Daily Inspiration Quote by Michael Chertoff

A bureaucratic shrug disguised as a historical lesson, Michael Chertoff's line works because it normalizes dysfunction while sounding like sober realism. "Took 40 years" is doing double duty: it's a timeline, but also an alibi. It invites the listener to accept that sprawling security institutions are, by nature, slow-moving creatures that require decades of trial, error, and accretion before they become legible - let alone effective. In other words: don't expect quick wins, and don't blame us for the mess while we're building the machine.

The context matters. Chertoff is a post-9/11 government architect, speaking in an era when the U.S. was rapidly assembling new structures (notably the Department of Homeland Security) under intense public pressure. By invoking the Department of Defense - a massive, now-canonical pillar of the national security state - he reaches for a precedent that feels unquestionable. The subtext is strategic: if DoD needed 40 years to evolve into its modern form, then DHS, still new and politically contested, should be granted patience, budget, and deference.

The sentence is also carefully passive. "Get where it got" avoids specifying what "where" is: efficiency? power? coherence? accountability? That vagueness lets the listener project success onto an institution whose track record can be debated. It's a public servant's version of rhetorical insulation: a claim that sounds empirical, carries institutional gravitas, and quietly lowers the standard by which present-day performance will be judged.