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You know you're a good leader when people follow you out of curiosity.

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
Curiosity
Follow
Leadership
Leader
Good

More quotes by 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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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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It takes more courage to send men into battle than to fight the battle yourself.
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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Effective leaders are made, not born. They learn from trial and error, and from experience.
Colin Powell
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It is the job of leaders to eliminate uncertainty.
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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War is never a happy solution, but it may be the only solution. We must exhaustively explore other possible solutions before we make the choice for war. Every political and diplomatic effort should be made to avoid war while achieving your objective.
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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I think the American people want to see what we want to see, and that is for the Iraqi people to have a free, open, fair election, for their forces to be built up, for our reconstruction money to be used well, and for Iraqi security forces to take over so we can start bringing our troops home.
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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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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Leaders honor their core values, but they are flexible in how they execute them.
Colin Powell
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You have achieved excellence as a leader when people will follow you anywhere if only out of curiosity.
Colin Powell
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The claims made about Iraq's WMD capabilities before the invasion were inaccurate, wrong, and in some cases, deliberately misleading.
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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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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The burden is on Saddam Hussein. And our policy, our national policy - not the UN policy but our national policy - is that the regime should be changed until such time as he demonstrates that it is not necessary to change the regime because the regime has changed itself.
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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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