Bill Bradley

“For much of my career I had no authentic political voice. I had been campaigning all over the country not to change the world or shake up my audiences but to please the roomful of people to whom I was speaking... As a result, my words rarely had the ring of truth to the nonpolitical observer.”

“Becoming number one is easier than remaining number one.”

“Over the years, the tax code has become a vehicle for political favoritism and social engineering.”

“I'm somebody who has to physically experience an environment in order to know it as well as I would like to know it. I recognize this is impressionistic, not scientific. People say, 'You sound like Walt Whitman.' Well, I'll take that comparison.”

“Leadership is unlocking people's potential to become better.”

“There has never been a great athlete who died not knowing what pain is.”

“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.”

“At the end of the Cold War, the prevailing view in Washington was that the U.S. was strong, and Russia was weak and did not count in a unipolar world. We disregarded Russia's opposition to NATO expansion, the Iraq War, and the U.S.-led military intervention in Serbia for the independence of Kosovo.”

“Kids always ask the most obvious and the most difficult questions.”

“I always thought the objective of basketball was to get the maximum amount of movement to get the easiest shot, closest to the basket. With the three-point rule, the whole strategy changes, and you make a move and then throw it 30 feet out, where somebody takes a standing jump shot.”

“I think that the great presidents have always been a little more clever.”

“Malpractice tort reform can be something as commonsensical as the establishment of medical courts - similar to bankruptcy or admiralty courts - with special judges to make determinations in cases brought by parties claiming injury.”

“I am more interested in experiencing life than in analyzing it.”

“Why do we fully tax some kinds of income from capital, like interest and dividends; partially tax other kinds like capital gains; defer tax on other kinds, like IRAs; and impose no tax at all on still other types of capital income, like interest on municipal bonds? This simply is not rational. These distinctions don't have any inherent logic.”

“Ambition is the path to success. Persistence is the vehicle you arrive in.”

“I think Jeremy Lin is a really interesting player.”

“Sports is a metaphor for overcoming obstacles and achieving against great odds. Athletes, in times of difficulty, can be important role models.”

“When I played the game, you played with your feet. And the game was about finesse. Movement.”

“Every time I have some moment on a seashore, or in the mountains, or sometimes in a quiet forest, I think this is why the environment has to be preserved.”

“The U.S. actions in Kosovo - carving out an independent state based on ethnicity from within a sovereign nation - provided the precedent for Russia to carve Crimea out of Ukraine.”