Colin Powell

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

The best method of overcoming obstacles is the team method

Strategy equals execution. All the great ideas and visions in the world are worthless if they can't be implemented rapidly and efficiently. Good leaders delegate and empower others liberally, but they pay attention to details, every day.

Luck tends to come to people who are prepared.

The bottom line in all of it is that, in life, it's all about people.

Let it [racism] be a problem to someone else... Let it drag them down. Don't use it as an excuse for your own shortcomings.

Wouldn't it be great if we could look forward to a whole world in which no child will be left behind?

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.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it' is the slogan of the complacent, the arrogant or the scared. It's an excuse for inaction, a call to non-arms.

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 can't just have slogans, you can't just have catchy phrases. You have to have an agenda. And I think what the Republican Party has to do, if it's going to incorporate the tea party efforts in it, is to come up with an agenda that the American people can see, touch, and actually believe in, and something they believe in.

It's not just a matter of whether you support Obama or Romney. It's who they have coming with them. I always keep my powder dry, as they say in the military.

There are lots of countries that are having these kinds of internal civil wars in other parts of the world and nobody is talking about intervening.

In other words, don't expect to always be great. Disappointments, failures and setbacks are a normal part of the lifecycle of a unit or a company and what the leader has to do is constantly be up and say 'we have a problem, let's go and get it'.

Politics is not bean bags. It's serious, tough stuff.

It's a disgrace that we have millions of people who are uninsured.

I respect the fact that many denominations have different points of view with respect to gay marriage and they can hold that in the sanctity in the place of their religion and not bless them or solemnize them.

I try to be the same person I was yesterday.

Organization charts and fancy titles count for next to nothing.

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

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.