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Robert Ballard
Discoverer of the Titanic
Robert Ballard: He died in a car accident. He had been with me in tough, dangerous settings. He worked the deck in storms, where a father wants to not let his son be out there, but he can't say that, because he's got to be out there with everyone else, and to just be terrified that he was going to get injured in the heavy seas, with the heavy equipment. And then to have that all behind you, and take a sigh of relief that he is no longer at risk, and then to have him die the next week, when you weren't looking, when you weren't ready. It's devastating. To try to make that a positive experience -- for you, certainly not for him -- but to make the most out of your son's death is a big challenge.
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Robert Ballard
Discoverer of the Titanic
When I said I was going to find the Titanic, no one believed it. When I said I was going to find the Bismarck, everyone believed it, and then I failed in my first attempt to find the Bismarck. So people expect you to succeed, but they don't want to stick their own necks out, and so risk-taking can be very lonely at times. You know that classic saying, which is very true: "Failure is an orphan, but success has many fathers." I'll tell you, when I'm most at risk, I look around, and there are not a whole lot of people there. But as soon as I succeed, they say, "We were always there." And I say, "Yeah, but 500 miles behind me." You have to learn to accept that. You have to know that when it gets dicey, and there is a lot on the line, you are going to find out who your friends are, not at the party afterwards.
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Sir Roger Bannister
Track and Field Legend
Sir Roger Bannister: To everybody's surprise, I was put in a team. It was a dreadful winter in 1947. Historically, there's never been a winter like it since. The track was frozen. They couldn't have trials. So, I couldn't prove that I could be in the team. My previous best time was about five minutes. You know, won a freshman's race. But, I had been seen shoveling away the snow rather vigorously. So the captain -- and sport is entirely run by students in Oxford -- the captain said, "Well look, just as a third string." That means the third runner who is not expected to do anything. "Why don't we put him in?" And they put me in. Then on the race itself, I just overtook all the rest of the field and won, which at the time was 30 seconds faster than I had done before, but very modest of course, four and a half minutes. That was the beginning of an eight-year process in which every year I improved and then after eight years I was near the world record. And, then on the eighth year, broke it. I had qualified as a doctor six weeks later. I tidied up one or two other races. My record was broken by an Australian, John Landy. Then John Landy and I had to compete head-to-head in what was then called the Empire Games, when we still had a bit of an empire. That is now the Commonwealth games. I then defeated him. So my honor was satisfied. I had another European race and then retired and never ran again competitively.
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Sir Roger Bannister
Track and Field Legend
For example, I knew I wasn't going to be an obstetrician, and there were certain areas of medicine which could be reduced to formulae. You know, "There are six complications of this condition " and once you had mastered that, it was not too difficult where you had to deliver some babies and things. So I would tend to take about two hours off to travel to a track, spend about 35 minutes running, but running very hard and then just have a shower, didn't warm up, didn't warm down, had a shower, would get something to eat and get back to the hospital by two o'clock. So that was really the pattern for several years with, of course, intervals for traveling to matches and team. So, it was a major incursion into my medical studies, and I think that -- although I passed all my examinations the first time and so on -- I did not pay as much attention in depth to clinical medicine as I had to my physiology. But in the long-term, I simply had to catch up after qualifying by studying for the various higher exams which our specialist physicians and neurologists need to do.
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Ehud Barak
Former Prime Minister of Israel
Ehud Barak: I believe that I already came from my childhood with the kind of feeling somehow that the fact that I'm slightly different doesn't mean that I'm worse. Or somehow -- it doesn't create -- should not kind of deter me from trying to do things. It's just a matter of fact. I cannot throw the ball through the basket so I cannot become a basketball player. But it somehow did not deter me. Somehow I came out of childhood with kind of a self-confident -- or not self-confidence in things that I cannot do, but kind of calibrated assessment of what I can do, and with a basic sense of direction of what I can do, a sense of judgment.
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Ehud Barak
Former Prime Minister of Israel
And under battle, under exercises, it's unbelievably -- the simplest operations become unbelievably tough. It's like burden on all the people. People become paralyzed. Some of them that were so kind of easy going and kind of hyper before battle become totally paralyzed. They don't hear well. They tend -- everyone tends to stay behind cover. To move a unit to assault is infinitely complicated. You know, it's -- first of all, personally you are paralyzed by the shooting. You are confident that once you raise your head over you will get a bullet at your head. It's only the eyes of your own soldiers that you know that they know that you are committed to lead them. They expect you to do something. You cannot avoid it. You cannot leave there and leave them kind of paralyzed.
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