Famous Donald Rumsfeld Quotes

And for once, Donald Rumsfeld, in the news at the time over the Iraq war made sense to me: "As we know," he said, famously, "there are known knowns-things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns-things we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns- things we don't know we don't know.

But the main problem was that we failed to allow for what Donald Rumsfeld famously called the “unknown unknowns

We were forecasting based on the information in front of us—WYSIATI—but the chapters we wrote first were probably easier than others, and our commitment to the project was probably then at its peak. But the main problem was that we failed to allow for what Donald Rumsfeld famously called the “unknown unknowns.

You might have a sense of déjà vu about those first two types of dark data. In a famous news briefing, former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld nicely characterized them in a punchy sound bite, saying “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.”6 Rumsfeld attracted considerable media ridicule for that convoluted statement, but the criticism was unfair. What he said made very good sense and was certainly true.

Years later, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld famously brought public attention to the concept of “known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns.