Bill Bradley

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?

All I have are the people.

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.

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.

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.

Legislating is a very human experience in which trust and mutual respect play critical roles.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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 taste of defeat has a richness of experience all its own.

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