There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.
Colin Powell
If you are going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little matters. Excellence is not an exception, it is a prevailing attitude.
A dream doesn't become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work.
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.
Success is the result of perfection, hard work, learning from failure, loyalty, and persistence.
Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.
Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate and doubt, to offer a solution everybody can understand.
I think whether you're having setbacks or not, the role of a leader is to always display a winning attitude.
The commander in the field is always right and the rear echelon is wrong, unless proved otherwise.
Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.
It ain't as bad as you think. It will look better in the morning.
Get mad, then get over it.
Bad news isn't wine. It doesn't improve with age.
Don't let your ego get too close to your position, so that if your position gets shot down, your ego doesn't go with it.
You don't know what you can get away with until you try.
Never let your ego get so close to your position that when your position goes, your ego goes with it.
No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.
Diplomacy is listening to what the other guy needs. Preserving your own position, but listening to the other guy. You have to develop relationships with other people so when the tough times come, you can work together.
Never neglect details. When everyone's mind is dulled or distracted the leader must be doubly vigilant.
Experts often possess more data than judgment.
90 percent of my time is spent on 10 percent of the world.
Don't be afraid to challenge the pros, even in their own backyard.
Don't bother people for help without first trying to solve the problem yourself.
Surround yourself with people who take their work seriously, but not themselves, those who work hard and play hard.
Organization charts and fancy titles count for next to nothing.
The healthiest competition occurs when average people win by putting above average effort.
As I have done in every election since I started voting so many years ago, I always like to take my time and examine the two candidates, see not only the two candidates but the policies they will bring in, the people they will bring in, who they might appoint to the Supreme Court, and look at the whole range of issues before making a decision.
Indeed, we're strongest when the face of America isn't only a soldier carrying a gun but also a diplomat negotiating peace, a Peace Corps volunteer bringing clean water to a village, or a relief worker stepping off a cargo plane as floodwaters rise.
Fit no stereotypes. Don't chase the latest management fads. The situation dictates which approach best accomplishes the team's mission.
Trump is a national disgrace and an international pariah.
We need to understand that we as citizens and as a government in any community throughout this country have no more important obligation than to educate those who are going to replace us.
You're not just voting for an individual, in my judgment, you're voting for an agenda. You're voting for a platform. You're voting for a political philosophy.
My own experience is use the tools that are out there. Use the digital world. But never lose sight of the need to reach out and talk to other people who don't share your view. Listen to them and see if you can find a way to compromise.
The chief condition on which, life, health and vigor depend on, is action. It is by action that an organism develops its faculties, increases its energy, and attains the fulfillment of its destiny.
Children need to get a high-quality education, avoid violence and the criminal-justice system, and gain jobs. But they deserve more. We want them to learn not only reading and math but fairness, caring, self-respect, family commitment, and civic duty.
But just as they did in Philadelphia when they were writing the constitution, sooner or later, you've got to compromise. You've got to start making the compromises that arrive at a consensus and move the country forward.
Giving back involves a certain amount of giving up.
Drones are just another weapon, and they turn out to be a very effective weapon that puts no American troops at risk, and I don't see why we shouldn't use them against identified enemy targets.
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.
If a leader doesn't convey passion and intensity then there will be no passion and intensity within the organization and they'll start to fall down and get depressed.
I try to be the same person I was yesterday.
Our diplomacy and development budget is not just about reducing spending and finding efficiencies. We need a frank conversation about what we stand for as that 'shining city on a hill.' And that conversation begins by acknowledging that we can't do it on the cheap.
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.
Engineering didn't take to me. And what saved me and kept me in college was I ran into ROTC cadets who were in a fraternity called The Persian Rifles. And I found my place. I found discipline. I found structure. I found people that were like me and I liked.
Today I can declare my hope and declare it from the bottom of my heart that we will eventually see the time when that number of nuclear weapons is down to zero and the world is a much better place.
Wouldn't it be great if we could look forward to a whole world in which no child will be left behind?
It was the Congress that imposed 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell,' it was certainly my position, my recommendation to get us out of an even worse outcome that could have occurred.
Throughout my career, I learned plenty about war on the battlefield, but I learned even more about the importance of finding peace. And that is what the State Department and U.S.A.I.D. do: prevent the wars that we can avoid so that we fight only the ones we must.
Too often we act - ask our schools to be truant officers, our teachers to be truant officers, because we're giving them children who have, you know, they're not ready to learn. And if they're not ready to learn by the third grade, they know they're behind.
You have to make sure you know why you are going to war and then use decisive force to end it as soon as possible.
