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Bill Russell
Cornerstone of the Boston Celtics' Dynasty
I played in this dumb number of seventh games. You know -- the last game. Either you win, or if you lose you go home. And I have a perfect record. Won all of them, including college and the Olympics. And so I was talking with the kids at the NBA, and first they asked me, "Were you scared?" I said no. "You weren't scared?" No. So he comes in with five different ways of asking me was I scared. "Didn't this scare you?" No, I was not scared. "Okay, were you nervous?" No. "You weren't scared? You weren't nervous?" No. In fact, Sam Jones and I kid about it all the time. Every seventh game that Sam was there, I came to the seventh game, I had a black suit on. And he says, "Why do you always wear a black suit to these games?" I said, "Because I'm the undertaker. I've come to bury these people!" Sam and I used to kid about that all the time. He says, "You always wear a black suit." "Yep, I'm the undertaker. I come to bury these guys." So finally -- a guy kept asking was I nervous or was I scared. So finally I said, "Listen, there was no reason for me to be scared or nervous. I did not have to play against Bill Russell and the Celtics. What was there to be nervous or scared about?" You probably think I'm really modest, right?
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Albie Sachs
Constitutional Court of South Africa
She had seen me once in exercise and she thought, "Gee, Albie is so brave." She'd heard my name and I saw her sitting there and I thought, "Gee, that woman, whoever she is, she's so brave." We each thought the other was brave. I was crying inside. I was wretched. And our lives actually met up with -- years later when I went into exile into England. She was there. She came there and we spoke and she married an Englishman. And years later, after I was blown up, and my like second exile in England, she got in touch with me. And when I set up the South African Constitution Study Center to prepare for a new constitution, I asked her to be my assistant. She said, "Albie, no. I'm too old." And so I said, "No, Dorothy, you must." And she did. And she came back to South Africa when I went back to South Africa afterwards.
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Albie Sachs
Constitutional Court of South Africa
Albie Sachs: I was very worried about myself. I thought, "I don't hate them. If I'm a serious freedom fighter, I should hate them." But I just saw Flicky, a guy doing his job as he saw it. "Advocate Sachs " They called me "advocate," like attorney. "Do you mind if I tell you a joke?" I was dying to have someone speak to me. "No, no. Go ahead." "There was this child who swallowed a little coin and his mother said, 'We must take him to the doctor,' and his father said, 'No, no, no. We must take him to the lawyer. He'll get the money out of him much quicker.' Do you mind if I tell you that joke?" And, you know, it was such a weird situation, that he's still respecting me as a policeman, he's respecting me because I'm a lawyer and treating me as a human being. He wasn't from the security police. And I couldn't imagine killing him or hating him. I could imagine living in the country with someone like him, who is kind of all right, you know, on a one-to-one basis. Maybe with the black prisoners he was much harsher, but I didn't feel that. He didn't have that edge. And when occasionally he would speak about there was a black constable and Flicky would say to this constable, but not in a bullying way, "Fetch some water for the boss." So I was the boss. I'm in prison as an enemy of the state trying to overthrow the state, but I was called the boss. You know, the racism just went everywhere.
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Albie Sachs
Constitutional Court of South Africa
Albie Sachs: Two years later I was picked up again. By then, half of my clients had been picked up and things were much rougher now. And the investigation was much tougher, and sleep deprivation was being used as a major mechanism of breaking people down. And I'm locked up and it's not, "Will you answer our questions?" And I would say, "Depends on what the questions are." And they would say, "We can't tell you what the questions are " and it was a game, " unless you tell us what you're willing to answer or not." Now it was just, I'm seated at a table, they work in relays. They bang, bang, bang, bang for like 10 minutes, and then total silence for 45 minutes. And then they go out and another group comes in, and shouting and shouting, shouting at me for ten minutes, and then total silence.
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Albie Sachs
Constitutional Court of South Africa
I asked for food at one stage, and I remember them smoking as they gave me the food -- and I'm convinced there was something in it, and it emerged afterwards they were using chemicals to break down your resistance. And by early morning, I'm feeling myself getting weaker and weaker and weaker. And my body is fighting my will. So it's not even them anymore. And they're working in relays, there were about eight of them, and they're taking turns, and they can sleep and come back. And the head was a Colonel Swanepoel. "Rooi Rus" (Red Russian) they called him. It's like he cultivated ugliness. I don't think how people appear is significant about them at all. But it was as though he liked the fact that he had short, cropped, reddish hair and bloodshot eyes and a thick neck. And heavy ham-fisted hands which he would slam onto the table, and a bellowing voice. And he was notorious. People had died -- I knew that -- had died under his interrogations. And then, bam, bam, bam, screaming and shouting and start banging the table, then total quiet. And eventually I feel my resistance going.
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Albie Sachs
Constitutional Court of South Africa
I say, "Albie, you've got to manage your collapse. It's coming. Your clients had sometimes held out for two, three, four, five days and when they broke, they broke completely." And so now I'm thinking about it, how I can control. Eventually, early in the morning, I just toppled off the chair. I'm lying on the ground and I see all those shoes coming. And I hear the excited voices, black shoes, brown shoes, and they're all shuffling around me, and I'm just lying inert, and water comes pouring down on me and my hair gets matted. And I'm lifted up, and these Swanepoel's heavy fingers pushing open my eyes, pushing them open, I closed them, he pushes them open, I close them, he pushes them open. And eventually I just sit and I collapse again, and the same thing happens a few times, and eventually I just sit and I'm going through my head, I'm going to say something. What am I going to say?
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Albie Sachs
Constitutional Court of South Africa
Albie Sachs: I thought back to that darkness when I'd been blown up, and I didn't know what was happening, and total darkness. And I knew something terrible was happening, and I thought I was being kidnapped to be taken to prison in South Africa. And voices talking, and my body being pulled, and I shouted in English and in Portuguese, but not too loudly. I'm conscious even then that I'm a lawyer in a public place. We mustn't make a noise. "Leave me, leave me. I'd rather die." Then I'd faint and I feel terrible pain in the car. I thought at least they could have decent springs in the car if they're gonna kidnap me. And then total darkness, total silence and a voice says, "Albie, this is Ivo Garrido. You're in the Maputo Central Hospital. Your arm is in " and he used the Portuguese word lamentável, " it's in lamentable condition. You have to face the future with courage." And into the darkness I said, "What happened?" and a woman's voice said, "It was a car bomb," and I collapsed into darkness again, but with a sense of euphoria. I'd survived. For, I don't know how many decades, every single day in the freedom struggle, wondering, "If they come for me today, if they come for me tonight, if they come for me tomorrow morning, will I be brave? Will I survive?" They'd come for me and I'd got through. I'd got through. I just felt fantastic. Then darkness, quiet, nothing.
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Jonas Salk
Developer of Polio Vaccine
Before the field trial, I did a test in about 5,000 school children in the city of Pittsburgh which was of the nature to make sure that things did go well, before we went ahead and put this out on a much larger scale. And so, while it is true that we proceed on the basis of things that we know, about which we can have confidence, so to speak, that when you engage in human experimentation, you must proceed in a somewhat cautious manner and be prepared for the unforeseen and the unknowable.
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