"I think our initiative with respect to..." - Quote by Colin Powell

“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.”

“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.”

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

“Ideas are of themselves extraordinarily valuable, but an idea is just an idea. Almost anyone can think up an idea. The thing that counts is developing it into a practical product.”

“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.”

“The essence of thought, as the essence of life, is growth.”

“I am interested only in the relations of a people to the rearing of the individual man, and among the Greeks the conditions were unusually favourable for the development of the individual; not by any means owing to the goodness of the people, but because of the struggles of their evil instincts.With the help of favourable measures great individuals might be reared who would be both different from and higher than those who heretofore have owed their existence to mere chance. Here we may still be hopeful: in the rearing of exceptional men.”

“We cannot but pity the boy who has never fired a gun; he is no more humane, while his education has been sadly neglected.”

“Libraries are the center of our lives. There's no use going to a university if you don't live at the library.”