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Maybe we don't put our young people in situations often enough where they're allowed to fail. When you fail you gain experience, and with enough experience, you don't fail as often.

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
People
Inspiring
Failing
Maybe
Situation
Situations
Often
Gain
Experience
Allowed
Young
Gains
Enough
Fail

More quotes by 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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Luck tends to come to people who are prepared.
Colin Powell
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If everybody trusts one another, then the person who didn't prevail will faithfully execute the decision as if it was their idea.
Colin Powell
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I would not presume from this distance, nor would America presume to say who should be the leader of the Iraqi nation.
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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It is the fault of the United States that these terrible people, these insurgents and terrorists are out there. They are the ones that we ought to be focusing our energy on defeating and not just wring our hands about the fact that it's going to be difficult.
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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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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Politics is not bean bags. It's serious, tough stuff.
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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The commander in the field is always right and the rear echelon is wrong, unless proved otherwise.
Colin Powell
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We view Egypt as a good friend of America. We are in constant touch with them. We provide them economic and military assistance as part of our relationship.
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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None of us can change our yesterdays but all of us can change our tomorrows.
Colin Powell
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Thee are such horrible weapons. And so no sane leader would ever want to cross that line to using nuclear weapons. And, if you are not going to cross that line, then these things are basically useless.
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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It is the job of leaders to eliminate uncertainty.
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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We are not going to dwell on those things that divide us. We are going to rejoice in those things that keep us together to make this a better country - to reach down and back to touch every young person in need!
Colin Powell
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Almost invariably, whoever doesn't win the argument is going to be unhappy.
Colin Powell