Colin Powell - My American Journey (1995)

20 Sourced Quotes

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It ain't as bad as you think. It will look better in the morning.

Colin Powell
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
With vision only, you get no follow-through. With enforcers only, the vision is realized but leaves a lot of wreckage.

Colin Powell
For all the hardship, I was still excited to be on the trail, testing my endurance, feeling especially alive as strength and fatigue flowed alternately through my limbs.

Colin Powell
We have to start thinking of America as a family. We have to stop screeching screeching at each other, stop hurting each other, and instead start caring for, sacrificing for and sharing with each other... We cannot move forward if cynics and critics swoop down and pick apart anything that goes wrong, to a point where we lose sight of what is right, decent and uniquely good about America.

Colin Powell
I have lived in and risen in a white-dominated society and white-dominated profession, but not by denying my race, not by seeing it as a chain holding me back or an obstacle to overcome. Others may use my race against me, but I will never use it against myself.

Colin Powell
When I was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I would still have junior officers brief me. Usually these people knew more about the subject we were discussing than I did. I had to make sure that they felt confident enough to tell me everything they believed.

Colin Powell
The healthiest competition occurs when average people win by putting in above-average effort.

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

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

Colin Powell
When we are debating an issue, loyalty means giving me your honest opinion, whether you think I'll like it or not. Disagreement, at this state, stimulates me. But once a decision is made, the debate ends. From that point on, loyalty means executing the decision as if it were your own.

Colin Powell
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
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.

Colin Powell
Don't be buffaloed by experts and elites. Experts often possess more data than judgment. Elites can become so inbred that they produce hemophiliacs who bleed to death as soon as they are nicked by the real world.

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

Colin Powell
Don't be afraid to challenge the pros, even in their own backyard.

Colin Powell
You can't make someone else's choices. You shouldn't let someone else make yours.

Colin Powell
Many of my generation, the career captains, majors, and lieutenant colonels seasoned in that war [Vietnam], vowed that when our turn came to call the shots, we would not quietly acquiesce in halfhearted warfare for half-baked reasons that the American people could not understand.

Colin Powell
The policies — determining who would be drafted and who would be deferred, who would serve and who would escape, who would die and who would live — were an antidemocratic disgrace … I am angry that so many of the sons of the powerful and well placed … managed to wangle slots in reserve and National Guard units. Of the many tragedies of Vietnam, this raw class discrimination strikes me as the most damaging to the ideal that all Americans are created equal and owe equal allegiance to their country.

Colin Powell
Have fun in your command. Don't always run at a breakneck pace. Take leave when you've earned it, spend time with your families.

Colin Powell