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Don't bother people for help without first trying to solve the problem yourself.

Colin Powell

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Colin Powell
Age: 87
Born: 1937
Born: April 5
Diplomat
Former United States Secretary Of State
Politician
Soldier
New York City
New York
Colin Luther Powell
Helping
Problem
Firsts
Without
First
Trying
Bother
People
Solve
Help

More quotes by Colin Powell

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I always like to take my time and examine the two candidates, see not only the two candidates but the policies they will bring in, the people they will bring in, who they might appoint to the Supreme Court, and look at the whole range of issues before making a decision.
Colin Powell
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The claims made about Iraq's WMD capabilities before the invasion were inaccurate, wrong, and in some cases, deliberately misleading.
Colin Powell
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First you train the followers to accomplish the mission. Second, you resource them: Make sure that they have the tools to do the job. Third, you reward them: You give them medals or bonuses.
Colin Powell
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Surround yourself with people who take their work seriously, but not themselves, those who work hard and play hard.
Colin Powell
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One of the most worrisome things that emerges from the thick intelligence file we have on Iraq's biological weapons is the existence of mobile production facilities used to make biological agents.
Colin Powell
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Give me the right people and I don’t much care what organization you give me. Good things will happen. Give me the wrong people and it doesn’t matter what you do with the organization. Bad things will happen.
Colin Powell
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Our failure was that our intelligence community thought [Saddam Hussein ] had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction. That was a mistake. There is fallibility in human intelligence and in human decisions.
Colin Powell
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Today I can declare my hope and declare it from the bottom of my heart that we will eventually see the time when that number of nuclear weapons is down to zero and the world is a much better place.
Colin Powell
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Always do your best. Somebody is watching you.
Colin Powell
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One of the fondest expressions around is that we can't be the world's policeman. But guess who gets called when suddenly someone needs a cop.
Colin Powell
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It's nice to say let's be bipartisan. But we're a partisan nation. We were raised as a partisan nation.
Colin Powell
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I think leadership is both a trained thing and a natural gift.
Colin Powell
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Leaders have followers. The primary role of a leader is to convey to those followers a sense of purpose, vision, and mission.
Colin Powell
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One important element of leadership is taking care of the troops.
Colin Powell
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Don't let your ego get too close to your position, so that if your position gets shot down, your ego doesn't go with it.
Colin Powell
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It was President [Bill] Clinton and the United States congress in 1998 which said that the regime has to be changed because the regime would not give up its weapons of mass destruction. We came into office in 2001 and kept that policy because Saddam Hussein had not changed.
Colin Powell
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There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.
Colin Powell
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War should be the politics of last resort. And when we go to war, we should have a purpose that our people understand and support.
Colin Powell
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In the military we also learn principles of war which also work in a corporate setting: How do you concentrate as much of your force as possible on a critical point and take a risk elsewhere? In business that translates into focusing your investment on marketing, sales, or R&D, whichever will give you the greatest return.
Colin Powell
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President Kennedy didn't negotiate out of the Cuban missile crisis simply because he and Khrushchev got along well. Khrushchev didn't have the cards.
Colin Powell