Top 60 Colin Powell Quotes

Experts often possess more data than judgment.

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.’

We got rid of a terrible dictator. We gave the Iraqi people an opportunity for a new life under a representative form of government.

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

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

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

Economy’s got to get moving, we’ve got to get the unemployment rate down. That may be the defining issue of the campaign.

Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer’s no. That’s not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim American kid believing that he or she could be president?

What we have to find is the right level of regulation of our financial system so that it has the incentive to invest in things, but at the same time, it is sufficiently regulated so it can’t get in the kind of trouble that we have seen in the past and we have seen recently.

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

I consider myself a moderate Republican. I have very, very moderate social views, and I’m pretty strong on, on defense matters.

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.

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.

Children need to get a high-quality education, avoid violence and the criminal-justice system, and gain jobs. But they deserve more. We want them to learn not only reading and math but fairness, caring, self-respect, family commitment, and civic duty.

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

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

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.

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

Wouldn’t it be great if we could look forward to a whole world in which no child will be left behind?

The country would be a lot better off if we stopped having comment sections. And if we got rid of Twitter.

If a leader doesn’t convey passion and intensity then there will be no passion and intensity within the organization and they’ll start to fall down and get depressed.

Giving back involves a certain amount of giving up.

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.

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

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.

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.

Get mad, then get over it.

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.

Yup, the whole birther movement was racist.

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?’

There’s not going to be a World War III, because there is no one to have World War III with.

Fit no stereotypes. Don’t chase the latest management fads. The situation dictates which approach best accomplishes the team’s mission.

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

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.

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.

Trump just looks stupid trying to appeal to blacks and Latinos.

When you decide to get involved in a military operation in a place like Syria, you’ve got to be prepared, as we learned from Iraq and Afghanistan, to become the government, and I’m not sure any country, either the United States or I don’t hear of anyone else, who’s willing to take on that responsibility.

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

I try to be the same person I was yesterday.

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.

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.

Surround yourself with people who take their work seriously, but not themselves, those who work hard and play hard.

The Army will take its lessons learned. They’re excellent at looking into themselves and reflecting on what did we do right, what did we do wrong.

I don’t know that there is much the United States can do except work with the international community.

Trump has no sense of shame.

Throughout my career, I learned plenty about war on the battlefield, but I learned even more about the importance of finding peace. And that is what the State Department and U.S.A.I.D. do: prevent the wars that we can avoid so that we fight only the ones we must.

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.

It ain’t as bad as you think. It will look better in the morning.

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

I think whether you’re having setbacks or not, the role of a leader is to always display a winning attitude.

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.

But just as they did in Philadelphia when they were writing the constitution, sooner or later, you’ve got to compromise. You’ve got to start making the compromises that arrive at a consensus and move the country forward.

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.

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.

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.

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

Politics is not bean bags. It’s serious, tough stuff.

No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.

Organization charts and fancy titles count for next to nothing.