"I confess that as I prepare once again to retire from a life mostly spent in intelligence and defense that began 42 years ago, I have become quite modest with respect to grandiose pronouncements and forecasts about the future or our ability to discern it, especially when applying the so-called “lessons of history.” The noted American historian, Gordon Wood, has written, “History does not teach lots of little lessons. Insofar as it teaches any lessons, it teaches only one big one: that nothing ever works out quite the way its managers intended or expected.”
Secretary of Defense, Dr. Robert M. Gates in his address to Oxford Analytica (United Kingdom) on Friday, 19 September 2008
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