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Shimon Peres
President of Israel
I started to work day and night, listening to all walks of life in our economy, and there were three or four things that I learned immediately, that in a democracy, you have two groups of decision making: the political parties -- they are good for politics -- and the economic partnership, which is detached from politics. The economy is not being run by parties, but by three factors in the society: government, employees, and employers. So leave the parties aside and try to see if you can reach an agreement among the three. Don't be in a haste to declare a plan, and then discover that one or two are against it. It will be extremely difficult to do so, particularly if the demands are very, very heavy.
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Shimon Peres
President of Israel
Now, every important decision has to go through a long avenue of disappointments, of setbacks, of troubles. I am totally unimpressed. I would be surprised if it would go smoothly. Somebody said, "You are as great as your crawl." If you want to achieve something important, you have to fight and crawl for it under very uncomfortable conditions and circumstances. And then again, when you win a war, your people are united and applaud you. When you make peace, your people are doubtful and resentful. To negotiate peace is to negotiate with your own people, not with your opponent, and your own people say, "My God, why did you give up so much? Why were you in a hurry? Why didn't you think this and that?" Well, if you think this and that, and you won't to be in a hurry, still you have to pay the price, because peace has a price as war has a price. The difference is that the price of war is unavoidably accepted. The price of the cost of peace cannot be measured.
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Sidney Poitier
Oscar for Best Actor
I said to myself, "How did he know that I was a dishwasher?" He suspected. I said, "I didn't tell him that. I didn't say anything about dishwashing." That was one thing I wouldn't have told him. And I realized then and there that what he said was his perception of my worth. He perceived me to be of no value beyond something that I could do with my hands. And while he was correct in his anger to characterize me that way, I was offended. I was offended deeply. And I said to myself, "I have to rectify that. I have to show him that he was wrong about me." I decided then and there that I was -- this is a wild decision I made, of course, but I did decide then, at that moment, on that street, that I am going to be an actor just to show him that he was wrong about me. And then I would give up the acting, because what do I want to be an actor for? I committed myself to that. That goes to show you that I was a rather peculiar kid. Luckily, I wasn't around psychiatrists and all that kind of stuff, because they probably would have marked me as a guy who was a little off his rocker.
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Sidney Poitier
Oscar for Best Actor
Sidney Poitier: I continued working as a dishwasher, and I learned that there were no other theatrical groups in Harlem at that time of the same caliber as was the American Negro Theatre. And I decided that I wanted to -- no, I learned that they had a school system where they taught acting and stuff. So I wanted to get in there. I also learned that there were some very prestigious black actors and actresses who were affiliated with this. So I set my sights there. And I learned that they had auditions every three, six months or so. So I decided that I would go there and take an audition.
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Sidney Poitier
Oscar for Best Actor
I went in and I auditioned for them. And they said, "Thank you." They said, "We'll let you know." And they did, indeed, let me know. And the note came that I wasn't selected. I was crestfallen. So, I couldn't give it up. So I went back to them. I walked in and there was a lady at the desk. And I said, "I took an audition the other day, and I wasn't accepted." I said, "However, I'm here today to ask if this is a possibility." And she said, "What?" I said, "I noticed that you don't have a janitor." And I said, "I will do the janitor work for you because it's not a big deal, you know, you have a fairly small place here and stuff. I will do the janitor work for you in exchange for letting me study here."
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Sidney Poitier
Oscar for Best Actor
I left the theater after I came off, saying to myself, "That's it, I tried, I am not gonna be an actor. I don't have the gift. And it's silly for me to be (doing) this. Okay, I did it, I've stuck to it, and I don't have it." So I left, and I went walking about in New York City. And on my way home, about 11:30, 12 o'clock at night, I'm on my way to my room where I had my residence, I decided to pick up the newspapers, and I picked up, I guess, The Daily News. And there were, believe it or not, there were 13 major newspapers in New York City at that time. Anyway, in three or four of them, I was mentioned very favorably. Well my dear, being -- well, being, being, being -- I changed my mind. I wasn't gonna quit the business so quickly!
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Colin Powell
Former Secretary of State, United States of America
Colin Powell: And then I think in one of the sad chapters of American history, having promised the South Vietnamese that we would come to their assistance with more weapons and ammunition if they needed it, the United States Congress finally abandoned them. That went against our word. Whether they would have prevailed even if we hadn't abandoned them is, I think questionable. I think they would probably have lost anyway, but I wish they had not lost on the heels of an American abandonment. So it was a very dismal period. And when it was all over, I was still a professional soldier, now a lieutenant colonel. And we were in an army that had been seen as the loser in this war. We were shaken to our core. We had lost a generation of leaders. We'd had the scandal of My Lai. We had racial relations. The American people said, "We want out of the draft. We no longer want to have a draft." In fact, they were separating themselves from the army. "You just go out and recruit and that's what you get. But no more draft." So we ended the draft. There was an estrangement between the American people and its military. But I was a professional soldier, and so it was my job to work in that world and try to fix it, repair it. And one of the things I'm proudest of in my life is that over the next 15, 17 years, working with great leaders and finally with the new political leadership that came in with the Reagan Administration -- political leaders who told us to be proud of ourselves once again and gave us the resources to really finish the transition to a modern, powerful army -- we became a force that the nation once again was proud of. And we saw the result of that in Desert Storm.
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Colin Powell
Former Secretary of State, United States of America
Colin Powell: I've had problems in my career, I've had downturns. I've had people who thought I wasn't very good, and said so in writing. I've had assignments that didn't come along when I thought they should have come along. There have been several times in my career where I thought I had reached as high a level as I was going to reach, and had started to make alternative plans, when suddenly luck came along, and things changed, and so it just kept going.
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Colin Powell
Former Secretary of State, United States of America
Colin Powell: We bombed a complex overnight, an Iraqi bunker that we thought was a command and control bunker. Turned out it was a command and control bunker, it was a military installation. But what we didn't know was they packed it with civilians. Maybe the civilians went there for protection, but it was the worst place to go for protection. We weren't bombing their neighborhoods, we were bombing their bunkers. But that's where 300 civilians were. So there you are, faced with, "You terrible people! You've killed several hundred innocent civilians!"
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