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Richard Leakey
Paleoanthropologist and Conservationist
Richard Leakey: In most cases, when you find a fossil -- and you don't always find it yourself, but one of your team finds it -- they find something that is very unimpressive. It's basically a fragment that is sufficiently preserved, that you can say, "Well, this is a fragment of a human ancestor." It's a piece of a skull, or it's a piece of a leg bone, but its anatomy -- the anatomical detail -- is distinctive from the anatomy of a similar element from another species. So you can say, "It's not a baboon, it's not a monkey, it's not a lion, it's not an antelope. This is a human ancestor." But it's just a scrap. You then look further, and you end up, if you're lucky, finding other pieces, some of which will fit back onto the original discovery. So you then get a fragment that is a little bigger. In some cases, you are very lucky. You find a fragment, a skull, and in time you pick up -- through excavation or a combination of screening and excavation -- you pick up enough that you can begin to piece together what the skull looked like.
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Richard Leakey
Paleoanthropologist and Conservationist
So the excitement, the buzz, usually is gradually developed. It's not like a jab with an electricity rod. It's sort of a slow build-up to the full consummation. I guess you could say it's like very slow sex, building up to the final moment. I guess that's an analogy for most of it. Sometimes however, it's not like that at all. You walk around a corner, and there the whole thing is before you because it was washed out complete. Or you find something, and with a very short amount of clearing away of the topsoil, you see what you have. So it can be either way, but it's generally a very slow process. Ninety percent of the time, these isolated fragments are just that. The other pieces have long since disappeared, through fracture and erosion, or were never deposited. So most pieces that you find don't lead to a lot more, but sometimes they do. The average is that one in 20 specimens proves to be worthwhile, and knowing that, you keep at it.
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Leon Lederman
Nobel Prize in Physics
Leon Lederman: I had spent three years in the army, and the first year in graduate school's a tough one, because I had forgotten how to study, and I wasn't doing that well, and the classes were very crowded. The professors were just getting back from their own war work, and didn't have much time for counseling. And so I was sort of at loose ends, and depressed, and my course work was poor, and I went around looking for my old college friends -- who were either in graduate school or already had graduated -- to get support, and they supported me. I remember trying to -- several of them were clustered up at MIT, and they said "Why don't you transfer here, and we'll help you?" So I tried to, but my early grades were so bad I couldn't get into MIT. People at MIT are a little embarrassed about that now.
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Leon Lederman
Nobel Prize in Physics
Leon Lederman: You've got to be hopeful and optimistic. Often, I remember sitting on the floor of an accelerator with a graduate student, looking at each other accusingly and he would say, "You're the professor, you get it working." I'd say, "You're the graduate student. It's your thesis, you get it working." And then, somehow, by five a.m. or so, between us, we'd find out why it wasn't working. It wasn't plugged in, or something even more significant than that. So we got it working.
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John Lewis
Champion of Civil Rights
John Lewis: I never thought that we would fail or that I would fail. I knew from time to time we may make some blunders. We may make some mistakes, but we were not going to fail. I think part of leadership is you must be hopeful. You must be optimistic. You must have this idea that we're not -- that I'm not going to give up. I'm not going to give in. I'm not going to give out that I'm going to hang in there. I'm going to keep the faith. I'm going to keep pushing. I'm going to keep pulling. People accuse me from time to time of being too hopeful, too optimistic, but I think being hopeful, being optimistic is part of being a leader, that in a sense you know where you're going. I know maybe it won't happen in my lifetime, but I know somehow in some way we're going to create the Beloved Community, that we're going to create a national community, a world community that is at peace. And as you pass this way, as you travel life's journey, you must do what you can. You must be part of an investment. You must be part of a down payment on the building of that Beloved Community. You must be part of an installment plan. You have to give your part. You have to give your piece.
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John Lewis
Champion of Civil Rights
I loved Martin Luther King, Jr. He was my hero. He was a wonderful friend. I remember during the last leg of the march from Selma to Montgomery, we were walking and I think it started raining. He had a little cap on his head, and he took the cap off and he put it on my head and he said, "John, you've been hurt. You need to protect your head. You need to wear this cap." I just thought it was a wonderful something on his part, but he was always so caring and so sharing. And Robert Kennedy, I'll tell you, I saw there was something about him that was so dear. When Dr. King was assassinated, I said to myself -- I had what I call an executive session with myself. I said, "We still have Robert Kennedy." And then two months later Robert Kennedy was taken. The assassination of these two young men was the most difficult time in my life really. The saddest. They were friends. They were people that I loved and admired. I was with Robert Kennedy when we heard that Dr. King had been shot. I was in Indianapolis, Indiana campaigning with him, and I was in his room at the Los Angeles Ambassador Hotel and spoke to him about 15 minutes before he went down to make his victory statement. Even today I feel like I must continue to do what I can. And I often wonder, "If Dr. King were here, and Robert Kennedy were, what would they be doing?" So someone must continue to speak up and speak out, because they're not here.
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John Lewis
Champion of Civil Rights
John Lewis: More than anything else, I had to combat the barriers, and we tore down those barriers. I just had to set a sail against the wind, those strong winds, to end segregation and racial discrimination, but somehow, in some way, I didn't let those barriers keep me down. When I would get arrested from time to time and thrown in jail one day, and I'd get out, I'd go right back the next day. That's how I got arrested 40 times. There were people who didn't want me to march all the way from Selma to Montgomery because I had been hurt, but two weeks after Bloody Sunday I was back on the line, marching all the way. They didn't want me to continue the Freedom Ride from Montgomery to Jackson, Mississippi, because I had been hurt, because I had a patch on my head but I kept going. You have to be determined. You have to feel that somehow in some way you can make it, that you will survive, that it's all going to work out.
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