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It is good if your enemy underestimates you. The dumber they think you are the more surprised they are when you kill them.

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
Thinking
Dumber
Underestimate
Surprised
Kill
Enemy
Interesting
Good
Think
Underestimates

More quotes by 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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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
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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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Nobody is ready to leave Iraq to be interviewed.
Colin Powell
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We want to approach this in a multilateral way, talking with our friends, consulting with our security council colleagues in the United Nations, hoping to find a way to solve this peacefully, but at the same time recognising that unless the threat of military force is there, Iraq will not disarm.
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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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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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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The healthiest competition occurs when average people win by putting above average effort.
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 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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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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I think that military, corporate, and non-political organizations are pretty much similar.
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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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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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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America has a terrible educational problem in the sense that we have too many youngsters not finishing school. A third of our kids don't finish high school, 50 percent of minorities don't finish high school.
Colin Powell
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We have to be on guard that we don't spend so much time worrying about terrorism and guarding ourselves that we start to lose the essence of who we are as an open, freedom-loving people, welcoming to the rest of the world.
Colin Powell
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Pissing people off doesn't mean you're doing the right things, but doing the right things will almost inevitably piss people off.
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