGBTQ+ issues, and most likely out of unfamiliarity didn’t do much for our community, which was also being left behind while he was in the Senate. However, when he ran for president in 1988, Dole lambasted his competitors for their AIDS-bashing speeches, saying, "There is, you know, such a thing as compassion." At that time and during that tragedy, getting anyone in power to show some compassion was a rarity. In 1995, running for president again (he became the GOP’s nominee in 1996), Dole clumsily flip-flopped with a donation sent to him by the Log Cabin Republicans. He accepted it, then sent it back saying he didn’t agree with the gay group’s agenda, then accepted it again, saying it had something to do with a mail mishap. It was rather embarrassing, to say the least. I think that’s how Dole approached LGBTQ+ issues, out of embarrassment, with hidden compassion. During the late ’80s to mid-’90s, most members of Congress were older white men, and the last thing in the world they wanted to talk about was "homosexual" issues. This is why the government was tragically so late in the game when it came to fighting AIDS."
"Dole gave up his Senate seat after serving for over 30 years when he ran for president, so once Clinton was in office, Dole had little sway over policy, but he was opposed not only to gays in the military but also to same-sex marriage, and that was as late as 2014, before same-sex marriage became legal nationwide. By then, Dole was in his 90s, and most likely still stuck in his ways. We can’t say that Dole was an ally, but I’m not so sure he should inspire our ire. He was from a generation that is disappearing at a very rapid rate. They were raised during a time when things like speaking about sexuality were taboo. Who really knew what was in his heart? I just always thought about the two guys I knew who worked for him, who loved him very much. However, we can — and should — commend him for his tremendous sacrifice during World War II. He nearly died defending our country and lived with his disabilities astonishingly until age 98. He was, and is, a legitimate American hero. Because of him and his generation, we are free — at least for the time being, and hopefully after 2024."
"We can also commend him for his comity. When he became the GOP leader in the 1980s, he said, “I don’t wait for the consensus. I try to help build it.” He was not only successful in working with the very liberal Sen. Ted Kennedy, Democrat from Massachusetts, in getting the historic ADA passed, but also worked with Democrats to help expand food stamp and school lunch programs, and to create nutrition programs for low-income pregnant women, mothers, and young children. He also played a leading role in passing a ramped-up clean air act, public housing laws, and an extension of the Voting Rights Act. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Dole was sitting in McConnell’s seat right now and understood the assault on voting rights that are currently taking place in state legislatures? He would understand the urgency to pass a bill to help strengthen and protect voting rights for all. And wouldn’t it be nice if Dole, who could be equally crusty as the other men in Congress and who had an acerbic wit, could nonetheless have had a leadership role in getting to the bottom of the January 6 insurrection? He fiercely loved democracy, the Senate, and our Constitution perhaps like no other member of Congress in history. And that’s because he almost died from all of that. He would surely want to convict anyone — even the former president — who betrayed all that he revered and stood for. I heard that he wept while the Capitol was under assault."
"When I attended the signing of the ADA, I was fortunate enough to sit behind and catty-corner to Dole during the ceremony, and I watched his reaction during the entire event because he was so close to me. When President George H.W. Bush gave him full credit for bringing such sweeping legislation to fruition, I saw Dole quickly wipe away a tear. A man from his generation was loath to cry in public. But when I saw that moment of emotion from him, I remembered his worrying about a dehydrated young man trying to get a job in Congress. Dole might not have been our biggest ally for queer rights, but he might go down in history as being one of American democracy’s most notorious defenders and biggest advocates, and that’s how he should be remembered."
"Now people call Bob Dole a moderate. Bob Dole is not a moderate. Bob Dole is an extremely conservative person."
"The radio and press have once again chewed off more than they can bite. They continue to confuse personality with politics. They seem to assume that I'm lying when I state that I am not a candidate for the Presidency. True, all the present candidates once denied they had any intention of running. But the fact that I am also a liar, doesn't make me a candidate."
"I've repeatedly warned we must avoid the extremists: those who say we should pull out our troops in Vietnam immediately, those who say we should escalate and go right into North Vietnam... I tell you, we should continue doing what we have been: just messing around."
"As a keen political observer, I've noticed that most people do not really vote for someone for the Presidency as much as they vote against the other candidate. And I think President Johnston's [sic] decision was unfair to these people."
"I ask you, will I solve our civil rights problems? Will I unite this country and bring it forward? Will I obliterate the national debt? [long pause] Sure, why not? Thank you."
"A good many people today feel our present draft laws are unjust. These people are called soldiers. In one of the arguments against the draft, we hear it is unfair, immoral, discourages young men from studying, ruins their careers and their lives. Picky, picky, picky! We propose a draft lottery, in which the names of all eligible males will be put into a hat, and the men will be drafted according to their hat sizes. The tiny heads will go into the military service, and the fat heads will go into government."
"After all, the leaders of our country were not elected to be tittered at. Censors have to draw the line somewhere. For instance, we are allowed to say Ronald Reagan is a lousy actor, but we're not allowed to say he's a lousy governor – which is ridiculous. We know he's a good actor. And you can't say anything bad about President Johnston [sic], because you shouldn't insult the President. But if you compliment him, who will believe it?"
"Many political experts have told me that nobody will vote for me because America is not ready for such decisive and dynamic leadership. They tell me these things, and I say nay to the negative nincompoops who never nourished the nihilistic nerve to name a novice to nail down the nomination."
"Left-wing or right-wing. No, I'm not either. I'm kind of middle-of-the-bird."
"Here and now, I am hereby publicly challenging all of the other leading candidates to debate on the issues of the campaign. I challenge Ronald Reagan to meet me on his home grounds, the back lot of Warner Brothers. And I challenge Herbert Humphrey [sic] to debate on his home grounds. I do have some reservations about meeting George Wallace on his home grounds, but I'm willing to meet him on a neutral site in Harlem."
"I've conducted my campaign thus far in the true American political tradition: I lied about my intention to run [...] I have been consistently vague on all the issues [...] Therefore I promise you all, my fellow Americans, that I will continue to make promises that I will be unable to fulfill."
"I do not claim that I can solve all the world's problems by myself. If I did, I'd have to run as a Republican or a Democrat."
"… let's all remember that we have a government "of the people, for the people, and by the people", and there are very few people in our government that you can't buy."
"We've got to step up our conservation efforts before it's too late. We're not protecting our lands and natural resources. Take the Grand Canyon for example; I'm sure that at one time it was a beautiful piece of land, and just look at the way we've let it go."
"Growing hemp as nature designed it is vital to our urgent need to reduce greenhouse gases and ensure the survival of our planet."
"If all fossil fuels and their derivatives, as well as trees for paper and construction were banned in order to save the planet, reverse the Greenhouse Effect and stop deforestation; then there is only one known annually renewable natural resource that is capable of providing the overall majority of the world's paper and textiles; meet all of the world's transportation, industrial and home energy needs, while simultaneously reducing pollution, rebuilding the soil, and cleaning the atmosphere all at the same time... and that substance is -- the same one that did it all before -- Cannabis Hemp... Marijuana!"