“We cannot have four more years apologizing to [America's] enemies and abandoning our friends. America needs to be strong for the world to be safe, and on the world stage, Donald Trump will lead from strength.”

Trump's Win, the Greatest Victory for anti-Semitism in America Since 1941 (2016)

2016, Remarks on Donald Trump and the 2016 race

Twitter post https://twitter.com/Evan_McMullin/status/807727779785670656 (10 December 2016)

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), Speech in (August 25, 2016)

Press Conference: Announcing Candidacy for Presidency, 2007-02-13 http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/02/13/romney.announce/index.html
2007 campaign for Republican nomination for United States President

2000s
Context: 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:

1960, Address at Convention Hall, Philadelphia
Context: In short, I believe in an America that is on the march — an America respected by all nations, friends and foes alike — an America that is moving, doing, working, trying — a strong America in a world of peace. That peace must be based on world law and world order, on the mutual respect of all nations for the rights and powers of others and on a world economy in which no nation lacks the ability to provide a decent standard of living for all of its people. But we cannot have such a world, and we cannot have such a peace, unless the United States has the vitality and the inspiration and the strength. If we continue to stand still, if we continue to lie at anchor, if we continue to sit on dead center, if we content ourselves with the easy life and the rosy assurances, then the gates will soon be open to a lean and hungry enemy.

2016, Remarks on Donald Trump and the 2016 race

Give Trump the Medal of Freedom (August 7, 2015)