No battle plan survives contact with the enemy
—Colin Powell
Topics: Battle
Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off.
—Colin Powell
Freedom to be your best is nothing unless you’re willing to do your best.
—Colin Powell
Topics: Freedom, Action
The healthiest competition occurs when average people win by putting in above-average effort.
—Colin Powell
Topics: Effort
Bad news is not wine. It does not improve with age.
—Colin Powell
Topics: Wine
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
Topics: Service
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
Topics: Failure, Success, Secrets of Success, Success & Failure, Preparation, Character
Keep looking below surface appearances. Don’t shrink from doing so just because you might not like what you find.
—Colin Powell
Topics: Appearance
They were anticipating a different kind of immediate aftermath of the fall of Baghdad, it turned out to be not exactly as they had anticipated.
—Colin Powell
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
Topics: Attitude, Excellence
Don’t be afraid to challenge the pros, even in their own backyard.
—Colin Powell
Topics: Challenges
Every organization should tolerate rebels who tell the emperor he has no clothes.
—Colin Powell
I want everybody to be scared to death of us. I don’t say that in a bellicose way. I say that in a way that is peaceful, frankly.
—Colin Powell
Topics: Power
Free speech is intended to protect the controversial and even outrageous word; and not just comforting platitudes too mundane to need protection.
—Colin Powell
Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.
—Colin Powell
Topics: Ego
Either move or be moved.
—Colin Powell
Topics: Action
There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work and learning from failure.
—Colin Powell
Topics: Success, Failure, Success & Failure, Preparation
Organization charts and fancy titles count for next to nothing.
—Colin Powell
Topics: Organization
None of us can change our yesterdays, but all of us can change our tomorrows.
—Colin Powell
Topics: Change
Get mad, then get over it.
—Colin Powell
Topics: Anger
Leadership is the art of accomplishing more than the science of management says is possible.
—Colin Powell
Experts often possess more data than judgment.
—Colin Powell
Topics: Professionalism, Experts
A dream doesn’t become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work.
—Colin Powell
Topics: Dreams
Trying to get everyone to like you is a sign of mediocrity.
—Colin Powell
Policies that emanate from ivory towers often have an adverse impact on the people out in the field who are fighting the wars or bringing in the revenues.
—Colin Powell
Topics: Politics
But you have to understand, American democracy is not like the system you have. We’re not an ocean liner that sails across the ocean from point A to point B at 30 knots. That’s not American democracy. American democracy is kind of like a life raft that bobs around the ocean all the time. Your feet are always wet. Winds are always blowing. You’re cold. You’re wet. You’re uncomfortable—but you never sink.
—Colin Powell
Topics: Democracy
Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.
—Colin Powell
Topics: Optimism
There comes a time when soft power or talking with evil will not work where, unfortunately, hard power is the only thing that works.
—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
Topics: Ego
Organization doesn’t really accomplish anything. Plans don’t accomplish anything, either. Theories of management don’t much matter. Endeavors succeed or fail because of the people involved. Only by attracting the best people will you accomplish great deeds.
—Colin Powell
Topics: Management
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- H. Norman Schwarzkopf United States Army Officer
- Eric Shinseki American Army Officer
- Omar Bradley American Military Leader
- George S. Patton American Military Leader
- Hyman G. Rickover American Admiral
- George Marshall American Military Leader
- Douglas MacArthur American Military Leader
- Robert S. Johnson American Military Leader
- William Tecumseh Sherman American Military General
- Robert E. Lee American Military General
Leave a Reply