Straight from today’s Quotle — here’s who really said it, and the story behind it. Play again

Who really said it

There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work and learning from failure

Attributed to Colin Powell 1937–2021 · U.S. Army four-star general and Secretary of State
Attributed In copyright

Powell is credited with this line more or less universally, and nobody else has ever claimed it — but the paper trail stops short of him. The best citation on offer, from Wikiquote’s sourced section ↗, is explicitly second-hand: “as quoted in” Oren Harari’s 2002 leadership study of Powell, p. 164. No speech, book, letter or interview in Powell’s own voice carrying this exact sentence could be located.

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

For presentations

Put it on a slide

Unconfirmed quote & credit

“There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work and learning from failure” attributed to Colin Powell (1937–2021). Documented only second-hand, in Oren Harari's The Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell (McGraw-Hill, 2002), p. 164 per Wikiquote; no primary Powell speech, book or interview containing this sentence has been located. Via Quotle.info

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Estate of Colin Powell; the cited printing is Oren Harari's The Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell (McGraw-Hill)). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the world of Colin Powell — U.S. Army four-star general · Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff 1989–1993 · Secretary of State 2001–2005. Theme: "There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work and learning from failure". 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 "There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work and learning from failure". 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 trail actually stops

Quoted in
The Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell
Author & publisher
Oren Harari · McGraw-Hill, 2002 (paperback 2003)
Citation given
Wikiquote: “As quoted in The Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell (2003) by Oren Harari, p. 164”
Primary source
None located — no Powell speech, book, letter or interview found carrying this sentence

There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work and learning from failure. Provenance stops at a secondary source

There is no fuller original context to print, because no primary appearance has been located. The line also circulates in a materially longer form that swaps ‘preparation’ for ‘perfection’ and adds loyalty and persistence.

Colin Powell on Wikiquote — the sourced section

Following the citation

  • Wikiquote’s Colin Powell page ↗ carries the exact popular wording in its sourced section and cites it as quoted in The Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell (2003) by Oren Harari, p. 164. By its own phrasing, that is a report of a quotation, not a primary source.
  • The book is real and easily checked: Open Library’s record ↗ gives Oren Harari, McGraw-Hill, 2002, 278 pages, and the 2002 printing is catalogued at the Internet Archive ↗ — where the scan is lending-restricted, so page 164 could not be read directly for this page.
  • Harari’s working method is on the record. His earlier compilation, “Quotations From Chairman Powell: A Leadership Primer” ↗ (Management Review, December 1996), describes him reading My American Journey and underlining “gems of wisdom regarding effective leadership,” then printing eighteen of them as Powell’s words verbatim. This sentence is not among those eighteen.
  • Nor is it in the best-documented Powell address of that era: his 1994 Howard University commencement speech ↗, which does urge hard work — “What will be asked of you is hard work. Nothing will be handed to you” — but never in these words.
In copyright

Whether the wording is Powell’s own or his biographer’s framing of it, every link in the documented chain is modern: the earliest appearance located is The Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell (McGraw-Hill, 2002), and Powell himself died in 2021. Nothing here is remotely near the public domain, so the sentence is reproduced only as a short quotation for identification and commentary.

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

Not a stolen quote — an undated one

No rival claimant has ever surfaced. This is not a case of the wrong name on the right words, which makes it the more common and more slippery kind of problem: a sentence reproduced by the million with no first appearance anyone can point to — and it does not even circulate in one shape.

‘preparation’ or ‘perfection’? variant

A longer version runs alongside the famous short one and is credited to Powell just as confidently: “There are no secrets to success: don’t waste time looking for them. Success is the result of perfection, hard work, learning from failure, loyalty to those for whom you work, and persistence.” ↗ A line that travels in two materially different wordings has been through other people’s hands.

Quote aggregators unsourced

A-Z Quotes ↗ prints the short form and names its source as IMDb’s user-contributed ‘Personal Quotes’ section — a database field, not a document with a date on it.

Oren Harari, not Powell’s own page second-hand

The single book-level citation in circulation is Wikiquote’s ↗, and it reads “As quoted in” — pointing at a 2002 leadership study about Powell rather than at anything Powell published or delivered.

Quote Investigator no entry

The specialists have not taken this one on: a site search at Quote Investigator ↗ returns no article tracing the line, so there is no expert chronology to adopt.

The honest answer is a narrow one: the earliest documentation this page could locate is second-hand, in Oren Harari’s The Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell (McGraw-Hill, 2002) ↗ — credible, consistent with Powell, and still not a primary source.

Context

How a general became a book of proverbs

Powell never published a book of aphorisms. He became one of America’s most-quoted leadership voices anyway, because other people did the compiling for him. In December 1996 the consultant Oren Harari published “Quotations From Chairman Powell: A Leadership Primer” ↗ in Management Review, describing how he had read My American Journey with a pen in hand and found that what he was underlining were “gems of wisdom regarding effective leadership.” He printed eighteen of them in bold and called them Powell’s words verbatim.

That primer became a chain letter, then a bestseller — The Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell (McGraw-Hill, 2002) — and it is in that book, not in anything Powell himself published, that this particular sentence is documented. The sentiment fits him completely. But a sentiment fitting an author is not a source, and on a verified-provenance site the difference is the whole job.

Nobody disputes the line. Nobody can date it either.

Where this page looked, and what was not there

Harari’s eighteen-lesson primer (1996). Read in full; it is drawn from My American Journey and does not contain this sentence.

Powell’s 1994 Howard University commencement address. Read in full; it urges hard work (“What will be asked of you is hard work. Nothing will be handed to you.”) but never in these words.

Quote Investigator. A site search returns no article tracing this line, so there is no specialist chronology to adopt or contradict.

Harari’s book itself. The Internet Archive copy is lending-restricted and Google Books returned no snippet, so page 164 could not be read directly for this page — the citation is reported as Wikiquote gives it, not independently confirmed.

Explore

Filed under

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

Success Work Failure

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.

Colin Powell — Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

The sourced Powell page. Carries this exact wording and gives its only book-level citation: “As quoted in The Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell (2003) by Oren Harari, p. 164.”
The Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell — Open Libraryopenlibrary.org

Catalogue record for Oren Harari’s book: McGraw-Hill, 2002, 278 pages. The work Wikiquote points to.
The Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell — Internet Archivearchive.org

The 2002 McGraw-Hill printing, catalogued and scanned. Lending-restricted, so page 164 cannot be read without a library account.
“Quotations From Chairman Powell: A Leadership Primer”www.csun.edu

Harari’s 1996 Management Review article, the seed of the book. Shows exactly how Powell’s lines were harvested from his memoir — and does not include this one.
Powell’s 1994 Howard University commencement addressamericanradioworks.publicradio.org

Full text of one of Powell’s best-documented speeches on effort and self-reliance. Useful as a control: the famous sentence is not in it.
Quote Investigator — site searchquoteinvestigator.com

The usual court of last resort has not tried this case. No article traces this Powell line, which is why the verdict here stays at ‘attributed’.

The true author, so far as anyone can show

The man everyone credits

Colin Powell

1937–2021 · U.S. Army four-star general · Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff 1989–1993 · Secretary of State 2001–2005

Colin Luther Powell (5 April 1937 – 18 October 2021) grew up in the South Bronx, took a geology degree at City College of New York, and rose through the U.S. Army to four-star general. He served as National Security Advisor (1987–89), Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1989–93) and Secretary of State (2001–05). His 1995 memoir My American Journey became the quarry that leadership writers mined for a decade afterwards — which is exactly how sentences like this one enter circulation without a date attached.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Best available citation

Colin Powell, quoted in Oren Harari, The Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002; 2003 paperback ed.), 164 — page reference per Wikiquote, which gives the line only as “quoted in” that book. No primary Powell speech, book or interview containing this sentence has been located.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work and learning from failure’?” Last verified 17 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/there-are-no-secrets-to-success-it-is-the-result-of/

Something wrong on this page?

Tell us what’s off. A link helps but isn’t required — “this is the wrong person” is a useful report on its own. Nothing here changes the page directly; it goes to our review queue and a human checks it.

Only used to tell you if we act on your report. We never sell or share it.

Copied