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We need to understand that we as citizens and as a government in any community throughout this country have no more important obligation than to educate those who are going to replace us.

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
Needs
Obligation
Going
Citizens
Community
Understand
Government
Need
Replace
Country
Educate
Important
Throughout

More quotes by Colin Powell

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Don't be afraid to challenge the pros, even in their own backyard.
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Politics is not bean bags. It's serious, tough stuff.
Colin Powell
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It ain't as bad as you think. It will look better in the morning.
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The Court is perhaps one of the last citadels of jealously preserved individualism. For the most part, we function as nine, small independent law firms.
Colin Powell
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I have never seen a good organization where the standards weren't high.
Colin Powell
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When we are debating an issue, loyalty means giving me your honest opinion, whether you think I'll like it or not. Disagreement, at this state, stimulates me. But once a decision is made, the debate ends. From that point on, loyalty means executing the decision as if it were your own.
Colin Powell
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Foe means enemy. Now, will we have differences of opinion with the Russians? Yes. Will they get mad at us from time to time, and we get mad at them? That's part of the normal diplomatic relations.
Colin Powell
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Wouldn't it be great if we could look forward to a whole world in which no child will be left behind?
Colin Powell
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Nobody has ever said in the United States government that we are going to war next month. No decision has been made by the president because, as he said to the United Nations, he wants the United Nations to live up to its responsibilities and he wants Saddam Hussein to cooperate.
Colin Powell
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You have to create circumstances where your first-tier leader knows what you are trying to accomplish, because he is the one who's going to get it done.
Colin Powell
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I think you can improve on that natural ability with training and exposure to great leaders of the past and to management theories.
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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There is no such thing as an unimportant person in an organization.
Colin Powell
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With respect to our friends in the [Iraq] region, each has its own system, each will have to make its own judgment as to whether it will change, how fast it will change, and we hope that we can help influence them as to how change comes about and what change might be better for them than other forms of change.
Colin Powell
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Actually, there is no more important task for a leader than to pick people. To make sure you have the very best people working for you.
Colin Powell
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So has the strategic decision been made to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction by the leadership in Baghdad? I think our judgment has to be clearly not.
Colin Powell
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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.
Colin Powell
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Even the greatest of all strategists must occasionally take into account the presence of an enemy.
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
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My responsibility, our responsibility as lucky Americans, is to try to give back to this country as much as it has given us, as we continue our American journey together.
Colin Powell