Robert Gates Quotes

It is amazing to a great many of us how Congress ignores the Constitution. For example, the 13th Amendment clearly states: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction." Currently, the average working person pays over forty percent of his earnings to the Government (City, State and National) and IT IS NOT VOLUNTARY! Did the people vote for these taxes? NO! They were imposed by a Communist dominated Congress. Therefore, Congress has declared that each and every wage earner is a SLAVE of the Government and the Government has a right to steal their money. WHY? ~ Robert Gates Sr.

What the hell am I doing here? I have walked right into the middle of a category-five shitstorm. ~ Robert Gates

I'm done doing this!' Obama said, finally erupting. 'We've all agreed on a plan. And we're all going to stick to that plan. I haven't agreed to anything beyond that.'

The 30,000 was a 'hard cap,' he said forcefully. 'I don't want enablers to be used as wiggle room. The easy thing for me to do - politically - would actually be to say no' to the 30,000. Then he gestured out the Oval Office windows, across the Potomac, in the direction of the Pentagon. Referring to Gates and the uniformed military, he said. 'They think it's the opposite. I'd be perfectly happy -' He stopped mid-sentence. 'Nothing would make Rahm happier than if I said no to the 30,000.'

There was some subdued laughter.

'Rahm would tell me it'd be much easier to do what I want to do by saying no,' the president said. He could then focus on the domestic agenda that he wanted to be the heart of his presidency. The military did not understand. 'Politically, what these guys don't get is it'd be a lot easier for me to go out and give a speech saying, 'You know what? The American people are sick of this war, and we're going to get out of there. ~ Bob Woodward

Never the less, it is no light thing to enter into a profession absolutely foreign and alien to the people among which one's lot is cast; a profession which seems as dim and faraway and unreal as the shores of Europe. ~ Robert E. Howard

If Mr. Einstein doesn't like the natural laws of the universe, let him go back to where he came from. ~ Robert Benchley

If you have no dreams, you shall live within them ~ Robert Burton

For anything with a name(and zero had so many) surely existed......Yet how could what doesn't exist, exist? ~ Robert D. Kaplan

How we long to remove the clutter from our lives not realizing that the clutter is our lives. ~ Robert Breault

A lot of good things start in Virginia; a lot of good things have started in Virginia. We're no strangers to firsts. ~ Robert Hurt

The tap'ring pyramid, the Egyptian's pride, And wonder of the world, whose spiky top Has wounded the thick cloud. ~ Robert Blair

And of course the World needs more love, but we need to be clear on what form that love will take. Sometimes love requires killing its object, to put it out of its misery or protect others. Sometimes love requires incarcerating its object to protect it or others. Sometimes love requires taxing and regulating its objects to protect and serve them. Sometimes love requires helping its object to help itself. Sometimes love requires giving its object a gift. But all of these are aspects of love, not merely the last, most popular example. I send love too, and my love takes many forms. My love varies with its objects. Yes, the World needs much more love. ~ Robert Peate

Did I kill him?" I said.

"No, miss," said Robert.

"Pity. ~ Franny Billingsley

No man should kill himself as long as he can be of the least use to anybody, and if you cannot find some person that you are willing to do something for, find a good dog and take care of him. You have no idea how much better you will feel. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll

Monkeys"
"You can buy cooler, more humdrum pets
a monkey deprived of his mother in the cradle
feels the want of her affection so keenly
he either pines away or masters you
by literally hanging on your neck
no ounce of your patience or courage is misplaced;
the worst is his air of boredom and neglect,
manifested in tail-chewing and fur plucking.
The whole species is vulnerable to killing colds,
likes straw, hay or bits of a torn blanket,
a floortray thinly covered with sawdust,
they need trapezes, shelves, old rubber tires
any string or beam will do to set them swinging
these charming youngsters tend to sour with age ~ Robert Lowell

Since I came to the World Bank in 2007, I have argued that we must 'modernize multilateralism.' ~ Robert Zoellick

We don't mind having sanctions banning us from Europe. We are not Europeans. ~ Robert Mugabe

These are all direct quotes, except every time they use a curse word, I'm going to use the name of a famous American poet:
'You Walt Whitman-ing, Edna St. Vincent Millay! Go Emily Dickinson your mom!'
'Thanks for the advice, you pathetic piece of E.E. Cummings, but I think I'm gonna pass.'
'You Robert Frost-ing Nikki Giovanni! Get a life, nerd. You're a virgin.'
'Hey bro, you need to go outside and get some fresh air into you. Or a girlfriend.'
I need to get a girlfriend into me? I think that shows a fundamental lack of comprehension about how babies are made. ~ John Green

If we are serious about climbing to higher ground, we will be found in church every Sunday - attending all of our meetings, partaking of the sacrament, participating in Sunday School, and contributing to the spirit found in Relief Society, Primary, and priesthood meetings. ~ Robert L. Millet

For the sensory thinker, the world of the mind bears a direct physical resemblance to the world outside. ~ Robert Sommer

An abusive culture, to me, is any culture that needs to single out and exclude a group. It's always a less productive culture because the organization's energy is diverted from lifting people up to keeping people down. It's like an autoimmune disease where the body sees its own organs as threats and begins attacking them. One of the most common signs of an abusive culture is the false hierarchy that puts women below men. ~ Melinda Gates

He's not sure how all the cowboys stay so good-looking in the movies when the country is so openly hostile to sartorial maintenance. ~ Robert Jackson Bennett

In the fifties I had dreams about touching a naked woman and she would turn to bronze or the dream about hot dogs chasing donuts through the Lincoln Tunnel. ~ Robert Klein

I didn't want to be known for punching out movie stars. ~ Robert Maillet

The range of debate between the dominant U.S. [political] parties tends to closely resemble the range of debate within the business class. ~ Robert Waterman McChesney

The East India Company's domination of the Indian economy was based on its private army. ~ Robert Trout

Robert Redford is like cheese: he ages well and I want to put him in my mouth. ~ T.J. Klune

Some artists imagine they've got a hold on this apparatus, which in fact has got a hold of them. As a result, they end up supporting a cultural prison that is out of their control. ~ Robert Smithson

By depriving the charged person of any defenses [the rulings] mean that sexual dalliance, however voluntarily engaged in, becomes harassment whenever an employee sees fit, after the fact, so to characterize it. ~ Robert Bork

I mean, if we said right now, there's somebody in the next room who's dying, let's all go save their life, you know, everybody would just get up immediately and go get involved in that. ~ Bill Gates

The raging rocks And shivering shocks Shall break the locks Of prison gates: And Phibbus' car Shall shine from far, And make and mar The foolish Fates. ~ William Shakespeare

No human culture is inaccessible to someone who makes the effort to understand, to learn, to inhabit another world. ~ Henry Louis Gates Jr.

God works through life, through people, and through physical, tangible, and material reality to communicate his healing presence in our lives. ~ Robert E. Webber

The role of the animal messenger in the dreams of modern city-dwellers is often to recall us to our wild side, and the natural path of our energy. ~ Robert Moss

Kill the heroes and you kill the soul of a nation. ~ Robert Ferrigno

He doesn't know what to make of me," Mat said softly.
"How very uncommon. I can't think of anyone else who has reacted that way to you, Mat. ~ Robert Jordan

Corporatists like Robert Schuman and Jean Monnet were bent on constructing the Brussels-based bureaucracy as a democracy-free zone. ~ Yanis Varoufakis

The government is somewhat inept, but the private sector is inept in general. How many companies do venture capitalists invest in that go poorly? By far most of them. However, every once in a while a Google or a Microsoft comes out, so people keep giving them money. ~ Bill Gates

Nobody ever inferred from the multiple infirmities of Windows that Bill Gates was infinitely benevolent, omniscient, and able to fix everything. ~ Simon Blackburn

Right now I'm trying to do a fragrance called Natalie. She's very, very much alive for us. ~ Robert Wagner

Build the kaizen habit of asking yourself small (and positive) questions... You are programming your brain for creativity ~ Robert Maurer

Drop dead-but first get permit ~ Robert A. Heinlein

The one you fight with the most is always the one who's most like you. ~ Robert Duvall

Yeah, I was always a big fan of noir. ~ Robert Rodriguez

The philosophy of Atheism has its root in the earth, in this life; its aim is the emancipation of the human race from all God-heads, be they Judaic, Christian, Mohammedan, Buddhistic, Brahmanistic, or what not. Mankind has been punished long and heavily for having created its gods, nothing but pain and persecution, have been man's lot since gods began. There is but one way out of this blunder. Man must break his fetters which have chained him to the gates of heaven and hell, so that he can begin to fashion out of his reawakened and illumined consciousness a new world upon the earth. ~ Emma Goldman

I always loved reading. Growing up, my favorite book was 'A Child's Garden of Verses,' by Robert Louis Stevenson. ~ Francine Pascal

Painting, sculpture and architecture are finished, but the art habit continues. ~ Robert Smithson

Sometimes I'll get to the end of a song, open my eyes and there's all these faces peering at me. It's quite horrifying. ~ Robert Smith

Stored away in some brain cell is the image of a long-departed aunt you haven't thought of in 30 years. Stored away in another cell is the image of a pink pony stitched on your first set of baby pajamas. All it takes to get that aunt mounted on the back of that pony is to eat a hunk of meatloaf immediately before going to bed. ~ Robert Breault

The variable that marks some periods as barren and some as rich in prophetic vision is in the interest, the level of seeking, the responsiveness of the hearers. The variable is not in the presence or absence or the relative quality and force of the prophetic voices. The prophet grows in stature as people respond to his message ... It is the seekers, then, who make the prophet. ~ Robert K. Greenleaf