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You can’t make someone else’s choices. You shouldn’t let someone else make yours.

Colin Powell

If you get the dirty end of the stick, sharpen it and turn it into a useful tool.
COLIN POWELL

Dirty End Tools Yourself
You don’t know what you can get away with until you try.
COLIN POWELL

Ability Let Go Try Yourself
The greatest gifts my parents gave to me were their unconditional love and a set of values.
COLIN POWELL

Gift Greatness Love Myself Parents Value
The essence of leadership is building bonds of trust in your organization.
COLIN POWELL

Bond Essence Leadership Organization Trust Yourself
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

Accomplishment Follow Job Medal Reward Tools Training Yourself
Every organization should tolerate rebels who tell the emperor he has no clothes.
COLIN POWELL

Clothes Himself Organization Rebel Tolerance
You can be sure that the American spirit will prevail over this tragedy.
COLIN POWELL

Spirit Tragedy Yourself
If a leader doesn’t convey passion and intensity then there will be no passion and intensity within the organization and they’ll start to fall down and get depressed.
COLIN POWELL

Depression Fall Intensity Leadership Passion Start Yourself
Trying to get everyone to like you is a sign of mediocrity.
COLIN POWELL

Average Sign Yourself
Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer is “no.” That’s not America.
COLIN POWELL

Country Racism Wrong
Surround yourself with people who take their work seriously, but not themselves, those who work hard and play hard.
COLIN POWELL

Hard Work People Play Serious Work
Bad news isn’t wine. It doesn’t improve with age.
COLIN POWELL

Age Bad Improvement News Wine
Failure is a part of life and you have to learn to deal with it. Failure is something that is part of life’s cycle and it’s from failure that you gain life experience.
COLIN POWELL

Deal Experience Failure Learning Life Yourself
Don’t be buffaloed by experts and elites. Experts often possess more data than judgment. Elites can become so inbred that they produce hemophiliacs who bleed to death as soon as they are nicked by the real world.
COLIN POWELL

Blood Death Expert Judgement Reality World
Don’t take counsel of your fears or naysayers.
COLIN POWELL

Advice Counseling Fear Voice Yourself
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

Best Connection Creation Job Resources Team Training Way Yourself
Look for intelligence and judgment and, most critically, a capacity to anticipate, to see around corners. Also look for loyalty, integrity, a high energy drive, a balanced ego and the drive to get things done.
COLIN POWELL

Balance Criticism Drive Ego Intelligence Judgement Loyalty
It takes more courage to send men into battle than to fight the battle yourself.
COLIN POWELL

Battle Courage Fight Man Yourself
We can seldom get our children to do what we tell them, but they almost never fail to imitate us.
COLIN POWELL

Children Failure Imitation Ourselves
The commander in the field is always right and the rear echelon is wrong, unless proved otherwise.
COLIN POWELL

Command Evidence Prove Right Wrong
Trust is the essence of Leadership.
COLIN POWELL

Essence Leadership Trust
You can’t get it all done yourself. The best leaders are not afraid of picking people who are better than they are and who may one day replace them.
COLIN POWELL

Afraid Best Leadership Pick Replacement Yorself
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

Care Goodness Organization People Right Yourself
Leadership is the art of accomplishing more than the science of management says is possible.
COLIN POWELL

Accomplishment Art Leadership Management Possible
Don’t let adverse facts stand in the way of a good decision.
COLIN POWELL

Decision Fact Goodness Stand Way
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

Disappointment Expectation Failure Greatness Himself Problem Word
My own experience is that you get as much information as you can and then you pay attention to your intuition, to your informed instinct.
COLIN POWELL

Attention Experience Information Intuition Pay Yourself

You can’t make someone else’s choices. You shouldn’t let someone else make yours.

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You can’t make someone else’s choices. You shouldn’t let someone else make yours.

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