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John Wooden
Basketball's Coaching Legend
John Wooden: Just do the best you can. Don't worry. I think the pressure -- you'd better put pressure on yourself and do a good job. And if you put pressure on yourself to do a good job, you'll do a good job. Nobody can do more than that. If you're affected by those alumni and those outside pressures or what not, if you're worried about your job for any other reason, you have reason to. But I can say honestly, and I'm very sincere about it, the pressure didn't bother me. The pressure didn't bother me. It gets to be like Richard Washington, who hit that shot to win the Louisville game. Someone said, "How in the world did you have what you set up to get Washington that shot?" And I said, "He's the wonder shooter." I said, "First of all, he's a pretty good shooter." I said, "Second, Richard's loose as a goose. And if he misses? To him, you can't make them all." But he didn't expect to miss, because he's a good shooter. He expected to make that shot. Now if I had let somebody else shoot that shot, they'd feel they have to make it. If you feel you have to do it, that, I think, hurts your chances of doing it. It's kind of like character and reputation. Your character is what you are, and you're the only one that truly knows that. Your reputation is what others perceive it to be, and they can be wrong. So which is the most important? What you really are. It doesn't make any difference what others might think. You'd like for them to think well of you, but it really doesn't make any difference. You'd just like for them to. But boy, it's very important what you think about yourself. That's very important. That's probably the most important thing there is.
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Chuck Yeager
First Man to Break the Sound Barrier
Chuck Yeager: Well, number one, they built the airplane with very thin wings so that the airplane could go faster before it ran into the buffeting problems. It was rocket-powered, which meant that you had full thrust at altitude -- jet engines decrease in thrust the higher you go -- and it was built about two-and-one-half times stronger than airplanes that we were flying at that time. The airplanes that we used in World War II, and the ones that were built immediately after World War II, were stressed for 7.33 Gs, or 7.33 times the pull of gravity and, if you overstressed them, they would break, obviously. The wings would break off and the like. But the X-1 was stressed for 18 Gs, positive or negative. So it would stay together in case you run into a problem. And also, it had a moveable, horizontal stabilizer. The tail-plane on all airplanes just stabilizes, and you have elevators on the back to make the airplane go up and down. Well, they built the capability into the X-1 to move the whole angle of the horizontal stabilizer, change the angle with that. That really was the big secret on how we got the airplane through the speed of sound. That horizontal stabilizer.
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Robert Zemeckis
Motion Picture Production
Robert Zemeckis: I was in my parents' living room, and I was watching The Johnny Carson Show as I did every night, you know? And Johnny had Jerry Lewis on as a guest. And he started his interview by saying, "So I understand you're teaching college." And Jerry Lewis said, "Yeah, I'm a visiting professor at the USC School of Cinema." And I said, "School of Cinema?" Never in my wildest -- I mean, school was about engineering and science, but cinema? I mean, literally, the thought never crossed my mind that something like this could have existed. And then, the next day I went to the library and looked up the USC School of Performing Arts and saw their curriculum. And it was just amazing how it opened my eyes.
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