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Mike Krzyzewski
Collegiate Basketball Champion
I have a rule on my team: when we talk to one another, we look each other right in the eye, because I think it's tough to lie to somebody. You give respect to somebody. "It's you that I'm talking to right now." As a result, I know that there are going to be times on that bench where there's two seconds to go, or where a kid's having a bad game, and I've got to say, "Look, you're playing horribly, but you're not horrible. So get your head going," or whatever words I might use. "I believe in you." I might not even say it that way. It might be two seconds, and we have to connect. If we haven't done the work beforehand, you can't wait 'til those two seconds to do it. I speak to a lot of groups, and with business groups, a lot of them ask about crisis management. "What do you do with crisis management?" Well, the main thing that you do with crisis management is trust one another. Well how do you get that? Wow, it takes a while. But being honest with one another is the very first and most important step.
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Mike Krzyzewski
Collegiate Basketball Champion
Right in front of me, there was a kid named Richie Farmer from Kentucky. I didn't even see the shot go in, because everyone jumped up, but I knew when he shot it that it was going to go in. Our kids were jumping, and I looked at Richie Farmer, and he was like this: "That could have been us." So my initial thing was to go out to him, and not to our team, just because it seemed a little bit unfair, that you could be in a great game like that, and there was this extreme here, and this extreme down here. As a teacher, I didn't like that, but that's the way it is. That's where great moments come about. But I'll always remember my feeling about Richie, when that happened.
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Mike Krzyzewski
Collegiate Basketball Champion
At Duke University, we have a beautiful cathedral. In the cathedral, there's an altar, and a lot of wood sculpting, carvings, and it's just amazing. I have to think whatever man, or woman, or both, did those things, that if they were just sitting by a lake, making something, that they would make that as good as the one in the altar, because they did it for themselves. Their standards were so good. And then they allowed other people to share it. That's how I try to coach my team. I believe that my standards, or what I want to accomplish for that team, are as high as any fan would want, but maybe the reasoning behind it would be a little deeper, or better for our youngsters to understand or learn from.
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Charles Kuralt
A Life On the Road
I'm still interested, as I was when I was 10 or 11 years old in this thing that so much interested my father, injustices in society and the unfairness that still exists. I mean, that a country so rich that it can reach out and touch the stars and send people to the moon still has hundreds of thousands of its citizens who can't read and who really haven't any way of making a way for themselves in society. That's terribly troubling to me. In recent years, since my retirement, I've spent a lot of time trying to be of help to the School of Social Work at the University of North Carolina, my father's old school because I realize, and I now have time to do something about it, that a society like this just can't afford an uneducated underclass of citizens. We just can't afford it.
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Charles Kuralt
A Life On the Road
I'm not any kind of social reformer myself, but looking back on it, I'm much prouder of my father and what he did, mostly quietly, than I am of anything I have ever done because what he did was back in the '40s, before anybody else had the idea, he started day care centers for the children of poor women. He sold it to the local government on the basis of getting these welfare mothers back to work. Well, what he really had in mind was giving those children a chance by educating them a little bit, giving them a head start, as it is now called.
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Richard Leakey
Paleoanthropologist and Conservationist
Richard Leakey: I think one of the things I've always enjoyed doing was doing things that people largely said couldn't be done. Turning the Kenya Museum into a first-rate world center for the study of human origins, as opposed to a venue where some interesting stuff periodically happened, was a great challenge. Turning it into a big, well-financed scientific institution in a period of 15 years gave me a lot of satisfaction. Going into conservation, took over an extremely corrupt government department, the most corrupt in Kenya. Wildlife in Kenya was total disaster, poaching of elephants rampant, wildlife people being killed. Turning that around into an absolutely clean, fast-moving, well-funded, high-morale wildlife authority in a couple of years was very exciting. It was something nobody thought could be done. I didn't know it could be done, but tried it, and it worked.
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Richard Leakey
Paleoanthropologist and Conservationist
There is far better democracy today in Kenya than there ever was. And then to move out of being anti the President and getting involved with the President again, having been accused by him of treason and sedition, and a year or two later being invited by him to head the government under him as head of the public service in charge of military, the police, the entire structure -- who in their right mind would think you could do that and do it well? So that was great fun, very challenging and hugely exciting. I thoroughly enjoyed that.
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Richard Leakey
Paleoanthropologist and Conservationist
You do so knowing full well that you can be successful by failing thoroughly. At least you can prove that something wasn't possible. It doesn't always have to end well, provided what you did was done with sincerity and thorough effort. I guess that is in part the essence of science. You have an idea, you set it up, you set out to prove it, and if you work hard enough at it, you either do prove it, or you prove it utterly is wrong. That's not quite as satisfying, but it's also satisfying to get to the truth, and the truth doesn't always have to fit with what your preconceived concept was, and I think that's important.
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Richard Leakey
Paleoanthropologist and Conservationist
I'd rather not have lost my legs, but it doesn't stop you functioning. You can still do things. You can still have fun. You have a lot of fun without legs. It depends on how you spin it, but I think you ought to have the courage of your own convictions. There are a lot of people who want to be popular. I have no interest in being popular. I have an interest in pursuing my own goals, hopefully not selfishly, but if necessary, selfishly, and take the knocks. People say, "But you know, you've got a lot of enemies," and I say, "Well, probably I do. Probably I have a few friends, but my purpose when I left my mother's womb wasn't to have a lot of friends. It was to make a dent on this world."
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Richard Leakey
Paleoanthropologist and Conservationist
My ability to speak on corruption is because, first of all, I'm not corrupt and never have been, but more importantly, I'm perceived to have never been corrupt. There is a distinction, but in this case, they are the same. I'm expected to be brave enough to speak the truth, and I am known not to be willing to be persuaded not to say something if it needs saying. So much so that I am no longer allowed to really exercise any discretion, because the public will expect me to put my neck on the block, irrespective of any personal considerations. I am now perceived to be fearless of retribution, and that I will speak for the people on issues of this kind, and it's an interesting role. It is not one that I particularly sought, but I guess it's very flattering and going back to the Victorian ethos of Britain, which I guess I have some links to. Is there a better cause to die for than one's country?
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