Colin Powell Quotations

Success is the result of perfection, hard work, learning from failure, loyalty, and persistence.

Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.

Get mad, then get over it.

A dream doesn't become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work.

There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.

Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.

If a leader doesn't convey passion and intensity then there will be no passion and intensity within the organization and they'll start to fall down and get depressed.

If you are going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little matters. Excellence is not an exception, it is a prevailing attitude.

Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate and doubt, to offer a solution everybody can understand.

Many interviewers when they come to talk to me, think they're being progressive by not mentioning in their stories any longer that I'm black. I tell them, 'Don't stop now. If I shot somebody you'd mention it.'

Some of the generals are saying, 'We're making progress. We are clearing an area.' But you really don't defeat the Taliban by clearing an area. They move.

Fit no stereotypes. Don't chase the latest management fads. The situation dictates which approach best accomplishes the team's mission.

But just as they did in Philadelphia when they were writing the constitution, sooner or later, you've got to compromise. You've got to start making the compromises that arrive at a consensus and move the country forward.

When you decide to get involved in a military operation in a place like Syria, you've got to be prepared, as we learned from Iraq and Afghanistan, to become the government, and I'm not sure any country, either the United States or I don't hear of anyone else, who's willing to take on that responsibility.

Surround yourself with people who take their work seriously, but not themselves, those who work hard and play hard.

Never neglect details. When everyone's mind is dulled or distracted the leader must be doubly vigilant.

I think whether you're having setbacks or not, the role of a leader is to always display a winning attitude.

It ain't as bad as you think. It will look better in the morning.

No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.

We got rid of a terrible dictator. We gave the Iraqi people an opportunity for a new life under a representative form of government.

The commander in the field is always right and the rear echelon is wrong, unless proved otherwise.

I was born in Harlem, raised in the South Bronx, went to public school, got out of public college, went into the Army, and then I just stuck with it.

Have fun in your command. Don't always run at a breakneck pace. Take leave when you've earned it, spend time with your families.

The healthiest competition occurs when average people win by putting above average effort.

Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.

Giving back involves a certain amount of giving up.

The chief condition on which, life, health and vigor depend on, is action. It is by action that an organism develops its faculties, increases its energy, and attains the fulfillment of its destiny.

In other words, don't expect to always be great. Disappointments, failures and setbacks are a normal part of the lifecycle of a unit or a company and what the leader has to do is constantly be up and say 'we have a problem, let's go and get it'.

Don't let your ego get too close to your position, so that if your position gets shot down, your ego doesn't go with it.

You don't know what you can get away with until you try.

I try to be the same person I was yesterday.

In terms of the legal matter of creating a contract between two people that's called marriage, and allowing them to live together with the protection of law, it seems to me is the way we should be moving in this country.

I always like to take my time and examine the two candidates, see not only the two candidates but the policies they will bring in, the people they will bring in, who they might appoint to the Supreme Court, and look at the whole range of issues before making a decision.

Politics is not bean bags. It's serious, tough stuff.

We need to understand that we as citizens and as a government in any community throughout this country have no more important obligation than to educate those who are going to replace us.

I don't want to spend the rest of my life giving speeches.

You can't just have slogans, you can't just have catchy phrases. You have to have an agenda. And I think what the Republican Party has to do, if it's going to incorporate the tea party efforts in it, is to come up with an agenda that the American people can see, touch, and actually believe in, and something they believe in.

We all hoped in 2001 that we could put in place an Afghan government under President Karzai that would be able to control the country, make sure al-Qaeda didn't come back, and make sure the Taliban wasn't resurging. It didn't work out.

It's a disgrace that we have millions of people who are uninsured.

Don't bother people for help without first trying to solve the problem yourself.

My own experience is use the tools that are out there. Use the digital world. But never lose sight of the need to reach out and talk to other people who don't share your view. Listen to them and see if you can find a way to compromise.

Never let your ego get so close to your position that when your position goes, your ego goes with it.

Organization charts and fancy titles count for next to nothing.

Bad news isn't wine. It doesn't improve with age.

Wouldn't it be great if we could look forward to a whole world in which no child will be left behind?

War should be the politics of last resort. And when we go to war, we should have a purpose that our people understand and support.

It's not just a matter of whether you support Obama or Romney. It's who they have coming with them. I always keep my powder dry, as they say in the military.

It's nice to say let's be bipartisan. But we're a partisan nation. We were raised as a partisan nation.

You should see what our Founding Fathers used to say to each other and in the early part of our nation. But what they were able to do, especially in Philadelphia in 1787, four months, they argued about what a House should be, what a Senate should be, the power of the president, the Congress, the Supreme Court. And they had to deal with slavery.

Don't be afraid to challenge the pros, even in their own backyard.

So like any football or basketball coach, you always always believe you're going to win.

The United States is not stingy. We are the greatest contributor to international relief efforts in the world.

The only bipartisanship you ever see is when they finally sign a bill and everybody says, 'Gee, isn't that wonderful?'

Economy's got to get moving, we've got to get the unemployment rate down. That may be the defining issue of the campaign.

There are lots of countries that are having these kinds of internal civil wars in other parts of the world and nobody is talking about intervening.

I don't know that there is much the United States can do except work with the international community.

I don't think we handled the aftermath of the fall of Baghdad as well as we might have. But that's now history.

I respect the fact that many denominations have different points of view with respect to gay marriage and they can hold that in the sanctity in the place of their religion and not bless them or solemnize them.

Too often we act - ask our schools to be truant officers, our teachers to be truant officers, because we're giving them children who have, you know, they're not ready to learn. And if they're not ready to learn by the third grade, they know they're behind.

Today I can declare my hope and declare it from the bottom of my heart that we will eventually see the time when that number of nuclear weapons is down to zero and the world is a much better place.

What you're seeing with Occupy Wall Street and the others are people who are unhappy and they're directing their unhappiness now toward Wall Street and toward those they think are doing too well in our society.

Foe means enemy. Now, will we have differences of opinion with the Russians? Yes. Will they get mad at us from time to time, and we get mad at them? That's part of the normal diplomatic relations.

I think the Iranians are clearly determined to have a nuclear program. And we have to assume that with a nuclear program they have the capability and the will to create a nuclear weapon.

It was the Congress that imposed 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell,' it was certainly my position, my recommendation to get us out of an even worse outcome that could have occurred.

It isn't enough just to scream at the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. We need our political system to start reflect this anger back into, 'How do we fix it? How do we get the economy going again?'

Look at the world. There is no pure competitor to the United States of America.

I consider myself a moderate Republican. I have very, very moderate social views, and I'm pretty strong on, on defense matters.

The purposes of the United States should not be doubted. The Security Council resolutions will be enforced - the just demands of peace and security will be met - or action will be unavoidable. And a regime that has lost its legitimacy will also lose its power.

We strongly oppose it, ... It will cause us international difficulties, and it opens up other opportunities for others to try to seek similar relief.

We stand ready to help, but that help can only come when North Korea has abandoned its programs to achieve a nuclear weapons capability, something that the international community thought it had done years ago,

We didn't deal with Yasser Arafat when we were putting the road map together, and so his comments don't mean a whole lot to me.

Unless North Korea ends its program, it cannot expect the benefits of relations with the outside world.

We have no intention of invading North Korea or taking hostile action against North Korea,

The regime only allows interviews with inspectors in the presence of an Iraqi official, a minder, ... The official Iraqi organization charged with facilitating inspections announced, announced publicly and announced ominously that, 'Nobody is ready to leave Iraq to be interviewed.'

ways to communicate with the people of Iran to convince them that the policies their leaders have been following are inappropriate.

Mr. Arafat has not been playing a helpful role, ... And if he wanted to play a helpful role, he would be supporting Prime Minister Abbas, not frustrating his efforts.

China has a role to play and I hope China will play that role,

has the interest of the Haitian people at heart.

I think we have stabilized things right now to the point where we can continue working the diplomatic and political track and persuade everyone that is the direction we should continue to move.

It is not up to Iraq to dictate the conditions to the United Nations, but for the United Nations to dictate the conditions to Iraq, ... If the United Nations does not act, then the United States, joined by other willing nations, must act.

Laurence Foley had devoted his own life to U.S. government service and to improving the lives of others through his work with the Agency for International Development, ... He will be deeply missed.

The American people to this point have taken it in stride, ... And I don't think they are upset yet to a point where it is troubling to the nation.

Whether it should or should not have been in the speech is something we can certainly discuss and debate,

We are committed to ensuring that as we review our force posture in the Balkans, we do so with full consultation with our NATO allies ... and in the process of doing so, make sure that we have the right mixture and balance of forces at all times.

What we would be committed to would be a representative government where all the Iraqi people decide who should lead their nation, and lead it in a way that keeps it together as a single nation and where all parts of the nation - Shia, Sunni and Kurds - are able to live free and in peace and believe that their interests are represented by the government.

I would not presume from this distance, nor would America presume to say who should be the leader of the Iraqi nation.

We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, is determined to make more.

It remains our policy to change the regime until such time as the regime changes itself. So far, we cannot be sure that he is cooperating or he [Saddam Hussein] is acting in a way that could give us comfort, or should give the international community comfort, that he is giving up his weapons of mass destruction. He continues to give us statements that suggest he is not in possession of weapons of mass destruction when we know he is.

Just hit my 75th birthday, I'm feeling great!

The most effective means of ensuring the government's accountability to the people is an aggressive, free, challenging, untrusting press.

When you wrestle with a pig, he has fun, and you just end up dirty.

It is the job of leaders to eliminate uncertainty.

Free speech is intended to protect the controversial and even outrageous word; and not just comforting platitudes too mundane to need protection.

No one has done more to prevent conflict - no one has made a greater sacrifice for the cause for Peace - than you, America's proud missile submarine family. You stand tall among our heroes of the Cold War.

Ambition and hatred are enough to bring Iraq and al Qaeda together

The Court is perhaps one of the last citadels of jealously preserved individualism. For the most part, we function as nine, small independent law firms.

I am confident that we will find evidence that makes it clear he had weapons of mass destruction.

The long bitter years of the Cold War are over. America and her allies have won; totally, decisively, and overwhelmingly....So thank you SAC. Job well done. Enjoy your retirement.

Policies that emanate from ivory towers often have an adverse impact on the people out in the field who are fighting the wars or bringing in the revenues.

A sense of shame is not a bad moral compass.