Top 40 Robert M. Gates Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “There will be boots on the ground if there’s to be any hope of success in the strategy.”

— Robert M. Gates

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

— Robert M. Gates

Featured in: Reading Quotes

3. “What I know concerns me. What I don’t know concerns me even more. What people aren’t telling me worries me the most.”

— Robert M. Gates

4. “We should never lose sight of the ethos that has made the Marine Corps – where ‘every Marine is a rifleman’ – one of America’s cherished institutions and one of the world’s most feared and respected fighting forces.”

— Robert M. Gates

5. “Your countrymen owe you their freedom and their security. They sleep safely at night and pursue their dreams during the day because you stand the watch and protect them... You are the best America has to offer. My admiration and affection for yo is with limit, and I will think about you and your families and pray for you every day for the rest of my life. God Bless you.”

— Robert M. Gates

6. “Well, I’ve ruffled a few feathers at all the institutions I’ve led. But I think that’s part of leadership.”

— Robert M. Gates

7. “No president is well-served by groupthink or by everybody singing from the same sheet of music they think he’s on.”

— Robert M. Gates

8. “One of the toughest battles in intelligence is combating conventional wisdom.”

— Robert M. Gates

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

— Robert M. Gates

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

— Robert M. Gates

11. “Development is a lot cheaper than sending soldiers.”

— Robert M. Gates

12. “I know that if everyone is a hero, then no one truly is. I concede the term is thrown around far too casually.”

— Robert M. Gates

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

— Robert M. Gates

14. “Most governments lie to each other. That’s the way business gets done.”

— Robert M. Gates

15. “Well, what I’ve said is that the war in Iraq will always be clouded by how it began, which was a wrong premise, that there were in fact no weapons of nuclear – weapons of mass destruction.”

— Robert M. Gates

16. “There is no international problem that can be addressed or solved without the engagement and leadership of the United States and everybody in the world knows that, its just fact of life. So sometimes I think we could conduct ourselves with a little more humility.”

— Robert M. Gates

17. “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 East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,’ as General MacArthur so delicately put it.”

— Robert M. Gates

18. “I had learned at Defense, a firm deadline was necessary to move the bureaucracy.”

— Robert M. Gates

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

— Robert M. Gates

20. “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.”

— Robert M. Gates

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21. “The United States has been a global power since late in the 19th century.”

— Robert M. Gates

22. “I wish I could set deadlines for the Congress, but that’s just not the way the Constitution is written.”

— Robert M. Gates

23. “Some people have said, in so many words, that I’m kind of wooly-headed in believing that the Iranians would see not having nuclear weapons as more in their security interest than not.”

— Robert M. Gates

24. “Things have gotten so nasty in Washington.”

— Robert M. Gates

25. “Well, Israel, obviously, thinks of the Iranian nuclear program as an existential threat to Israel.”

— Robert M. Gates

26. “You know, if I were an – if I were a Taliban, I’d say, ‘What did al-Qaida ever do for me except get me kicked out of Afghanistan?’”

— Robert M. Gates

27. “In the privacy of their offices, members of Congress could be calm, thoughtful, and sometimes insightful and intelligent in discussing issues. But when they went into an open hearing, and the little red light went on atop a television camera, it had the effect of a full moon on a werewolf. Many would posture and preach, with long lectures and harshly critical language; some become raving lunatics.”

— Robert M. Gates

28. “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.”

— Robert M. Gates

29. “The reality is, the United States has global interests. Our defense budget is about the same as the defense budgets or military budgets of every other country in the world put together.”

— Robert M. Gates

30. “No policy has proved more successful in making friends for the United States, during the cold war and since, than educating students from abroad at our colleges and universities.”

— Robert M. Gates

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

— Robert M. Gates

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

— Robert M. Gates

33. “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.”

— Robert M. Gates

34. “It has become clear that America ’s civilian institutions of diplomacy and development have been chronically undermanned and underfunded for far too long – relative to what we spend on the military, and more important, relative to the responsibilities and challenges our nation has around the world.”

— Robert M. Gates

35. “Defense is not like other discretionary spending.”

— Robert M. Gates

36. “I always thought Obama was “presidential.” He treated the office of the presidency with respect. I rarely saw him in the Oval Office with a coat and tie, and he always conducted himself with dignity. He was a man of personal integrity, and in his personal behavior – at least to the extent I could observe it – he was an excellent role model... I thought Obama was first-rate in both intellect and temperament.” Page 300.”

— Robert M. Gates

37. “When I was the director of Central Intelligence in the early ’90s, I tried to get the Air Force to partner with us in building drones. And they didn’t want to, because they had no pilots.”

— Robert M. Gates

38. “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?”

— Robert M. Gates

39. “I don’t think any president that I worked with has ever said ’pretty please.”

— Robert M. Gates

40. “I’m a big advocate of drones.”

— Robert M. Gates

41. “I remember sitting at the witness table listening to this litany of woe and thinking, What the hell am I doing here? I have walked right into the middle of a category-five shitstorm.”

— Robert M. Gates

42. “One of the big changes in the Congress since I first came to Washington is that all of these folks go home every weekend. They used to play golf together; their families got to know each other, go to dinner at each other’s homes at weekends – and these would be people who were political adversaries.”

— Robert M. Gates

43. “When it comes to predicting future conflicts, what kind of fights they will be, and what will be needed, we need a lot more humility.”

— Robert M. Gates

44. “I consider myself a Republican.”

— Robert M. Gates

45. “Of the estimated forty million men and women who have served in the armed forces since the Civil War, fewer than 3,500 have received the Medal of Honor, the highest honor the United States can bestow, some 60 percent posthumously.”

— Robert M. Gates