“Leaders should be collaborative, modest, and generous”

Trying to take money out of politics is like trying to take jumping out of basketball.

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.

Imagination allows us to escape the predictable. It enables us to reply to the common wisdom that we cannot soar by saying, ‘Just watch!’

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.

When you’re not practicing, someone somewhere is. And when the two of you meet, assuming roughly equal ability, the other person will win.

Tax (reform) is ultimately a decision about values.

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

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.

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.

Working with the UN’s diplomacy and development arms, we can prevent minor differences from escalating into wars.

When you make speeches you elicit expectations against which you will be held accountable.

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

When conflicts do break out, UN peacekeepers should play a role in defusing and settling them. Without giving up our sovereignty, we can help the UN with better training and better command and control in order to develop more effective peacekeeping forces.

The only way to be true to our American tradition is to maintain absolute governmental neutrality regarding religious beliefs and practices

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.

I like the rough impersonality of New York … Human relations are oiled by jokes, complaints, and confessions-all made with the assumption of never seeing the other person again.

I don’t remember saying nothing about me crossing over. I did R&B collaborations but I never tried to do no pop stuff.

Everyone needs help from everyone.

It doesn’t matter if you work with an Oscar winner or if you work with an unknown actor. There is always a collaboration between the director and the actors, and you always have to listen as the actors have to listen to you as a director.

I’m a very big believer in collaboration and teamwork.

I definitely have plans to do more collaboration albums in the future.

Collaboration is being open to each other’s ideas and benefiting from each other’s perspectives in an open way.

Collaboration is all about rewriting and rewriting and rewriting and helping each other to constantly improve a piece.

It’s easier to do it in a collaboration than on your own.