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The most effective means of ensuring the government's accountability to the people is an aggressive, free, challenging, untrusting press.

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
Presses
Press
Challenges
Free
Ensuring
Means
Accountability
Government
Challenging
Mean
Aggressive
People
Effective

More quotes by 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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Effective leaders are made, not born. They learn from trial and error, and from experience.
Colin Powell
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Foe means enemy. Now, will we have differences of opinion with the Russians? Yes. Will they get mad at us from time to time, and we get mad at them? That's part of the normal diplomatic relations.
Colin Powell
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Politics is not bean bags. It's serious, tough stuff.
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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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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I don't want to spend the rest of my life giving speeches.
Colin Powell
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Everybody makes bad decisions. I am sure I have made my share of them over 40 years of service. Or I have made good decisions and have been overruled. The real challenge, when you are overruled, is to remember who the boss is and don't take it personally.
Colin Powell
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Our failure was that our intelligence community thought [Saddam Hussein ] had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction. That was a mistake. There is fallibility in human intelligence and in human decisions.
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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The freedom to do your best means nothing unless you are willing to do your best.
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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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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I have never seen a good organization where the standards weren't high.
Colin Powell
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Don't just count your days, make your days count.
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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I would not presume from this distance, nor would America presume to say who should be the leader of the Iraqi nation.
Colin Powell
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Maybe we don't put our young people in situations often enough where they're allowed to fail. When you fail you gain experience, and with enough experience, you don't fail as often.
Colin Powell
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Preferring members of any one group for no reason other than race or ethnic origin is discrimination for its own sake. This the Constitution forbids.
Colin Powell
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One of the greatest talents of all is the talent to recognize and to develop talent in others.
Colin Powell