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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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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
Right
Mean
Things
Pissing
People
Piss
Inevitably
Wisdom
Almost
Doesn

More quotes by Colin Powell

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It is not our place to decide who should lead the Iraqi people. If Saddam [Hussein] leaves or has to be forced out of power and a new regime brought in, a new leadership brought in, I am confident it will be some combination of people inside the country and outside the country.
Colin Powell
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The person who will decide whether or not there will be war or peace is Saddam Hussein, and all he has to do is give up these terrible weapons that he has used to kill fellow Arabs, fellow Muslims in that part of the world, and to step away from his past behaviour which invaded neighbouring countries.
Colin Powell
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It's nice to say let's be bipartisan. But we're a partisan nation. We were raised as a partisan nation.
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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Politics is different, because the mission is always to get the necessary votes. A good politician goes through everything in terms of mission and vision, and resourcing, but at the end of the day politicians have to make compromises in order to achieve consensus.
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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Have a sense of humor to break the tension in times of great toil.
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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I happen to hold a bachelor of science degree in geology... And my greatest contribution to the field of science is that I never entered it.
Colin Powell
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There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more.
Colin Powell
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All values are important, everyone who has ever touched my life in some way was a mentor for good or bad. Life is a blend, and a person is a blend of all the influences that have touched their lives.
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 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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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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The greatest gifts my parents gave to me...were their unconditional love and a set of values.
Colin Powell
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My responsibility, our responsibility as lucky Americans, is to try to give back to this country as much as it has given us, as we continue our American journey together.
Colin Powell
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The root cause of poverty is social injustice and the bad government that abets it
Colin Powell
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Surround yourself with people who take their work seriously, but not themselves, those who work hard and play hard.
Colin Powell
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Politics is not bean bags. It's serious, tough stuff.
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