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Use the formula P=40 to 70, in which P stands for the probability of success and the numbers indicate the percentage of information acquired. Once the information is in the 40 to 70 range, go with your gut.

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
Stands
Indicate
Range
Percentage
Numbers
Percentages
Information
Acquired
Success
Formula
Use
Probability
Formulas
Guts

More quotes by Colin Powell

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Almost invariably, whoever doesn't win the argument is going to be unhappy.
Colin Powell
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Think hard about it: I'm running out of demons. I'm running out of villians. I'm down to Castro and Kim Il Sung.
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I regret that the presentation I made at the UN turned out to be wrong. It was wrong on the stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, but pretty much right on intentions and capabilities.
Colin Powell
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It takes more courage to send men into battle than to fight the battle yourself.
Colin Powell
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The United States is not looking for a way to launch war.
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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We would like to see new leaders come forward who would be accountable and responsible, who would succeed in ending the terror and the violence. And it is up to the Palestinian people to judge who those new leaders should be.
Colin Powell
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Economy's got to get moving, we've got to get the unemployment rate down. That may be the defining issue of the campaign.
Colin Powell
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Great leaders are those who are able to look reality in the face, however painful it may be, and deal with it.
Colin Powell
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That's why the army sends all its future generals to what we call charm school. As soon as you are a general, people think that you know everything. You think yourself that you have become omniscient and omnipotent. Be careful, because people want to do everything they can to please the general, and you need to guard against this.
Colin Powell
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Generally you should act somewhere between P40 and P70, as I call it. Sometime after you have obtained 40 percent of all the information you are liable to get, start thinking in terms of making a decision. When you have about 70 percent of all the information, you probably ought to decide, because you may lose an opportunity in losing time.
Colin Powell
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Once the information is in the 40 to 70 range, go with your gut.
Colin Powell
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With vision only, you get no follow-through. With enforcers only, the vision is realized but leaves a lot of wreckage.
Colin Powell
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Good and solid analysis and a formal way of looking at a problem [are the core ingredients of good decisions].
Colin Powell
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I don't know that there is much the United States can do except work with the international community.
Colin Powell
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We are rather candid with them about the nature of their political processes and the state of development of their institutions, but they are looking to the West because they know that's where success lies.
Colin Powell
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I'll tell you what they're all going to face, whichever one of them becomes president on January 21st of 2009. They will face a military force - a United States military force that cannot sustain - continually sustain 140,000 people deployed in Iraq and the 20-odd or 25,000 people we have deployed in Afghanistan and our other deployments.
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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The commander in the field is always right and the rear echelon is wrong, unless proved otherwise.
Colin Powell
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The purposes of the United States should not be doubted. The Security Council resolutions will be enforced - the just demands of peace and security will be met - or action will be unavoidable. And a regime that has lost its legitimacy will also lose its power.
Colin Powell