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Lenny Wilkens
Basketball Hall of Fame
I grew up in a very staunch Roman Catholic family. My mother went to church every day, okay? And to Novenas on the weekends. I mean, she was there! And so, I'm probably a testament that prayer works because she was always praying for us. And, I became very close to a priest in the parish -- I was an altar boy, and he was the one that wrote to Providence College, talked to them about giving me a scholarship -- by the name of Tom Mannion. And we still stay in touch today and he would always encourage me in telling me that I could do this. I mean, I could achieve here. I mean, anything that I wanted to, I could. It was up to me, you know. And that reinforced what my mother said about not making excuses. You know, be accountable for who you are.
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Lenny Wilkens
Basketball Hall of Fame
Lenny Wilkens: The American Dream, to me, means having the opportunity to achieve, okay? Because I don't think you should be guaranteed anything other than the opportunity. I want you to let me fail or succeed, okay? And the thing that I tell young people, if you fail the first time that's just a chance to start over again so don't take it personally because it's like coming to a roadblock. If you can't go through it, find a way around it. Don't waste all your time banging your head against that. Move in another direction. So my philosophy becomes that I worry about the things I can affect, and the things I have no control over I move by.
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E.O. Wilson
Father of Sociobiology
No one ever becomes a general by joining the army at the end of the war. In other words, look for areas that are not yet opened up, and be a marathoner in a sense, or be prepared to run alone for a long period of time without anybody clapping or giving you any rewards for doing it, in order to be the first into a new area. It is probably the best way -- and certainly in the 21st Century -- of succeeding in science. But I learned a lesson in life when doing badly at distance running, and that was, I guess, humility. Whenever I feel I can fly by flapping my arms or anything, intellectually or any other way, I remember the long hard miles and hours and hours of trying that resulted in my discovery that I was hereditarily not going to be a good distance runner. I have to remind myself repeatedly, hereditarily, it is very likely you won't do very well in this or in that, don't move in that direction where you have doubt. Find out what you really love to do and where you might succeed. You don't have to be the very best, but move in that direction. Pick that field, and life will be a lot more satisfying.
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Oprah Winfrey
Entertainment Executive
I was raised on a farm with my grandmother for the first six years of my life -- I knew somehow that my life would be different and it would be better. I never had a clear cut vision of what it was I would be doing. I remember absolutely physically feeling it at around four years old. I remember standing on the back porch -- it was a screened-in porch -- and my grandmother was boiling clothes because, you know, at that time, we didn't have washing machines, and so people would, you know, physically boil clothes in a great big iron pot. She was boiling clothes and poking them down. And I was watching her from the back porch, and I was four years old and I remember thinking, "My life won't be like this. My life won't be like this, it will be better." And it wasn't from a place of arrogance, it was just a place of knowing that things could be different for me somehow. I don't know what made me think that.
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