Quotes by Colin Powell

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

Our strategy in going after this army is very simple. First we are going to cut it off, and then we are going to kill it.

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

Excellence is not an exception; it is a prevailing attitude.

In the last several years, I have been troubled by the right shift of the Republican party too far to the right.

President Assad, I worked with. I know him reasonably well, met with him a few times, and he's a liar.

You're not just voting for an individual, in my judgment, you're voting for an agenda. You're voting for a platform. You're voting for a political philosophy.

Standing in support of children is something we should all be able to get behind, regardless of party affiliation.

It takes more courage to send men into battle than to fight the battle yourself.

First you train the followers to accomplish the mission. Second, you resource them: Make sure that they have the tools to do the job. Third, you reward them: You give them medals or bonuses.

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

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

You have to make sure you know why you are going to war and then use decisive force to end it as soon as possible.

Pissing people off doesn't mean you're doing the right things, but doing the right things will almost inevitably piss people off.

Trust is the glue that holds an org together and the lubricant that moves it forward.

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

When Jerry Springer thinks you've gone too far, my friends, you have gone too far.

I was taught to think about mission and people. Mission. What are you trying to accomplish? Don't do anything until you know what the mission is. Drilled into our hearts and into our heads.

Even the greatest of all strategists must occasionally take into account the presence of an enemy.

I think you can improve on that natural ability with training and exposure to great leaders of the past and to management theories.

As a leader you set the tone for your entire team. Communicate your vision.

I'm sleeping like a baby, too. Every two hours, I wake up, screaming.

I happen to hold a bachelor of science degree in geology... And my greatest contribution to the field of science is that I never entered it.

The United Nations will spearhead our efforts to manage the new conflicts (that afflict our world)... Yes the principles of the United Nations Charter are worth our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

People have asked me, 'What would you have done if you hadn't gone into the Army?' I'd say I'd probably be a bus driver. I don't know.

The bottom line in all of it is that, in life, it's all about people.

Leaders honor their core values, but they are flexible in how they execute them.

One of the most worrisome things that emerges from the thick intelligence file we have on Iraq's biological weapons is the existence of mobile production facilities used to make biological agents.

You know you're a good leader when people follow you out of curiosity.

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

There are a lot of bigger issues we have to be worrying about with respect to our relationship to China, and the longer they drag out the situation, the more difficult it is to get this relationship back on track.

All values are important, everyone who has ever touched my life in some way was a mentor for good or bad. Life is a blend, and a person is a blend of all the influences that have touched their lives.

Keep looking below surface appearances. Don't shrink from doing so just because you might not like what you find.

When I was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I would still have junior officers brief me. Usually these people knew more about the subject we were discussing than I did. I had to make sure that they felt confident enough to tell me everything they believed.

All nations that are civilized and do not accept this kind of action as representing any sort of legitimate political cause are coming together to fight these terrorists.

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.

Don't just show kindness in passing or to be courteous. Show it in depth, show it with passion, and expect nothing in return. Kindness is not just about being nice; it's about recognizing another human being who deserves care and respect.

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

You have to create circumstances where your first-tier leader knows what you are trying to accomplish, because he is the one who's going to get it done.

I have never seen a good organization where the standards weren't high.

Leadership is all about people. It is not about organizations. It is not about plans. It is not about strategies. It is all about people-motivating people to get the job done. You have to be people-centered.

When you help the poorest in the world, you start to move them up an economic and social ladder, and they're not going to be moving toward violence or terrorism of the kind that we worry about.

You have to comply, you have to obey -- or you'd better resign and leave. But that is also the mark of a great leader -- somebody who, in the presence of inner conflict, will do the right thing.

No matter how significant or life-changing your greatest hit or miss might be, neither even begins to define who you are. Each of us is a product of all our experiences and all our interactions with other people. To cite calculus, we are the area under the curve.

My responsibility, our responsibility as lucky Americans, is to try to give back to this country as much as it has given us, as we continue our American journey together.

Leadership is the art of accomplishing more than the science of management says is possible.

I think leadership is both a trained thing and a natural gift.

The media only report stupid or careless answers, not stupid or unfair questions.

Use the formula P=40 to 70, in which P stands for the probability of success and the numbers indicate the percentage of information acquired. Once the information is in the 40 to 70 range, go with your gut.

I don't know who all of his advisers are, but I've seen some of the names and some of them are quite far to the right. And sometimes they might be in a position to make judgments or recommendations to the candidate that should get a second thought.

Finding the Russian scientists may be a problem being that Russia does not have a Social Security System, as here in America, that allows us to monitor, track down and capture an American citizen.

I went to graduate school as a lieutenant colonel after I had been in the army for 12 or 13 years. I learned so much from all the great management theorists. It gave me a greater understanding of my army experience and showed me the gaps in my knowledge.

I would sit and talk to any president who wishes to talk to me, but I'm not anxious to rule it in.

Another rule I have is: Don't let your ego get tied up in a policy dispute. Otherwise, if things don't go your way, you can end up breaking a relationship with somebody with whom you can't afford to break.

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

People get work done, not buildings, not staffs in a generic sense, and not plans, but people.

We have to be on guard that we don't spend so much time worrying about terrorism and guarding ourselves that we start to lose the essence of who we are as an open, freedom-loving people, welcoming to the rest of the world.

Saddam Hussein has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbours.

I'm absolutely sure that there are weapons of mass destruction there and the evidence will be forthcoming. We're just getting it just now.

I think all of the attention of the world, to include the attention of the Arab world, should be on Saddam Hussein and whether or not he is prepared to give up the weapons of mass destruction that he has used to terrorise the region.

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.

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.

As I've thought about gay marriage, I don't see any reason not to say that couples should be able to get married.

Failure is a part of life and you have to learn to deal with it. Failure is something that is part of life's cycle and it's from failure that you gain life experience.

Trump has no sense of shame.

The claims made about Iraq's WMD capabilities before the invasion were inaccurate, wrong, and in some cases, deliberately misleading.

What could be more important than equipping the next generation with the character and competence they need to become successful.

I think that military, corporate, and non-political organizations are pretty much similar.

A sense of shame is not a bad moral compass.

The United States-Israeli relationship is based on the broadest conception of American national interest in which our two nations are bound forever together by common democratic values and traditions. This will never change.

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

President Kennedy didn't negotiate out of the Cuban missile crisis simply because he and Khrushchev got along well. Khrushchev didn't have the cards.

We have practiced diplomacy since the very beginning of the nation. Sometimes it has not worked, and we've had to go to war. I always believe you should try to find peace and reconciliation before conflict. That has been the approach I've taken.

Russia isn't going to start a war. They can't afford it. I think Mr. Putin can be dealt with if we stop screaming at him. You can work with the guy. You just have to know who he is.

Engineering didn't take to me. And what saved me and kept me in college was I ran into ROTC cadets who were in a fraternity called The Pershing Rifles. And I found my place. I found discipline. I found structure. I found people that were like me and I liked.

You need to understand, if you take out a government, take out a regime, guess who becomes the government and regime and is responsible for the country? You are. So if you break it, you own it.

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.

Leadership is solving problems.