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Maya Angelou
Poet and Historian
I don't think modesty is a very good virtue, if it is a virtue at all. A modest person will drop the modesty in a minute. You see, it's a learned affectation. But humility comes from inside out. Humility says there was someone before me, someone found the path, someone made the road before me, and I have the responsibility of making the road for someone who is yet to come. Dr. King was really humble so that he was accessible to everybody. The smallest child could come up to him, the most powerful person could come up to him, he never changed. If somebody very rich and very powerful said, "Dr. King, I want to speak to you," he was the same person to that person as he would be to one of you who is 16, 17, if you would say, "Dr. King " He was still accessible, gentle, powerful, humble.
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Maya Angelou
Poet and Historian
I will not sit in a group of black friends and hear racial pejoratives against whites. I will not hear "honky." I will not hear "Jap." I will not hear "kike." I will not hear "greaser." I will not hear "dago." I will not hear it. As soon as I hear it, I say, "Excuse me, I have to leave. Sorry." Or if it's in my home, I say, "You have to leave. I can't have that. That is poison, and I know it is poison, and you're smearing it on me. I will not have it." Now, it's not an easy thing. And one doesn't all of a sudden sort of blossom into somebody who's courageous enough to say that. But you do start little by little. And you sit in a room, and somebody says -- if you're all white, and somebody says, "Well, the niggers -- " You may not have the courage right then, but you say, "Whooh! My goodness! It's already eight o'clock. I have to go," and leave. Little by little, you develop courage. You sit in a room, and somebody says, "Well, you know what the Japs did then, and what they're doing now." Say, "Mm-hmm! I have to go. My goodness! It's already six o'clock." Leave. Continue to build the courage. Sooner or later, you'll be able to say out loud, "Just a minute. I defend that person. I will not have gay bashing, lesbian bashing. Not in my company. I will not do it."
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Maya Angelou
Poet and Historian
When we talk about racism, we have to see that we are not just talking about acts against blacks, we are talking about vulgarities against any human being because of her -- his -- race. This is vulgar. That is what it is, whether it is anti-Asian, whether it is the use of racial pejoratives about Jews, about Japanese, about Native Americans, about blacks, about Irish, it is stupid, because what it is really is it is poison. It poisons the spirit, the human spirit. I know there are blacks who say, "I can use the N-word because I mean it endearingly." I don't believe that. I believe it is vulgar and dangerous, given from any mouth to any ear. I know that if poison is in a vial which says P-O-I-S-O-N and has a skull and the cross bones, that it is poison. But if you pour the same thing into Bavarian crystal it is still poison. So I think racism is vulgar any way you cut it.
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Maya Angelou
Poet and Historian
Maya Angelou: There was a time when Malcolm espoused the belief that all whites were "blue-eyed devils." But he took his life in his own hands when he said, publicly, that he had been to Mecca, and there he saw blonde, blue-eyed men whom he could call brothers. He said, "So everybody, what I said was wrong." Now, that took an incredible amount of courage to say that, because after he said it, he didn't live very long. He was killed after he said that. But he did see it, and he said it. And that has to be -- I mean, one has to salute him.
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Robert Ballard
Discoverer of the Titanic
I had a chance to warm up to success. I had that ego thing that you go through of being on television and newspapers, and all of that sort of thing when the media has their meal with you. I had done that on a smaller scale. So, when this big thing came, I think I had a proper frame of mind about it. A lot of people who succeed, the ones that do it overnight, it can ruin them. But the ones that work at it for a long, long time, like some stars who get discovered after a 30-year career, they tend to handle it better than the people that are a star in their first movie. I'm thankful that I was prepared, as much as you could be, for something like that. It still was quite an experience, but I think I kept my feet on the ground through it all. You can't take it too seriously when the spotlight, to some degree arbitrarily, says "Now you are famous." You say, "Well I don't feel any different." The key is: don't act any different then.
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Sir Roger Bannister
Track and Field Legend
Sir Roger Bannister: There was a coach, but I fell out with him. He said, "You do this." And I said, "Why do I do this?" He said, "Well, you do this because I'm the coach and I tell you to do it." He'd make me do a timed trial and he would be holding a watch and I would say, "What time did I do?" He would say, "Oh, don't worry about that." So, although he had been quite well known -- he was actually the coach to someone called, Jack Lovelock who won the Olympic 1500 meters in Berlin in 1936 -- but I suppose I was always independent. I felt about running that it was my task to find out what suited me and what didn't suit me, how much training could I do and then improve my performance, and not let my performance go down because I was training too hard. These were things which seemed to me so individual that nobody else was going to understand me to this degree.
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Sir Roger Bannister
Track and Field Legend
Just three weeks before the Helsinki Olympics -- the management of the events in the Olympic Games was left to local (Helsinki in this case) organizers. It was said afterwards that there had been a rather deliberate attempt because I was the favorite, to change the program. They had three races on three successive days, which were unnecessary. Previous there had always been the heats, a day's rest or two day's rest, and a final. And that was what I was planning for and I could have coped with it. But by the third day of these successive races, I knew in my heart that it was a virtually impossible task for me. Of course, with that frame of mind too, it did prove impossible. I came fourth. No British gold medals in the Helsinki Olympics except for a horse called Fox Hunter who won an equestrian event. Disaster! Criticism for Bannister. "We told him he should train differently and now it is proved." If I had won the gold medal, I would probably have retired because Olympic gold medals, 1500 meters, there was nothing higher and I would just have gone on with my work. But, I felt angry with the press, angry at myself, angry with the organizers of the event and thought about it. I knew that I could go on for two more years when the equivalent of an Olympic prize would have been the European championships and the Commonwealth games. That would have meant most of the great runners, not unfortunately, the American runners. The rest of the world would have been represented. So after thought, I decided it would be possible to work and go on training. It proved difficult.
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Sir Roger Bannister
Track and Field Legend
Now I had to sink to the bottom of the pile, graduating as a medical student, and I had to do my residencies, and it was a very difficult time in which I had to turn down all the engagements, work for these further exams, catching up on things that I had not been diligent enough to pursue earlier. And my colleagues and my teachers, of course, had some difficulties in dealing with me because I was famous, notorious, infamous, whichever phrase you like to use. And the concept that I could also have a serious career -- and indeed in a very highly competitive field like neurology -- was really rather strange to them. There were those who supported me, but I certainly felt I was being examined rather carefully and had to be more careful than others to start writing medical papers and pass the exams as speedily as I could, and select the appointments.
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Sir Roger Bannister
Track and Field Legend
Gradually, administration begins to come into the equation, but after a car accident when I was 45 -- which I had quite severe injuries -- it wasn't my fault, but there we are. I was badly injured and I had a time to rethink. And I was then getting too busy in too many directions. I was being asked to see more private patients and so on, and I made the conscious decision then that I wouldn't do any more private practice and there was already an area of research, the autonomic nervous system, which was relatively neglected. It was between cardiology and neurology, and these areas in between are often the province of neither specialty, and so can lag behind. And that was the area I chose and this changed the second half of my life, if you like, because I then set up a laboratory.
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