Colin Powell Quotations | Page 3

Our senior officers knew the war was going badly. Yet they bowed to groupthink pressure and kept up pretenses. ...Many of my generation, the career captains, majors, and lieutenant colonels seasoned in that war, 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.

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.

Well, the correct answer is he is not a Muslim, he’s a Christian. He’s always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?

A dream doesn't become reality...

The president's personal staff has a unique role

We would like to see new leaders come forward who would be accountable and responsible, who would succeed in ending the terror and the violence. And it is up to the Palestinian people to judge who those new leaders should be.

I happen to hold a bachelor of science degree in geology... And my greatest contribution to the field of science is that I never entered it.

There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more.

There's no doubt in my mind, though, that the Iraqi people would be better off with a different leader who did not waste their oil on weapons, as opposed to education, as opposed to healthcare, as opposed to food, as opposed to roads, as opposed to clean water. It is really sinful, a crime, what Saddam Hussein has done with the wealth of the Iraqi people over the last 30 years.

The United States is looking at a way to launch peace with a disarmed Iraq. And so we are studying the declaration that Iraq submitted. Other members of the security council are studying the declaration, as is Unmovic and IAEA, and I would not make a judgment as to whether or not the declaration will be found deficient and whether or not that might lead to a material breach and whether or not, if it did, that would lead to action on the part of the United Nations.

At the same time I think it is absolutely necessary that there be no confusion, no misunderstanding that if the Iraqis.. do not comply, then there will be consequences and those consequences will involve the use of military force to disarm them through changing the regime.

This is about Americans getting off the sidelines and getting onto the playing field, .. This is about each and every one of us who have been blessed by the wealth of this country sharing that blessing by reaching down and reaching back and lifting up somebody in need. That's what America is all about. That's what being American is all about.

There is no such thing as an unimportant person in an organization.

Finding the Russian scientists may be a problem being that Russia does not have a Social Security System, as here in America, that allows us to monitor, track down and capture an American citizen.

The one thing the terrorists cannot do -- not one of them, not 10 of them, not 10,000 of them -- they cannot change who we are.

We are rather candid with them about the nature of their political processes and the state of development of their institutions, but they are looking to the West because they know that's where success lies

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.

The ties that bind us are stronger than the occasional stresses that separate us.

I'm absolutely sure that there are weapons of mass destruction there and the evidence will be forthcoming. We're just getting it just now.

I want to scare the hell out of the rest of the world.

A sense of shame is not a bad moral compass.

Policies that emanate from ivory towers often have an adverse impact on the people out in the field who are fighting the wars or bringing in the revenues.

The long bitter years of the Cold War are over. America and her allies have won; totally, decisively, and overwhelmingly....So thank you SAC. Job well done. Enjoy your retirement.

I am confident that we will find evidence that makes it clear he had weapons of mass destruction.

The Court is perhaps one of the last citadels of jealously preserved individualism. For the most part, we function as nine, small independent law firms.

Ambition and hatred are enough to bring Iraq and al Qaeda together

No one has done more to prevent conflict - no one has made a greater sacrifice for the cause for Peace - than you, America's proud missile submarine family. You stand tall among our heroes of the Cold War.

Free speech is intended to protect the controversial and even outrageous word; and not just comforting platitudes too mundane to need protection.

It is the job of leaders to eliminate uncertainty.

When you wrestle with a pig, he has fun, and you just end up dirty.

The most effective means of ensuring the government's accountability to the people is an aggressive, free, challenging, untrusting press.

Just hit my 75th birthday, I'm feeling great!

It remains our policy to change the regime until such time as the regime changes itself. So far, we cannot be sure that he is cooperating or he [Saddam Hussein] is acting in a way that could give us comfort, or should give the international community comfort, that he is giving up his weapons of mass destruction. He continues to give us statements that suggest he is not in possession of weapons of mass destruction when we know he is.

We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, is determined to make more.

I would not presume from this distance, nor would America presume to say who should be the leader of the Iraqi nation.

What we would be committed to would be a representative government where all the Iraqi people decide who should lead their nation, and lead it in a way that keeps it together as a single nation and where all parts of the nation - Shia, Sunni and Kurds - are able to live free and in peace and believe that their interests are represented by the government.

There are many roles to be played, and we believe that every peace-loving nation in the world -- every nation that would like to see a more stable Middle East, that would like to see a democracy arise in that part of the world -- would like to play a role,

We thought it would be useful to point out to the Pakistani leadership at every level that we are looking for and expecting their fullest cooperation ... as well as (to see) how helpful they might be if we find a basis to act on that information,

Let me blow that up for you again.

President Kennedy didn't negotiate out of the Cuban missile crisis simply because he and Khrushchev got along well. Khrushchev didn't have the cards.

The burden is on Saddam Hussein. And our policy, our national policy - not the UN policy but our national policy - is that the regime should be changed until such time as he demonstrates that it is not necessary to change the regime because the regime has changed itself.

That's not really a number I'm terribly interested in.

Use the formula P=40 to 70, in which P stands for the probability of success and the numbers indicate the percentage of information acquired. Once the information is in the 40 to 70 range, go with your gut.

You have achieved excellence as a leader when people will follow you anywhere if only out of curiosity.

Time is passing, ... We have to look at the reality of the situation and ... redouble our efforts and get on with it.

He (Saddam Hussein) has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbours.

When we have dealt with bin Laden and his network we will then broaden the campaign to go after other terrorists all around the world.

I understand that and I have had very candid discussions with Saudi leaders in the past. I respect their culture and their heritage and their traditions, but I think that they now, as they move forward, will have to start examining these traditions and these practices to see whether or not change is appropriate.

Nobody has ever said in the United States government that we are going to war next month. No decision has been made by the president because, as he said to the United Nations, he wants the United Nations to live up to its responsibilities and he wants Saddam Hussein to cooperate.

We want to approach this in a multilateral way, talking with our friends, consulting with our security council colleagues in the United Nations, hoping to find a way to solve this peacefully, but at the same time recognising that unless the threat of military force is there, Iraq will not disarm.

The United States is not looking for a way to launch war.

We are not going to dwell on those things that divide us. We are going to rejoice in those things that keep us together to make this a better country - to reach down and back to touch every young person in need!

We hope that more assistance will be available to the nations of the region, to include Egypt, on the three pillars that I discussed today: civic society development, education and economic development.

Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier. I am talking about a gung-ho attitude that says 'we can change things here, we can achieve awesome goals, we can be the best. 'Spare me the grim litany of the 'realist;' give me the unrealistic aspirations of the optimist any day.

Bahrain is moving at one pace, Morocco another, Qatar at another, Kuwait at yet another. And we are there to assist our friends.

With respect to our friends in the [Iraq] region, each has its own system, each will have to make its own judgment as to whether it will change, how fast it will change, and we hope that we can help influence them as to how change comes about and what change might be better for them than other forms of change.

Change of regime with respect to Iraq had nothing to do with this; it had everything to do with the fact that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. And at the time change in regime as a policy came into effect in 1998, it was seen as the only way to compel Iraq to get rid of its weapons of mass destruction.

Don't take counsel of your fears or naysayers.

90 percent of my time is spent on 10 percent of the world.

If you are black, if you are Puerto Rican or Hispanic, be proud of that. But don't let it become a problem. Let it become somebody else's problem.

There is only one China. Taiwan is not independent. It does not enjoy sovereignty as a nation, and that remains our policy, our firm policy.

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

I think our initiative with respect to education and economic development can work in Saudi Arabia and it is up to the Saudis to decide how they wish to transform their society in order to make it prepared for the challenges of the 21st century.

Trust is the glue that holds an org together & the lubricant that moves it forward.

Each of us must work to become a hardheaded realist, or else we risk wasting our time and energy on pursuing impossible dreams. Yet constant naysayers pursue no less impossible dreams. Their fear and cynicism move nothing forward. They kill progress. How many cynics built empires, great cities, or powerful corporations?

My two Jamaican cousins ... were studying engineering. 'That's where the money is,' Mom advised. ... I was to be an engineering major, despite my allergy to science and math. ... Those who preceded me at CCNY include the polio vaccine discoverer, Dr. Jonas Salk ... and eight Nobel Prize winners. ... In class, I stumbled through math, fumbled through physics, and did reasonably well in, and even enjoyed, geology. All I ever looked forward to was ROTC. Autobiographical comments on his original reason for going to the City College of New York, where he shortly turned to his military career.

Remain calm, be kind.

There is no suggestion of regime change; quite the contrary, this is an initiative to help people and to help governments who are inclined toward change.

I'm going to be bringing people into the public diplomacy function of the department who are going to change from just selling us in the old USIA way to really branding foreign policy, branding the department, marketing the department, marketing American values to the world and not just putting out pamphlets.

Every human endeavor has leaders and followers, and your job as a leader is to inspire.

I'll tell you what they're all going to face - whichever one of them becomes president on Jan. 21 of 2009 - they will face a military force, a United States military force, that cannot sustain, continue to sustain, 140,000 people deployed in Iraq, and the 20 (to) 25,000 people we have deployed in Afghanistan, and our other deployments.

Once the information is in the 40 to 70 range, go with your gut.

One of the most worrisome things that emerges from the thick intelligence file we have on Iraq's biological weapons is the existence of mobile production facilities used to make biological agents.

Nobody is ready to leave Iraq to be interviewed.

War is never a happy solution, but it may be the only solution. We must exhaustively explore other possible solutions before we make the choice for war. Every political and diplomatic effort should be made to avoid war while achieving your objective.

Think hard about it: I'm running out of demons. I'm running out of villians. I'm down to Castro and Kim Il Sung.

I have always held the view that decisive force should be used in addressing a military conflict. The reason is simple: Why wouldn't you, if you could?

Saudi Arabia will have to decide its own path, and I don't know if it will decide a path like any other nation in the region or if it will design something that is unique to Saudi Arabia.

Baghdad fell on April 9, 2003, Hussein and his regime were brought down, we declared "Mission Accomplished" and celebrated victory . . . and chaos erupted. We did not assert control and authority over the country, especially Baghdad. We did not bring with us the capacity to impose our will. We did not take charge. And Iraq did not in a few weeks magically transform itself into a stable nation with democratic leaders. Instead a raging insurgency engulfed the country.

I think all of the attention of the world, to include the attention of the Arab world, should be on Saddam Hussein and whether or not he is prepared to give up the weapons of mass destruction that he has used to terrorise the region.

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.

It was President [Bill] Clinton and the United States congress in 1998 which said that the regime has to be changed because the regime would not give up its weapons of mass destruction. We came into office in 2001 and kept that policy because Saddam Hussein had not changed.

It was not the United States who invaded Kuwait; it was Iraq. It was not the United States that went to war with Iran; it was Iraq. It was not the United States that fired chemical weapons at Iran; it was Iraq. And it was not the United States that murdered innocent Iraqi citizens with chemical weapons; it was Iraq.

I can't deny that it will be a historic event for an African-American to become president. And should that happen, all Americans should be proud - not just African-Americans, but all Americans - that we have reached this point in our national history where such a thing could happen. It will also not only electrify our country, I think it'll electrify the world.

When you help the poorest in the world, you start to move them up an economic and social ladder, and they're not going to be moving toward violence or terrorism of the kind that we worry about.

I would sit and talk to any president who wishes to talk to me, but I'm not anxious to rule it in.

The United States is still seen as the leader at the world that wants to be free.

I'm an American, first and foremost, and I'm very proud - I said, I've said, I've said to my beloved friend and colleague John McCain, a friend of 25 years, "John, I love you, but I'm not just going to vote for you on the basis of our affection or friendship." And I've said to Barack Obama, "I admire you. I'll give you all the advice I can. But I'm not going to vote for you just because you're black." We, we have to move beyond this.

I served 40 years in government, and I - I'm not looking forward to a position or an assignment. Of course, I have always said if a president asks you to do something, you have to consider it. But I am in no way interested in returning to government. But I, of course, would sit and talk to any president who wishes to talk to me.

Our model of politics is one that it is inclusive of all members of the society; all should be represented. That is the nature of our democracy.

I think we can make a contribution to their [Saudi Arabia] thinking as they decide how they should deal with the economic and social challenges that they are facing.

We are not shrinking from talking to Saudis or anyone else in the region, but it is up to each nation in the region to decide on its own how it will proceed and at what pace. There are other nations in the region that had similar policies to Saudi Arabia that are starting to make changes, such as Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Morocco. And so it takes time but when you see the need for such changes, then changes tend to follow.

We are not dictating. We are not telling them [Saudi Arabia] how they should do it or who they should look like. We are their friends. We have mutual interests and we will help them in any way that is possible.

Thee are such horrible weapons. And so no sane leader would ever want to cross that line to using nuclear weapons. And, if you are not going to cross that line, then these things are basically useless.

The best way to create a winning team is to train them, give them everything they need to get the job done and second, make sure they know what the job is and what the job will be. So you connect strategy to resources.

I have always tried to do my job in a way that I have people give me different points of view.

Failure is a part of life and you have to learn to deal with it. Failure is something that is part of life's cycle and it's from failure that you gain life experience.

Diplomacy never stops, and, with or without an election, it never stops.

The United States has every intention of continuing to do the kind of reconnaissance and surveillance work we have done for decades, well known to everyone, that is essential to protect our national security, and frankly, the security of our friends in various regions of the world. It is part of our collection system.

I think the American people want to see what we want to see, and that is for the Iraqi people to have a free, open, fair election, for their forces to be built up, for our reconstruction money to be used well, and for Iraqi security forces to take over so we can start bringing our troops home.