David Robinson

“Keep working and saving and striving for a better future for your children, and for their children, even if you won't be around to see it pay off.”

“Yes, I played in '92 with the original Dream Team, and then again in '96 with what they labeled 'Dream Team III.'”

“I think everything works in cycles. I was fortunate enough to come along in the golden age for big men. There were guys like Hakeem Olajuwon and Patrick Ewing.”

“This is sports. In sports, you win and you lose. That's the nature of sports. You can't get away from that part of it. And if you get too hung up on the losing part, then you miss the boat. The competition part, a game like that, is why you play sports. That is as good as it gets.”

“Preparation is everything.”

“Shaq was a great physical specimen. I mean, 7 foot, 350 pounds. There wasn't anybody like him.”

“Marc Gasol, he's more of a true center. There are guys who play that traditional center role, but the game is also played differently now.”

“When you get that signing bonus, don't start thinking about all the things you can do with $1 million.”

“A lot of these teams really forget that part of success comes with having veteran leadership. You see a lot of teams forget that and start letting go of these old veterans. They don't realize how important it is to have a veteran voice in your locker room or on the bench. It's important to have guys who have been there before.”

“Sometimes I feel like hitting somebody. You look at the refs and they say, 'We'll take care of it.' I think, 'Yeah? You won't take care of it the way I'd like to take care of it.'”

“I'm not a great reader, believe it or not. It's not the vocabulary - my father made me read the dictionary when I was little - but my attention span is poor. Takes me months to read one book.”

“Your peers will respect you for your integrity and character, not your possessions.”

“Your grandfather is and will always be your hero, your inspiration. He fought in World War II, came home to Little Rock, Arkansas, and worked for 50 years as a mailman in the segregated south. Not once did he get a job promotion in five decades. But he kept working all the same.”

“You need to learn a practical lesson. Grit alone is not going to save you from sinking.”

“In some ways, you have to fail some. You have to figure that stuff out, because if I didn't have an Hakeem Olajuwon, would I have been able to achieve the heights that I did achieve? I don't think so. He pushed me, and I pushed him.”

“My dad was in the Navy, and I was raised with a strong commitment to service.”

“Tanzania sells about 50 million pounds of coffee a year to coffee-shop chains such as Starbucks and Peet's. But Sweet Unity is the only finished, branded product from the East African country to be sold directly in the U.S.”

“If you forget your history, you forget who you are.”

“I know I will leave my work unfinished. I just hope I planted enough seeds in my children and grandchildren that they will continue.”

“Just being raised in a home where my mother, from as early as I can remember, always taught me to be thinking about other people first, basically that our service was going to be the measure of our success.”