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Who really said it

Leadership is the art of accomplishing more than the science of management says is possible

Attributed to Colin Powell 1937–2021 · Four-star general & 65th U.S. Secretary of State
Attributed In copyright

Powell genuinely owned this idea — but the famous wording is not the wording he used. In his 2003 Leadership Lecture at the State Department ↗ he said: “My own personal definition is that leadership is the art of getting people to do more than the science of management says is possible.” The circulating “accomplishing more” version is documented in Oren Harari’s books about Powell; Harari’s own source note traces it to Powell’s memoir My American Journey (1995), p. 258 — a page reference we have not been able to confirm. No Powell speech or transcript we found uses the “accomplishing more” wording.

Last verified 17 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Unconfirmed quote & credit

“Leadership is the art of accomplishing more than the science of management says is possible” Leadership is the art of getting people to do more than the science of management says is possible. — Colin Powell, 2003 Leadership Lecture, U.S. Department of State, 28 October 2003. (The widely shared "accomplishing more" wording is a variant documented in Oren Harari's books about Powell; Harari cites it to Powell's memoir My American Journey, 1995, p. 258 — a page reference we have not been able to confirm.)

Can you use it?

The wording in the credit above is Powell’s own, quoted from a U.S. Department of State transcript — a U.S. Government work (17 U.S.C. §105), free to reproduce. The circulating “accomplishing more” variant is different: it is identifiable only in Oren Harari’s in-copyright books (© 2002 The McGraw-Hill Companies; © 2003 Oren Harari), so if you use that version, keep it short, credit it, and get permission for commercial or published reuse.

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In context

Evoking the world of Colin Powell — U.S. Army four-star general, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff & 65th Secretary of State. Theme: "Leadership is the art of accomplishing more than the science of management says is possible". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Leadership is the art of accomplishing more than the science of management says is possible". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

Where the line actually comes from

Powell’s documented wording
2003 Leadership Lecture: Why Leadership Matters In The Department of State
Delivered
Dean Acheson Auditorium, Washington, DC — 28 October 2003
Popular wording appears in
The Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell (2002) and The Powell Principles (2003)
Written by
Oren Harari — the 2002 book closes its Prologue with the line and cites Powell’s memoir My American Journey (1995), p. 258, a page we have not been able to confirm; the 2003 book prints it as a front-matter epigraph with no citation at all

Leaders make a difference. They don’t stand there. They do something. How do they make that difference? What is leadership all about? My own personal definition is that leadership is the art of getting people to do more than the science of management says is possible. … If the science of management says that the capacity of this organization is at 100 percent, good leaders take it to 110 percent. 2003 Leadership Lecture

Powell’s own words, from the U.S. Department of State transcript. Note the verb: “getting people to do more,” not “accomplishing more.”

State Department transcript
Read the 2003 Leadership Lecture transcript
U.S. Department of State — 2003 Leadership Lecture transcript

The paper trail

  • Oren Harari’s original compilation, “Quotations from Chairman Powell: A Leadership Primer” (©1996) ↗, gathers eighteen Powell lessons — and contains neither “science of management” nor “accomplishing more” anywhere in its text.
  • The two Harari books handle it differently, and the difference matters. In The Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell ↗ (2002) the sentence closes the Prologue — “Colin Powell has his own definition of leadership. As he puts it” — and the book’s back-of-book source notes cite it to Colin Powell with Joseph E. Persico, My American Journey (New York: Random House, 1995), p. 258. We have not been able to confirm that page. In The Powell Principles ↗ (2003) it is set alone on a front-matter page before the title page with no citation at all — verified against a scan of the printed front matter of the 2003 first printing.
  • Powell’s own formulation is on the record at the 2003 Leadership Lecture ↗, where he introduces it as “my own personal definition” and uses the phrase “getting people to do more.”
  • Wikiquote ↗ lists the popular wording under the heading “The Powell Principles (2003)” and describes that section as quotes of Powell from Harari’s book — not from anything Powell wrote or is transcribed as saying.
In copyright

Two different sentences with two different rights answers. Powell’s own documented wording comes from a lecture delivered on 28 October 2003 and published as a U.S. Department of State transcript — a work of the U.S. Government, and so uncopyrightable under 17 U.S.C. §105. The circulating “accomplishing more” variant is another matter: its earliest verified printings are Oren Harari’s McGraw-Hill books of 2002 (© The McGraw-Hill Companies) and 2003 (© Oren Harari), both firmly in copyright. Harari’s 2002 notes cite the line to Powell’s My American Journey (Random House, 1995), p. 258, which would move it into a different rights bucket again — but we have not been able to confirm that page, so we treat the Harari titles as the controlling identifiable source and classify the variant conservatively as in copyright.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

What actually went wrong

This one is unusual. The idea really is Powell’s, and he said so himself — but what circulates is a tidied-up version of his sentence, riding on a slide deck that most people believe he wrote.

“accomplishing more” replaces “getting people to do more” Reworded

Powell’s documented sentence puts people at the centre. In the very next breath at the 2003 Leadership Lecture ↗ he insisted, “The key word in that sentence, however, is ‘people.’” The popular rewrite deletes exactly that word.

Harari’s books — and his one citation points at a page we can’t check Second-hand

The circulating wording is documented in Harari’s The Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell ↗ (2002), where it closes the Prologue and the book’s source notes credit it to My American Journey (New York: Random House, 1995), p. 258 — a page we have not been able to confirm, and Harari’s own 1996 compilation, drawn from the same memoir, contains no version of the sentence. In The Powell Principles ↗ (2003) it is printed on a front-matter page with no citation attached. So the honest position is narrower than “Powell never wrote it”: the only citation anyone offers is one we cannot verify.

credited to Powell as author; actually Harari’s 1996 compilation of Powell quotations — and the banner sentence is not among them Repackaged

The much-forwarded “General Colin Powell – A Leadership Primer” PDF ↗ prints this sentence at the top of its title page, above eighteen numbered lessons. The lessons themselves really are Powell’s words — Harari says so in his ©1996 article ↗: “I present Powell’s words verbatim in bold—18 priceless lessons, to be exact.” What is Harari’s is the compilation, the commentary — and the banner sentence, which appears nowhere in that article.

Powell owned the idea outright — he called it “my own personal definition” at the State Department in 2003 ↗. Quote him by all means, but his words were “the art of getting people to do more than the science of management says is possible.”

Context

Why the missing word matters

Powell was not theorising. He was talking to a room of State Department employees sitting on the floor and standing against the walls, and he had just dismissed the whole apparatus of leadership theory — “power up, power down, decentralize, centralize, theory X, theory Y” — as interesting but beside the point. His definition was meant as the plain-language alternative: if the science of management says an organisation’s capacity is 100 percent, a good leader takes it to 110, and a bad one takes it well below its designed capability.

The rewrite that travels the internet quietly deletes the one word Powell stopped to underline. Immediately after giving his definition he said the key word in that sentence is people — leadership is “not about organizations… not about plans… not about strategies.” “Accomplishing more” is smoother and more quotable, and it turns a claim about motivating human beings into a claim about output.

The key word in that sentence, however, is ‘people.’

How the tidier version took over

Powell had been drawing the same distinction for years. Government Executive reported in June 2001 that he told State Department workers, “Management is a science, leadership is an art, and I will be interested in identifying those people who are leaders, who really know how to turn people on.”

The compressed form appears in Oren Harari’s McGraw-Hill books. The 2002 Leadership Secrets closes its Prologue with it and, in the back-of-book notes, sources it to Powell’s My American Journey (1995), p. 258 — a page we have not been able to confirm; the 2003 Powell Principles simply prints it on a front-matter page before the title page with nothing attached. From there it was lifted onto the much-forwarded “A Leadership Primer” slide deck as a title-slide banner, and from the slide deck onto quote aggregators — each hop further from any transcript.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Leadership Courage

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

2003 Leadership Lecture — full State Department transcriptweb.archive.org

The U.S. Department of State's own archived transcript, in which Powell gives the definition in his own words on 28 October 2003.
Why Leadership Matters at the Department of Stategovleaders.org

A clean, readable copy of the same 2003 lecture, useful for reading the passage in full context.
Quotations from Chairman Powell: A Leadership Primergovleaders.org

Oren Harari's ©1996 article — the origin of the famous eighteen lessons, and notably containing no version of this sentence.
Colin Powell — sourced quotationsen.wikiquote.org

Lists the popular wording only under 'The Powell Principles (2003) by Oren Harari' — a book about Powell, not one he wrote.
The Powell Leadership Doctrinewww.govexec.com

Government Executive, June 2001, quoting Powell on the same distinction: 'Management is a science, leadership is an art.'
The Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell (McGraw-Hill, 2002)archive.org

Harari's 2002 book — the sentence closes the Prologue, and the book's source notes cite it to Powell's My American Journey (Random House, 1995), p. 258.

The man behind the line

Colin Powell

Colin Powell

1937–2021 · U.S. Army four-star general, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff & 65th Secretary of State

Powell served as the 12th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1989–1993) and then as the 65th — and first Black American — U.S. Secretary of State (2001–2005). He described himself as having defended the flag, the Constitution and the country “for 35 years as a soldier,” and traced his own leadership education to “some sergeant grabbing you by the back of your neck” at Fort Benning when he was a brand-new second lieutenant. He talked about leadership constantly and largely extemporaneously — which is precisely why his best-known lines circulate in several slightly different wordings.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Source

Colin L. Powell, “2003 Leadership Lecture: Why Leadership Matters In The Department of State” (remarks, Dean Acheson Auditorium, Washington, DC, October 28, 2003), U.S. Department of State — where Powell’s wording is “the art of getting people to do more than the science of management says is possible.” The popular “accomplishing more” wording closes the Prologue of Oren Harari, The Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002), whose source notes cite it to Colin Powell with Joseph E. Persico, My American Journey (New York: Random House, 1995), p. 258 — a page reference we have not been able to confirm — and appears as an uncited front-matter epigraph in Harari, The Powell Principles (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003).

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Leadership is the art of accomplishing more than the science of management says is possible’?” Last verified 17 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/leadership-is-the-art-of-accomplishing-more-than-the/

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