Colin Powell Quotes

• "90 percent of my time is spent on 10 percent of the world."
• "Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it."
• "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."
• "Experts often possess more data than judgment."
• "Get mad, then get over it."
• "Giving back involves a certain amount of giving up."
• "Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate and doubt, to offer a solution everybody can understand."
• "Have a vision. Be demanding."
• "I can think of nothing that Saddam Hussein can do diplomatically (to avoid war). I think that time is now over. He's had his chance, he has had many chances over the last 12 years and he has blown every one of those chances."
• "I don't want to spend the rest of my life giving speeches."
• "I try to be the same person I was yesterday."
• "I want to scare the hell out of the rest of the world."
• "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."
• "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."
• "It ain't as bad as you think. It will look better in the morning."
• "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."
• "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."
• "Never neglect details. When everyone's mind is dulled or distracted the leader must be doubly vigilant."
• "Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier."
• "Remain calm. Be kind."
• "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 healthiest competition occurs when average people win by putting above average effort."
• "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."
• "The United States is not stingy. We are the greatest contributor to international efforts in the world."
• "There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure."
• "Think hard about it: I'm running out of demons. I'm running out of villians. I'm down to Castro and Kim Il Sung."
• "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 have gone forth from our shores repeatedly over the last hundred years and we've done this as recently as the last year in Afghanistan and put wonderful young men and women at risk, many of whom have lost their lives, and we have asked for nothing except enough ground to bury them in."
• "When we are debating an issue, loyalty means giving me your honest opinion, whether you think I'll like it or not. Disagreement, at this stage, stimulates me. But once a decision has been made, the debate ends. From that point on, loyalty means executing the decision as if it were your own."
• "Wouldn't it be great if we could look forward to a whole world in which no child will be left behind?"
• "You don't know what you can get away with until you try."
• "When people come together, go to each other's country, and watch a conflict being played out on the field of sport, as opposed to the field of battle... then why can't that same spirit, that same philosophy, infect other aspects of relations? [Hoping India and Pakistan would develop their relationship off the pitch]"
• "You don't know what you can get away with until you try."
• "There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure."
• "The healthiest competition occurs when average people win by putting above average effort."
• "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."
• "I try to be the same person I was yesterday."
• "Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate and doubt, to offer a solution everybody can understand."
• "Bad news isn't wine. It doesn't improve with age."