Quotes from Colin Powell

If you get the dirty end of the stick, sharpen it and turn it into a useful tool.

You should never be so involved with your position/job that when the position is gone your entire self image is gone with it.

No matter how significant or life-changing your greatest hit or miss might be, neither even begins to define who you are. Each of us is a product of all our experiences and all our interactions with other people. To cite calculus, we are the area under the curve.

ON BUSY BASTARDS: A busy bastard can't stop finding things to do. He never rests and as a result, his staff never rests. He's always making work that expands to fill whatever time is available. The point I make in my book is: Be busy, work hard, but don't become so busy that you cut out other things in life, like family and recreation and hobbies. And never be so busy that you're not giving your staff and your followers enough time to do the same thing.

The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them.

It takes more courage to send men into battle than to fight the battle yourself.

I'm not perfect but I'll be the creator of perfection.

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.

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.

Perpetual optimism is a force leveler

A sense of shame is not a bad moral compass.

Fear and failure are always present. Accept them as part of life and learn how to manage these realities. Be scared, but keep going. Being scared is usually transient. It will pass. If you fail, fix the causes and keep going.

We can seldom get our children to do what we tell them, but they almost never fail to imitate us.

Tell me what you know. • Tell me what you don't know. • Then tell me what you think. • Always distinguish which from which.

Each of us is a product of all our experiences and all our interactions with other people.

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.

Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers.

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.

When things go badly, it is your fault, not theirs. You are responsible. Analyze how it happened, make the necessary fixes, and move on. No mass punishment or floggings. Fire people if you need to, train harder, insist on a higher level of performance, give halftime rants if that shakes a group up. But never forget that failure is your responsibility.

Whenever you place the cause of one of your actions outside yourself, it's an excuse and not a reason.

IT AIN'T AS BAD AS YOU THINK. IT WILL LOOK BETTER IN THE MORNING.

If you take the pay, earn it. Always do your very best. Even when no one else is looking, you always are. Don't disappoint yourself.

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

I get over it quickly and never lose control of myself.