Quotes By Colin Powell
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.
Colin Powell
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'.
Colin Powell
Wouldn't it be great if we could look forward to a whole world in which no child will be left behind?
Colin Powell
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.
Colin Powell
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.
Colin Powell
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.
Colin Powell
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.
Colin Powell
There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.
Colin Powell
I think whether you're having setbacks or not, the role of a leader is to always display a winning attitude.
Colin Powell
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.
Colin Powell
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.
Colin Powell
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.
Colin Powell
Never let your ego get so close to your position that when your position goes, your ego goes with it.
Colin Powell
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.
Colin Powell
I don't know that there is much the United States can do except work with the international community.
Colin Powell
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.
Colin Powell
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.
Colin Powell
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.'
Colin Powell
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.
Colin Powell