Colin Powell was a former US Army general and statesman who served as the 65th United States Secretary. His parents were immigrants from Jamaica who moved to New York City.
After graduation, he joined the army and served for over 30 years. Colin also worked as National Security Advisor to President Ronald Reagan. Moreover, he received medals for bravery from Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
Here we have 112 motivational, leadership, decision making, success, learning, and political quotes by Colin Powell.
Colin Powell Motivational Quotes
“You don’t know what you can get away with until you try.” — Colin Powell
“Never let your ego get so close to your position that when your position goes, your ego goes with it.” — Colin Powell
“No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.” — Colin Powell
“Giving back involves a certain amount of giving up.” — Colin Powell
“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.” — Colin Powell
“Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off.” — Colin Powell
“Always focus on the front windshield and not the review mirror.” — Colin Powell
“Get mad, then get over it.” — Colin Powell
“Experts often possess more data than judgment.” — Colin Powell
“Don’t be afraid to challenge the pros, even in their own backyard.” — Colin Powell
“Bad news isn’t wine. It doesn’t improve with age.” — Colin Powell
“Organization charts and fancy titles count for next to nothing.” — Colin Powell
“I don’t want to spend the rest of my life giving speeches.” — Colin Powell
“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.” — Colin Powell
“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.” — Colin Powell
“A dream doesn’t become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work.-Colin Powell” — Colin Powell
“The ties that bind us are stronger than the occasional stresses that separate us.” — Colin Powell
“Luck tends to come to people who are prepared.” — Colin Powell
“Keep looking below surface appearances. Don’t shrink from doing so just because you might not like what you find.” — Colin Powell
“The healthiest competition occurs when average people win by putting above average effort.” — Colin Powell
“90 percent of my time is spent on 10 percent of the world.” — Colin Powell
“I’m not perfect but I’ll be the creator of perfection.” — Colin Powell
“It takes more courage to send men into battle than to fight the battle yourself.” — Colin Powell
“Be careful what you choose. You may get it.” — Colin Powell
“Always show more kindness than seems necessary, because the person receiving it needs it more than you will ever know.” — Colin Powell
“Perpetual optimism is a force leveler.” — Colin Powell
“You should never be so involved with your position/job that when the position is gone your entire self image is gone with it.” — Colin Powell
“I like Holiday Inns” — Colin Powell
“You can’t make someone else’s choices. You shouldn’t let someone else make yours.” — Colin Powell
“A sense of shame is not a bad moral compass.” — Colin Powell
“We can seldom get our children to do what we tell them, but they almost never fail to imitate us.” — Colin Powell
“Trying to get everyone to like you is a sign of mediocrity.” — Colin Powell
“It ain’t as bad as you think. It will look better in the morning.” — Colin Powell
“Each of us is a product of all our experiences and all our interactions with other people.” — Colin Powell
“Don’t let adverse facts stand in the way of a good decision.” — Colin Powell
“Have a vision. Be demanding.” — Colin Powell
“Look for intelligence and judgment and, most critically, a capacity to anticipate, to see around corners. Also look for loyalty, integrity, a high energy drive, a balanced ego and the drive to get things done.” — Colin Powell
“Don’t just show kindness in passing or to be courteous. Show it in depth, show it with passion, and expect nothing in return. Kindness is not just about being nice; it’s about recognizing another human being who deserves care and respect.” — Colin Powell
“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 state, stimulates me. But once a decision is made, the debate ends. From that point on, loyalty means executing the decision as if it were your own.” — Colin Powell
“The freedom to do your best means nothing unless you are willing to do your best.” — Colin Powell
Colin Powell Leadership Quotes
“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
“The commander in the field is always right and the rear echelon is wrong, unless proved otherwise.” — Colin Powell
“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.” — Colin Powell
“Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers who can cut through the argument debate and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand.” — Colin Powell
“You are the leader and the troops will reflect your emotions.” — Colin Powell
“Respect for leaders by followers can’t be mandated; it must be earned. It has to be given to leaders by their followers.” — Colin Powell
“Never neglect details. When everyone’s mind is dulled or distracted the leader must be doubly vigilant.” — 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
“Good leaders must know how to reward those who succeed and know when to retrain, move, or fire ineffective staff.” — Colin Powell
“It’s nice to say let’s be bipartisan. But we’re a partisan nation. We were raised as a partisan nation.” — Colin Powell
“You know you’re a good leader when people follow you out of curiosity.” — 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
“Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers.” — Colin Powell
“The best method of overcoming obstacles is the team method.” — Colin Powell
“Effective leaders are made, not born. They learn from trial and error, and from experience.” — Colin Powell
“Leadership is the art of accomplishing more than the science of management says is possible.” — Colin Powell
“Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.” — Colin Powell
Colin Powell Decision Making Quotes
“Don’t bother people for help without first trying to solve the problem yourself.” — 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
“Fit no stereotypes. Don’t chase the latest management fads. The situation dictates which approach best accomplishes the team’s mission.” — 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
“I consider myself a moderate Republican. I have very, very moderate social views, and I’m pretty strong on, on defense matters.” — Colin Powell
“The only bipartisanship you ever see is when they finally sign a bill and everybody says, ‘Gee, isn’t that wonderful?” — Colin Powell
“I try to be the same person I was yesterday.” — 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
“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.” — Colin Powell
“Surround yourself with people who take their work seriously, but not themselves.” — Colin Powell
“Freedom to be your best means nothing unless you are willing to do your best.” — 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
Colin Powell Success Quotes
“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
“There are no secrets to success: don’t waste time looking for them. Success is the result of perfection, hard work, learning from failure, loyalty to those for whom you work, and persistence.” — 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
“So like any football or basketball coach, you always always believe you’re going to win.” — Colin Powell
“There are no secrets to success: don’t waste time looking for them. Success is the result of perfection, hard work, learning from failure, loyalty to those for whom you work, and persistence.” — Colin Powell
“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.” — Colin Powell
“Perpetual Optimism is a Force Multiplier.” — Colin Powell
“Endeavors succeed or fail because of the people involved.” — Colin Powell
“There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hardwork, and learning from failure-” — 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
“The less you associate with some people, the more your life will improve. Any time you tolerate mediocrity in others, it increases your mediocrity. An important attribute in successful people is their impatience with negative thinking and negative acting people.” — Colin Powell
“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.” — Colin Powell
“There are no secrets to success. It’s the result of preparation, hard work, learning from failure.” — Colin Powell
“If you get the dirty end of the stick, sharpen it and turn it into a useful tool.” — Colin Powell
“Success is the result of perfection, hard work, learning from failure, loyalty, and persistence.” — Colin Powell
“Economies got to get moving, we’ve got to get the unemployment rate down. That may be the defining issue of the campaign.” — Colin Powell
Colin Powell Learning Quotes
“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.” — Colin Powell
“It’s a disgrace that we have millions of people who are uninsured.” — 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
“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.” — Colin Powell
“I was taught to think about mission and people. Mission. What are you trying to accomplish? Don’t do anything until you know what the mission is. Drilled into our hearts and into our heads.” — Colin Powell
“Officers have been trying for hundreds of years to outsmart soldiers and have still not learned that it cannot be done. We can always count on the native ingenuity of the American GI to save us from ourselves, and to win wars.” — Colin Powell
Colin Powell Quotes About Politics
“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.” — Colin Powell
“We got rid of a terrible dictator. We gave the Iraqi people an opportunity for a new life under a representative form of government.” — 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
“Look at the world. There is no pure competitor to the United States of America.” — 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
“Some of the generals are saying, ‘We’re making progress. We are clearing an area.’ But you really don’t defeat the Taliban by clearing an area. They move.” — Colin Powell
“I don’t know that there is much the United States can do except work with the international community.” — Colin Powell
“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.” — Colin Powell
“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.” — Colin Powell
“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.” — Colin Powell
“The United States is not stingy. We are the greatest contributor to international relief efforts in the world.” — 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
“I don’t think we handled the aftermath of the fall of Baghdad as well as we might have. But that’s now history.” — Colin Powell
“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?” — Colin Powell
“Politics is not bean bags. It’s serious, tough stuff.” — 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
“You can’t just have slogans, you can’t just have catchy phrases. You have to have an agenda. And I think what the Republican Party has to do, if it’s going to incorporate the tea party efforts in it, is to come up with an agenda that the American people can see, touch, and actually believe in, and something they believe in.” — Colin Powell
“Our strategy in going after this army is very simple. First we are going to cut it off, and then we are going to kill 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
“Well, the correct answer is he is not a Muslim, he’s a Christian. He’s always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?” — Colin Powell
“Foe means enemy. Now, will we have differences of opinion with the Russians? Yes. Will they get mad at us from time to time, and we get mad at them? That’s part of the normal diplomatic relations.” — Colin Powell