Colin Powell Quotes

Anyone can lead when the plan is working. The best lead when the plan falls apart.

An important part of leadership is being able to hold two things in your mind at once: Dealing with the reality, whatever it may be, and focus on hope for the future. Any leader helping an organization through challenges needs to be able to do both.

I've always been calm, and I'm very good in a crisis.

I have my moments when I am down and low. But I gather myself when decisions are to be taken.

Why did the achievers overcome problems while thousands are overwhelmed by theirs? They refused to hold on to the common excuses for failure. They turned their stumbling blocks into stepping stones. They realized that they couldn't determine every circumstance in life but they could determine their choice of attitude towards every circumstance.

Great leaders don't blame the tools they are given. Great leaders work to sharpen them.

[Donald] Trump, I think, is the sort of guy that if he maybe thought he'd made a little bit of a mistake, would find a way out, he wouldn't want to say, "Well, that's what I've done and I'm sticking to it, and I don't give a damn." Which is what the other people in America would be like.

I never panic when I get lost. I just change where it is I want to go.

I learned a long time ago that I can't control the challenges the creator sends my way, but I can control the way I think about them and deal with them

Life is going to hit you some line drives, and sometimes you'll have to think fast. However, it's better to think first than to think fast.

Well, the first quality of being a good leader is you have to be able to follow. See, a good leader can't just be the leader all the time, I have to be able to follow.

Great presidents, and even those not so great, never complained about the hands they were dealt. Just the opposite. They assumed they were in the big chair to meet big challenges, no matter how difficult.

One of the best paradoxes of leadership is a leader's need to be both stubborn and open-minded. A leader must insist on sticking to the vision and stay on course to the destination. But he must be open-minded during the process.

Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her: but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game.

A president, like a college freshman, can't know in advance which questions he'll have to answer or what topics he'll have to master. He has to be flexible, supple, and responsive. He has to be comfortable with multiple-choice.

As a leader, you have to have the ability to assimilate new information and understand that there might be a different view.

Prudence is what makes someone a great commodities trader - the capacity to face reality squarely in the eye without allowing emotion or ego to get in the way. It's what is needed by every quarterback or battlefield general.

I stopped thinking too much about what could happen and relied on my physical and mental strength to play the right shots at the right time.

Let me define a leader. He must have vision and passion and not be afraid of any problem. Instead, he should know how to defeat it. Most importantly, he must work with integrity.

In the end, it all comes to choices to turn stumbling blocks into stepping stones.

There is just no getting around that turning bad things into good things is up to you.

It’s not the man; it’s the plan.

I have been taught by experience, and never hesitate to sacrifice personal feeling to the requirements of the hour.

Men of routine or men who can do what they are told are not hard to find; but men who can think and plan and tell the routine men what to do are very rare. They are paid in proportion to the supply and demand of them

Kids are resilient. My kids are resilient.