Quote

The less you associate with some people, the more your life will improve. Any time you tolerate mediocrity in others, it increases your mediocrity. An important attribute in successful people is their impatience with negative thinking and negative acting people.

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
Acting
Increases
Less
Mediocrity
Others
Attributes
Important
Tolerate
Time
Improve
Attribute
Thinking
Increase
Associate
Life
Negative
Impatience
People
Successful
Associates

More quotes by Colin Powell

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I think we can make a contribution to their [Saudi Arabia] thinking as they decide how they should deal with the economic and social challenges that they are facing.
Colin Powell
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Let's not forget that Congress bears a lot of responsibility for many of the problems we have now
Colin Powell
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Lying offshore, ready to act, the presence of ships and Marines sometimes means much more than just having air power or ship's fire, when it comes to deterring a crisis. And the ships and Marines may not have to do anything but lie offshore. It is hard to lie offshore with a C-141 or C-130 full of airborne troops.
Colin Powell
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For all the hardship, I was still excited to be on the trail, testing my endurance, feeling especially alive as strength and fatigue flowed alternately through my limbs.
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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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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Organization charts and fancy titles count for next to nothing.
Colin Powell
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Free speech is intended to protect the controversial and even outrageous word and not just comforting platitudes too mundane to need protection.
Colin Powell
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Saudi Arabia will have to decide its own path, and I don't know if it will decide a path like any other nation in the region or if it will design something that is unique to Saudi Arabia.
Colin Powell
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The essence of leadership is building bonds of trust in your organization.
Colin Powell
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I have the deepest regret about 9/11. Sept. 11, 2001, was one of the most difficult days I've ever had. I was in Lima, Peru, and had to fly back eight hours not knowing what happened in my own country, knowing thousands of my fellow citizens had died.
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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It was President [Bill] Clinton and the United States congress in 1998 which said that the regime has to be changed because the regime would not give up its weapons of mass destruction. We came into office in 2001 and kept that policy because Saddam Hussein had not changed.
Colin Powell
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Every organization needs to be introspective, transparent, and honest with itself. This only works if everyone is unified on the goals and purposes of the organization and there is trust within the team. High-performing, successful organizations build cultures of introspection and trust and never lose sight of their purpose.
Colin Powell
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Treat people kindly. When you are kind to somebody and I don't mean necessarily buddy-buddy, just show kindness and consideration. Show that people are worthy and you respect them and you are glad they're with you.
Colin Powell
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The best way to create a winning team is to train them, give them everything they need to get the job done and second, make sure they know what the job is and what the job will be. So you connect strategy to resources.
Colin Powell
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War should be the politics of last resort. And when we go to war, we should have a purpose that our people understand and support.
Colin Powell
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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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Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.
Colin Powell
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The root cause of poverty is social injustice and the bad government that abets it
Colin Powell