Famous Quotes

Quotes by Colin Powell

• 90 percent of my time is spent on 10 percent of the world.
• A dream doesn't become reality through magic it takes sweat, determination and hard work.
• Bad news isn't wine. It doesn't improve with age.
• 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.
• Fit no stereotypes. Don't chase the latest management fads. The situation dictates which approach best accomplishes the team's mission.
• Get mad, then get over it.
• Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate and doubt, to offer a solution everybody can understand.
• 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.
• I think whether you're having setbacks or not, the role of a leader is to always display a winning attitude.
• 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.
• 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'.
• 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 ain't as bad as you think. It will look better in the morning.
• 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?'
• Just hit my 75th birthday, I'm feeling great!
• 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.
• 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.
• Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.
• Politics is not bean bags. It's serious, tough stuff.
• Success is the result of perfection, hard work, learning from failure, loyalty, and persistence.
• Surround yourself with people who take their work seriously, but not themselves, those who work hard and play hard.
• 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.
• 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.
• There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• We got rid of a terrible dictator. We gave the Iraqi people an opportunity for a new life under a representative form of government.
• 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.
• 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.