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Excellence is not an exception, it is a prevailing attitude

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
Prevailing
Exception
Excellence
Perfection
Attitude

More quotes by Colin Powell

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The chief condition on which, life, health and vigor depend on, is action. It is by action that an organism develops its faculties, increases its energy, and attains the fulfillment of its destiny.
Colin Powell
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In other words, don't expect to always be great. Disappointments, failures and setbacks are a normal part of the lifecycle of a unit or a company and what the leader has to do is constantly be up and say 'we have a problem, let's go and get it'.
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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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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I don't think anyone would disagree with the conclusion that Saddam [Hussein] was a terrible dictator. He had gassed his own people and his neighbors. He had killed thousands of people, and he had started a couple of wars and destroyed his country.
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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None of us can change our yesterdays but all of us can change our tomorrows.
Colin Powell
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We need stable regimes in this part of the world [the Mideast] who will be partners and friends of ours, because the fact of the matter is we do rely on imported oil to fuel our economy and to fuel our nation.
Colin Powell
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Policies that emanate from ivory towers often have an adverse impact on the people out in the field who are fighting the wars or bringing in the revenues.
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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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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Leaders honor their core values, but they are flexible in how they execute them.
Colin Powell
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There are lots of countries that are having these kinds of internal civil wars in other parts of the world and nobody is talking about intervening.
Colin Powell
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I think all of the attention of the world, to include the attention of the Arab world, should be on Saddam Hussein and whether or not he is prepared to give up the weapons of mass destruction that he has used to terrorise the region.
Colin Powell
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I can think of nothing that Saddam Hussein can do diplomatically (to avoid war). I think that time is now over. He's had his chance, he has had many chances over the last 12 years and he has blown every one of those chances.
Colin Powell
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Another rule I have is: Don't let your ego get tied up in a policy dispute. Otherwise, if things don't go your way, you can end up breaking a relationship with somebody with whom you can't afford to break.
Colin Powell
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As a leader you set the tone for your entire team. Communicate your vision.
Colin Powell
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A sense of shame is not a bad moral compass.
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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I was born in Harlem, raised in the South Bronx, went to public school, got out of public college, went into the Army, and then I just stuck with it.
Colin Powell