The Best Colin Powell quotes

Leadership is all about people … and getting the most out of people. — Colin Powell

Leadership is solving problems. — Colin Powell

Trust is the essence of Leadership. — Colin Powell

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

We are not trapped in what the science of management says we can do. We are capable of doing what the art of leadership says is possible. — Colin Powell

Leadership is the art of accomplishing more than the science of management says is possible. — Colin Powell

One important element of leadership is taking care of the troops. — Colin Powell

Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers. — Colin Powell

You know you’re a good leader when people follow you out of curiosity. — Colin Powell

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

I would not presume from this distance, nor would America presume to say who should be the leader of the Iraqi nation. — Colin Powell

You are the leader and the troops will reflect your emotions. — Colin Powell

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. — Colin Powell

It is the job of leaders to eliminate uncertainty. — Colin Powell

One thing the military does far better than business is train its own leaders. I can’t go to IBM and hire a battalion commander. They don’t have any. — Colin Powell

Every human endeavor has leaders and followers, and your job as a leader is to inspire. — 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

You can’t get it all done yourself. The best leaders are not afraid of picking people who are better than they are and who may one day replace them. — Colin Powell

Leaders honor their core values, but they are flexible in how they execute them. — Colin Powell

Effective leaders are made, not born. They learn from trial and error, and from experience. — 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

As a leader you set the tone for your entire team. Communicate your vision. — Colin Powell

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

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

Leaders have followers. The primary role of a leader is to convey to those followers a sense of purpose, vision, and mission. — Colin Powell

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

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. — 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

The United States stands willing to work with a transformed Palestinian Authority with new leaders coming to the front. — Colin Powell

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. — Colin Powell

Good leaders must know how to reward those who succeed and know when to retrain, move, or fire ineffective staff. — Colin Powell

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

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

I want to scare the hell out of the rest of the world. — Colin Powell

Percent of my time is spent on 10 percent of the world. — Colin Powell

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

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. — Colin Powell

We need stable regimes in this part of the world [the Mideast] who will be partners and friends of ours, because the fact of the matter is we do rely on imported oil to fuel our economy and to fuel our nation. — 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

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

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. — Colin Powell

The most influential people in my life will never show up on a Google search. — Colin Powell

I have found that leadership is leadership is leadership. It applies whether you are in government or in corporate life or in non–profit life. — 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

All values are important, everyone who has ever touched my life in some way was a mentor for good or bad. Life is a blend, and a person is a blend of all the influences that have touched their lives. — Colin Powell

I don’t want to spend the rest of my life giving speeches. — Colin Powell

The bottom line in all of it is that, in life, it’s all about people. — Colin Powell

Failure is a part of life and you have to learn to deal with it. Failure is something that is part of life’s cycle and it’s from failure that you gain life experience. — Colin Powell

The United Nations will spearhead our efforts to manage the new conflicts (that afflict our world)… Yes the principles of the United Nations Charter are worth our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. — 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

There is no such thing as an unimportant person in an organization. — Colin Powell

I think that military, corporate, and non–political organizations are pretty much similar. — Colin Powell

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. — Colin Powell

An organization that is not facing up to people who are not getting the job done, is going to have difficulties. — Colin Powell

Nobody wants to be in a mediocre organization. You don’t have the same energy flowing through. — Colin Powell

Leadership is all about people. It is not about organizations. It is not about plans. It is not about strategies. It is all about people–motivating people to get the job done. You have to be people–centered. — Colin Powell

Organization charts and fancy titles count for next to nothing. — Colin Powell

I have never seen a good organization where the standards weren’t high. — 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

Give me the right people and I don’t much care what organization you give me. Good things will happen. Give me the wrong people and it doesn’t matter what you do with the organization. Bad things will happen. — Colin Powell

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. — Colin Powell

The essence of leadership is building bonds of trust in your organization. — Colin Powell

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

I’m absolutely sure that there are weapons of mass destruction there and the evidence will be forthcoming. We’re just getting it just now. — Colin Powell

We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, is determined to make more. — Colin Powell

So has the strategic decision been made to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction by the leadership in Baghdad? I think our judgment has to be clearly not. — 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

Drones are just another weapon, and they turn out to be a very effective weapon that puts no American troops at risk, and I don’t see why we shouldn’t use them against identified enemy targets. — Colin Powell

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. — Colin Powell

He (Saddam Hussein) has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbours. — Colin Powell

I am confident that we will find evidence that makes it clear he had weapons of mass destruction. — Colin Powell

Our failure was that our intelligence community thought [Saddam Hussein ] had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction. That was a mistake. There is fallibility in human intelligence and in human decisions. — Colin Powell

Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer is ‘no.’ That’s not America. — 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

The claims made about Iraq’s WMD capabilities before the invasion were inaccurate, wrong, and in some cases, deliberately misleading. — Colin Powell

The commander in the field is always right and the rear echelon is wrong, unless proved otherwise. — Colin Powell

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. — Colin Powell