Quotes By Colin Powell

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.

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

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

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

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.

Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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?'

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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 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.

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

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

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

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'.