Colin Powell
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.Collection: Education
There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.Collection: Work
It ain't as bad as you think. It will look better in the morning.Collection: Morning
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.Collection: Business
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.Collection: Politics
Politics is not bean bags. It's serious, tough stuff.Collection: Politics
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.Collection: Leadership
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.Collection: Legal
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.Collection: War
There's not going to be a World War III, because there is no one to have World War III with.Collection: War
Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.Collection: Wisdom
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.Collection: Health
I think whether you're having setbacks or not, the role of a leader is to always display a winning attitude.Collection: Attitude
A dream doesn't become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work.Collection: Work
Success is the result of perfection, hard work, learning from failure, loyalty, and persistence.Collection: Work
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.Collection: Attitude
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.Collection: Peace
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.Collection: Experience
Russia isn't going to start a war. They can't afford it. I think Mr. Putin can be dealt with if we stop screaming at him. You can work with the guy. You just have to know who he is.Collection: War
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.Collection: Government
Diplomacy is listening to what the other guy needs. Preserving your own position, but listening to the other guy. You have to develop relationships with other people so when the tough times come, you can work together.Collection: Work
Surround yourself with people who take their work seriously, but not themselves, those who work hard and play hard.Collection: Work
Bad news isn't wine. It doesn't improve with age.Collection: Age
90 percent of my time is spent on 10 percent of the world.Collection: History
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?'Collection: Anger
Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate and doubt, to offer a solution everybody can understand.Collection: Great
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.Collection: Peace
Get mad, then get over it.Collection: Anger
Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.Collection: Positive
Indeed, we're strongest when the face of America isn't only a soldier carrying a gun but also a diplomat negotiating peace, a Peace Corps volunteer bringing clean water to a village, or a relief worker stepping off a cargo plane as floodwaters rise.Collection: Peace
You need to understand, if you take out a government, take out a regime, guess who becomes the government and regime and is responsible for the country? You are. So if you break it, you own it.Collection: Government
Fit no stereotypes. Don't chase the latest management fads. The situation dictates which approach best accomplishes the team's mission.Collection: Best
The country would be a lot better off if we stopped having comment sections. And if we got rid of Twitter.
Standing in support of children is something we should all be able to get behind, regardless of party affiliation.
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.
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.
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'.
The United States is not stingy. We are the greatest contributor to international relief efforts in the world.
I don't want to spend the rest of my life giving speeches.
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.
Trump just looks stupid trying to appeal to blacks and Latinos.
It's a disgrace that we have millions of people who are uninsured.
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.
The idea that putting Americans 'first' requires a withdrawal from the world is simply wrongheaded because a retreat would achieve exactly the opposite for our citizens.
The only bipartisanship you ever see is when they finally sign a bill and everybody says, 'Gee, isn't that wonderful?'
So like any football or basketball coach, you always always believe you're going to win.
In 2008, I spoke out against calling the president a Muslim as if that was a curse. And then in 2012, once again, I was very disturbed about some of the intolerance I was seeing in the party, so I made a statement saying there's a level of intolerance in some parts of the Republican Party. And there was, and I think there still is.
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.
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.