“With the press there is no ‘off the record.’”

You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.

If it were a fact, it wouldn’t be called intelligence.

If in doubt, move decisions up to the President.

Preserve the President’s options. He may need them.

Let’s stick something in the ground and not pretend that it’s perfect.

Don’t speak ill of your predecessors or successors. You didn’t walk in their shoes.

Amidst all the clutter, beyond all the obstacles, aside from all the static, are the goals set. Put your head down, do the best job possible, let the flak pass, and work towards those goals.

If we know anything, it is that weakness is provocative.

Don’t blame the boss. He has enough problems.

The price of being close to the President is delivering bad news. You fail him if you don’t tell him the truth. Others won’t do it.

Those who made the decisions with imperfect knowledge will be judged in hindsight by those with considerably more information at their disposal and time for reflection.

Know that the amount of criticism you receive may correlate somewhat to the amount of publicity you receive.

Be precise. A lack of precision is dangerous when the margin of error is small.

First rule of politics: you can’t win unless you’re on the ballot. Second rule: If you run, you may lose. And, if you tie, you do not win.

Your performance depends on your people. Select the best, train them and back them. When errors occur, give sharper guidance. If errors persist or if the fit feels wrong, help them move on. The country cannot afford amateur hour in the White House.

There are known knowns, things we know that we know; and there are known unknowns, things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns, things we do not know we don’t know.

Books allow you to fully explore a topic and immerse yourself in a deeper way than most media today. I’m looking forward to shifting more of my media diet towards reading books.

I think the media is among the most dishonest groups of people I`ve ever met.

In the modern media age, we are rarely surprised by what we see.

News is something somebody doesn’t want printed; all else is advertising.

If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you’re mis-informed.

The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses.

Social media has changed everything in our world. The collective humanity, as it was, has such a voice these days, and that’s never really existed before.

Everywhere you go you hear things that are untrue. You’ve just got to learn that if I don’t say it, physically out of my mouth, on camera, it’s not true.