A lot of people want to change the world, but only a few people want to change themselves. When it comes to the issue of race in America, we have to do both.
Becoming number one is easier than remaining number one.
The taste of defeat has a richness of experience all its own.
I might lose because I wasn’t tall enough; I might lose because I wasn’t fast enough. But I wasn’t going to lose because I wasn’t ready.
Leaders should be collaborative, modest, and generous.
We realized that no one of us could be as good as all of us playing unselfishly.
Leadership is not something that is done to people, like fixing your teeth. Leadership is unlocking people’s potential to become better.
Imagination allows us to escape the predictable. It enables us to reply to the common wisdom that we cannot soar by saying, ‘Just watch!’
Some people say we can never achieve our special destiny, but I say, in a world of new possibilities guided by goodness, we can and we will.
There has never been a great athlete who died not knowing what pain is.
Sports is a metaphor for overcoming obstacles and achieving against great odds. Athletes, in times of difficulty, can be important role models.
For a long time, I operated under the Chinese proverb that there are four kinds of leaders: those who you laugh at, those who you hate, those who you love and those who you don’t even know that they’re leaders.
The only way to be true to our American tradition is to maintain absolute governmental neutrality regarding religious beliefs and practices.
When you make speeches you elicit expectations against which you will be held accountable.
Give to another human being without the expectation of a return.
When the playing is over, one can sense that one’s youth has been spent playing a game, and now both the game and youth are gone.
We need to get beyond the politics of the moment, the deficit of the hour, the military count of the day, the numbers that rarely shape events. Our long-term interests must be in people and in the values of democracy and individual liberty.
Trying to take money out of politics is like trying to take jumping out of basketball.
How should we Democrats select the next presidential nominee? Smoke filled rooms? Brokered convention? National primary? Personally, I prefer jump shots from the top of the key.
Basketball can serve as a kind of metaphor for ultimate cooperation. It is a sport where success, as symbolized by the championship, requires that the dictates of community prevail over selfish impulses.
People tell me, “I’m glad you said that.” But this is not a spectator sport. This is an activity that requires daily moral awakening as well as a commitment that leads to real change.