1990s

• Our strategy in going after this army is very simple. First we are going to cut it off, and then we are going to kill it.
  • Remark made as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, announcing the U.S. gulf war plan against Saddam Hussein's army. Pentagon press briefing (23 January 1991).

• The United Nations will spearhead our efforts to manage the new conflicts (that afflict our world)....Yes the principles of the United Nations Charter are worth our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor."
  • General Colin Powell, 21 April 1993, receiving the UN-USA Global Leadership Award.

My American Journey (1996)

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

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

• 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.

• 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.

2000s

• The sanctions exist — not for the purpose of hurting the Iraqi people, but for the purpose of keeping in check Saddam Hussein's ambitions toward developing weapons of mass destruction … And frankly they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors. So in effect, our policies have strengthened the security of the neighbors of Iraq.
  • Press remarks with Foreign Minister of Egypt Amre Moussa, in Ittihadiya Palace, Cairo (24 February 2001).

• What the hell, what are these guys thinking about? Can’t you get these guys back in the box?
  • Remark made to Joint Chiefs of Staff General Shelton regarding comments by Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld, advocating an attack on Iraq, even before the battle plan for attacking the Taliban was formulated, shortly after the “the crucial meeting took place on September 15 in the Laurel Lodge at Camp David, at which Wolfowitz made the case for action against Iraq.” Halper, Stefan; Clarke, Johnathan (2004). America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. p. 149-150. ISBN 0-521-83834-7 hardback. . Also see Woodware, Bob (2002). Bush at War. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Simon and Schuster. p. 61. ISBN 0743215389. . (Remark from 9/2001 shortly after 9/11).

• Far from being the Great Satan, I would say that we are the Great Protector. We have sent men and women from the armed forces of the United States to other parts of the world throughout the past century to put down oppression. We defeated Fascism. We defeated Communism. We saved Europe in World War I and World War II. We were willing to do it, glad to do it. We went to Korea. We went to Vietnam. All in the interest of preserving the rights of people.
  And when all those conflicts were over, what did we do? Did we stay and conquer? Did we say, "Okay, we defeated Germany. Now Germany belongs to us? We defeated Japan, so Japan belongs to us"? No. What did we do? We built them up. We gave them democratic systems which they have embraced totally to their soul. And did we ask for any land? No, the only land we ever asked for was enough land to bury our dead. And that is the kind of nation we are.
  • MTV Global Discussion (14 February 2002).

• Capital is a coward. It flees from corruption and bad policies, conflict and unpredictability. It shuns ignorance, disease and illiteracy. Capital goes where it is welcomed and where investors can be confident of a return on the resources they have put at risk. It goes to countries where women can work, children can read, and entrepreneurs can dream.
  • As quoted by Ambassador Cameron R. Hume in a speech on U.S. Government Initiatives in South Africa at the American Chamber of Commerce, Johannesburg, South Africa (18 September 2002).

• My heart grieves when I think about the situation in the Middle East. I've worked very hard on this for two years, and for years before that. But trust is broken down. We have to do everything we can in our power — all of us, the United States, the European Union, any other nation that has the ability to influence the situation in the Middle East — to work with the Palestinians to put in place a leadership that is responsible, with representative institutions of government that will clamp down on terrorism, that will say to its people, "Terrorism is not getting us anywhere. It is not producing what we want: a Palestinian state. It is keeping us away from a Palestinian state."
  And we also have to say to our Israeli friends that you have to do more to deal with the humanitarian concerns of the Palestinian people, and you have to understand that a Palestinian state, when it's created, must be a real state, not a phony state that's diced into a thousand different pieces.
  • Address to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland (26 January 2003), as quoted in "Secretary of Incoherence" in National Review (27 January 2003).

• There is nothing in American experience or in American political life or in our culture that suggests we want to use hard power. But what we have found over the decades is that unless you do have hard power — and here I think you're referring to military power — then sometimes you are faced with situations that you can't deal with.
  I mean, it was not soft power that freed Europe. It was hard power. And what followed immediately after hard power? Did the United States ask for dominion over a single nation in Europe? No. Soft power came in the Marshall Plan. Soft power came with American GIs who put their weapons down once the war was over and helped all those nations rebuild. We did the same thing in Japan.
  So our record of living our values and letting our values be an inspiration to others I think is clear. And I don't think I have anything to be ashamed of or apologize for with respect to what America has done for the world.
  We have gone forth from our shores repeatedly over the last hundred years and we've done this as recently as the last year in Afghanistan and put wonderful young men and women at risk, many of whom have lost their lives, and we have asked for nothing except enough ground to bury them in, and otherwise we have returned home to seek our own, you know, to seek our own lives in peace, to live our own lives in peace. But there comes a time when soft power or talking with evil will not work where, unfortunately, hard power is the only thing that works.
  • Response to a question by George Carey (a former Archbishop of Canterbury), after the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland (26 January 2003), as to whether the US had given due consideration to the use of "soft power" vs "hard power" against the regime of Saddam Hussein; this has sometimes been portrayed as an accusation by an Archbishop of Canterbury that the United States was engaged in "empire building", in which Powell's response has been paraphrased:

Over the years, the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not return.

• There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more.
  • Remarks to the United Nations Security Council (5 February 2003); in an interview (September 2005) with Barbara Walters, Powell was asked about the Security Council speech and responded that it was a "blot" on his record… "it will always be a part of my record. It was painful. It's painful now."

• There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work and learning from failure.
  • As quoted in The Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell (2003) by Oren Harari, p. 164.

• I'm sleeping like a baby, too. Every two hours, I wake up, screaming.
  • Upon hearing that President Bush was "sleeping like a baby" on the eve of war with Iraq, as quoted in "The Tragedy of Colin Powell" (19 February 2004).

• You break it, you own it.
  • As quoted in Plan of Attack (2004) by Bob Woodward, a book in which he was a key source, cautioning President Bush before the Iraqi war that he would be responsible for the fate of the Iraqi's after the fall of the Hussein regime.

• This may sound a little improper, but when the Vice President and I are alone it's Colin and Dick.
  • As quoted in Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees (23 April 2004).

• 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.
  • Interview with CNN (27 October 2004), as quoted in "Warnings by Powell to Taiwan Provoke a Diplomatic Dispute" in The New York Times (28 October 2004).

• We want to see both sides not take unilateral action that would prejudice an eventual outcome, a reunification that all parties are seeking.
  • On Chinese and Taiwanese relations, in interview with Phoenix Television of Hong Kong (27 October 2004), as quoted in "Warnings by Powell to Taiwan Provoke a Diplomatic Dispute" in The New York Times (28 October 2004).

• Nothing was spun to me... What really upset me more than anything else was that there were people in the intelligence community that had doubts about some of this sourcing, but those doubts never surfaced up to us. (Powell told David Frost in a BBC television interview)
  • Quoted in Breaking Ranks Larry Wilkerson Attacked the Iraq War. In the Process, He Lost the Friendship of Colin Powell. Washington Post, by Richard Lei (19 January 2006)

• I wonder what will happen if we put half a million troops on the ground, and scour Iraq from one corner to the other, and find no weapons of mass destruction?
  • Quoted by Lawrence Wilkerson in Breaking Ranks Larry Wilkerson Attacked the Iraq War. In the Process, He Lost the Friendship of Colin Powell. Washington Post, by Richard Lei (19 January 2006)

• I wouldn't characterize it the way Larry has, calling it a cabal... what Larry is suggesting in his comments is that very often maybe Mr. Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney would take decisions in to the president that the rest of us weren't aware of. That did happen, on a number of occasions.
  • Quoted in Breaking Ranks Larry Wilkerson Attacked the Iraq War. In the Process, He Lost the Friendship of Colin Powell. Washington Post, by Richard Lei (19 January 2006)

• I'm also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say. And it is permitted to be said such things as, "Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim." 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? The answer's no, that's not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, "He's a Muslim and he might be associated terrorists." This is not the way we should be doing it in America.
  I feel strongly about this particular point because of a picture I saw in a magazine. It was a photo essay about troops who are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. And one picture at the tail end of this photo essay was of a mother in Arlington Cemetery, and she had her head on the headstone of her son's grave. And as the picture focused in, you could see the writing on the headstone. And it gave his awards — Purple Heart, Bronze Star — showed that he died in Iraq, gave his date of birth, date of death. He was 20 years old. And then, at the very top of the headstone, it didn't have a Christian cross, it didn't have the Star of David, it had crescent and a star of the Islamic faith. And his name was Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, and he was an American. He was born in New Jersey. He was 14 years old at the time of 9/11, and he waited until he can go serve his country, and he gave his life. Now, we have got to stop polarizing ourself in this way.
  • Meet the Press (19 October 2008) interview with Tom Brokaw. - Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan's Gravesite.

• I think he is a transformational figure. He is a new generation coming into the world — onto the world stage, onto the American stage, and for that reason I'll be voting for Senator Barack Obama.
  • Meet the Press (19 October 2008).

• That's not really a number I'm terribly interested in.
  • Reported as a comment on "the number of Iraqi dead from the combined allied air and ground campaign" by Tyler, Patrick. "After The War; Powell Says U.S. Will Stay In Iraq 'For Some Months.'" New York Times, March 23 1991, pp. 1,4.

2010s

• There's also a dark vein of intolerance in some parts of the party. What do I mean by that? What I mean by that is they still sort of look down on minorities.
  • As quoted in NBC's Meet the Press (2013).