Colin Powell Leadership Quotes & Sayings

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

The day the soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help them or concluded that you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership. — Colin Powell

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

You don't know what you can get away with until you try. — Colin Powell

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

He [Democritus] is probably best known for two of the most scientifically intuitive quotes ever uttered by an ancient: 'Nothing exists except atoms and space, everything else is opinion' ... — Leon M. Lederman

The impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time. — Thomas Jefferson

It is not our place to decide who should lead the Iraqi people. If Saddam [Hussein] leaves or has to be forced out of power and a new regime brought in, a new leadership brought in, I am confident it will be some combination of people inside the country and outside the country. — Colin Powell

Leadership is solving problems. — Colin Powell

Trust is the essence of Leadership. — Colin Powell

Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off. — Colin Powell

I crave stillness,
And yet I fear the moment
Stillness turns into boredom,
And the moment boredom
Turns into loneliness. — Chris Mc Geown

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

The price must be less than one half of the former high and preferably at or near its all time low. — Peter Cundill

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

Now it's high watermark
and floodtide in the heart
and time to go.
The sea-nymphs in the spray
will be the chorus now.
What's left to say?
Suspect too much sweet-talk
but never close your mind.
It was a fortunate wind
that blew me here. I leave
half-ready to believe
that a crippled trust might walk
and the half-true rhyme is love. — Seamus Heaney

The day you are not solving problems or are not up to your butt in problems is probably a day you are no longer leading. If your desk is clean and no one is bringing you problems, you should be very worried. It means that people don't think you can solve them or don't want to hear about them. Or, far worse, it means they don't think you care. — Colin Powell

Now I know from this very word and deed of yours what free choice is and is capable of, namely, madness. — Martin Luther

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

It is the US government's desire for the Iraqi people to lead themselves, not for any outside power to be the leadership for Iraq in the future. There may be some transition period where the international community would have to help the Iraqi people put in place a representative government. But that is the goal, not for the United States, or any other nation, for that matter, who might be in such a coalition, if one is formed, to serve as the leader of the Iraqi nation. — Colin Powell

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

I only did my duty to my country when I tried to oppose the criminal folly of Hitler. — Wilhelm Canaris