Bill Bradley
Imagination allows us to escape the predictable. It enables us to reply to the common wisdom that we cannot soar by saying, 'Just watch!'Collection: Wisdom
Leadership is unlocking people's potential to become better.Collection: Leadership
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.Collection: Independence
The taste of defeat has a richness of experience all its own.Collection: Experience
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.Collection: Medical
Sports is a metaphor for overcoming obstacles and achieving against great odds. Athletes, in times of difficulty, can be important role models.Collection: Sports
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.Collection: Environmental
Ambition is the path to success. Persistence is the vehicle you arrive in.Collection: Success
If you win a championship, you win it doing many of the same things you had to do when we won championships. You have to be unselfish. You have to work very hard. You have to be resilient. You have to have a passion for what you do.
I am more interested in experiencing life than in analyzing it.
Princeton ignited my intellectual curiosity and introduced me to a new social world. It... challenged me on the most fundamental levels imaginable. It was where I became a man.
Becoming number one is easier than remaining number one.
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.
Since the days of Harry Truman, Democrats have wanted universal health coverage, believing that if other industrialized countries can achieve it, surely the United States can. For Democrats, universal coverage speaks to America's sense of decency and compassion. Democrats also believe that it will lead to a healthier and more productive country.
The only way to be true to our American tradition is to maintain absolute governmental neutrality regarding religious beliefs and practices.
Look, I have no qualms about having played basketball. The game has done so much for me. Look at the places I've been, for one thing.
When you make speeches you elicit expectations against which you will be held accountable.
Kids always ask the most obvious and the most difficult questions.
By the time I was 14, I had become self-motivated. Whatever raced inside me was more demanding than any pressure applied by parents or teachers.
Trying to take money out of politics is like trying to take jumping out of basketball.
Leaders should be collaborative, modest, and generous.
All I have are the people.
There has never been a great athlete who died not knowing what pain is.
Al Gore clearly has the vision... it's a much better vision than that of George W. Bush.
Over the years, the tax code has become a vehicle for political favoritism and social engineering.
Democrats must rally behind a low-rate, broad-based tax system that is fair, simple and efficient.
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.
Whenever Congress undertakes large-scale reform, there are times when disaster appears certain - only to be averted at the last minute by the good sense of its sometimes unfairly maligned members.
For Republicans, tort reform and its health care analogue, malpractice reform, speak to the goal of stronger economic growth and lower costs.
Legislating is a very human experience in which trust and mutual respect play critical roles.
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.
When I played the game, you played with your feet. And the game was about finesse. Movement.
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.
That feeling of being the NBA Champion is really unparalleled, because you're the best in the world. Without question. How many people can say that in any profession?
I think Jeremy Lin is a really interesting player.
I think that the great presidents have always been a little more clever.
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.
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.
I never allowed other people's expectations to determine whatever course I took. I had to reach a decision about what I was going to do based on what I felt inside myself.
I've never allowed my political life, or my life as a basketball player, to define the totality of my humanity or my personality.
Respect your fellow human being, treat them fairly, disagree with them honestly, enjoy their friendship, explore your thoughts about one another candidly, work together for a common goal and help one another achieve it. No destructive lies. No ridiculous fears. No debilitating anger.Collection: Motivational
When you're not practicing, someone somewhere is. And when the two of you meet, assuming roughly equal ability, the other person will win.Collection: Inspirational
The point of the game is not how well the individual does, but whether the team wins. That's the beautiful heart of the game, the blending of personalities, the mutual sacrifices for the group success.Collection: Beautiful
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.Collection: America
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.Collection: Track
We realized that no one of us could be as good as all of us playing unselfishly.Collection: Teamwork
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.Collection: Basketball
Leaders should be collaborative, modest, and generousCollection: Teamwork
Leadership is not something that is done to people, like fixing your teeth. Leadership is unlocking people's potential to become better.Collection: People
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.Collection: Basketball