Colin Powell Quotes

A sense of shame is not a bad moral compass.

Nobody wants to be in a mediocre organization. You don't have the same energy flowing through.

You need to learn what people have done, but you need to learn where they have failed... Usually when they fail it is in the execution.

Terrorism really flourishes in areas of poverty, despair and hopelessness, where people see no future

Great leaders are those who are able to look reality in the face, however painful it may be, and deal with it.

Actually, there is no more important task for a leader than to pick people. To make sure you have the very best people working for you.

Even the greatest of all strategists must occasionally take into account the presence of an enemy.

This is something else that is drilled into us in the military: Make sure you know who your replacement is, in case you become a casualty. So you have to have depth within an organization.

You have to create circumstances where your first-tier leader knows what you are trying to accomplish, because he is the one who's going to get it done.

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

Once the information is in the 40 to 70 range, go with your gut.

The one thing the terrorists cannot do -- not one of them, not 10 of them, not 10,000 of them -- they cannot change who we are.

I think leadership is both a trained thing and a natural gift.

Good and solid analysis and a formal way of looking at a problem [are the core ingredients of good decisions].

In my 35 years in the army I was in school for 6 years. I think corporations should take a look at whether they are investing enough in the development of their human capital.

I have seen many organizations where there is this sense of purpose in the headquarters but it never gets cascaded down to everybody within the organization.

Always be looking for the opportunities, and always be optimistic about what you can do with that opportunity.

One important element of leadership is taking care of the troops.

I regret that the presentation I made at the UN turned out to be wrong. It was wrong on the stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, but pretty much right on intentions and capabilities.

The best leaders are those who break that mission down into the organization's constituent parts, so that everybody understands their role and how it all builds into the whole.

The most effective means of ensuring the government's accountability to the people is an aggressive, free, challenging, untrusting press.

One of the most worrisome things that emerges from the thick intelligence file we have on Iraq's biological weapons is the existence of mobile production facilities used to make biological agents.

Finding the Russian scientists may be a problem being that Russia does not have a Social Security System, as here in America, that allows us to monitor, track down and capture an American citizen.

Diplomacy never stops, and, with or without an election, it never stops.

I have always tried to do my job in a way that I have people give me different points of view.

If you are black, if you are Puerto Rican or Hispanic, be proud of that. But don't let it become a problem. Let it become somebody else's problem.

You have achieved excellence as a leader when people will follow you anywhere if only out of curiosity.

Our model of politics is one that it is inclusive of all members of the society; all should be represented. That is the nature of our democracy.

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

I have always held the view that decisive force should be used in addressing a military conflict. The reason is simple: Why wouldn't you, if you could?

The Court is perhaps one of the last citadels of jealously preserved individualism. For the most part, we function as nine, small independent law firms.

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.

You have to comply, you have to obey - or you'd better resign and leave. But that is also the mark of a great leader - somebody who, in the presence of inner conflict, will do the right thing.

I think you can improve on that natural ability with training and exposure to great leaders of the past and to management theories.

I think that military, corporate, and non-political organizations are pretty much similar.

How often have we seen politicians take a principle position only to give it up three days later? That is what makes democracy so fascinating.

I recommended to the president [George Bush] that our focus had to be on al-Qaida, the Taliban and Afghanistan. Those were the ones who attacked the United States of America on 9/11.

The United States is not stingy. We are the greatest contributor to international relief efforts in the world.

There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more.

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

I try to be the same person I was yesterday.

I would sit and talk to any president who wishes to talk to me, but I'm not anxious to rule it in.

President Kennedy didn't negotiate out of the Cuban missile crisis simply because he and Khrushchev got along well. Khrushchev didn't have the cards.

The United States is still seen as the leader at the world that wants to be free.

It's really not a number I'm terribly interested in.

When you help the poorest in the world, you start to move them up an economic and social ladder, and they're not going to be moving toward violence or terrorism of the kind that we worry about.

When we have dealt with bin Laden and his network we will then broaden the campaign to go after other terrorists all around the world.

All nations that are civilized and do not accept this kind of action as representing any sort of legitimate political cause are coming together to fight these terrorists.

The president's personal staff has a unique role.

Saudi Arabia will have to decide its own path, and I don't know if it will decide a path like any other nation in the region or if it will design something that is unique to Saudi Arabia.