People keep telling me I never lived up to my potential, that I wasted my talent. . . I just didn't have as much as people thought. I got more ink for doing less than any pitcher who ever lived.
A life lived at less than its full potential is a life half wasted.
We have more possibilities, more freedom, more options than any people who have ever lived. Yet there is more junk, more mediocrity, more garbage to sort through than ever, too.
When people ask me, "Who was the toughest pitcher you ever faced?", I have to say that there has never been a pitcher who over-impressed me. That's not meant to be a bragging statement. It's just that I get up for good pitchers.
You've got to bear it in mind that nobody that ever lived is specially privileged; the axe can fall at any moment, on any neck, without any warning or any regard for justice. You've got to keep your mind off pitying your own rotten luck and setting up any kind of a howl about it. You've got to remember that things as bad as this and a hell of a lot worse have happened to millions of people before and that they've come through it and that you will too.
The great ages did not perhaps produce much more talent than ours,' [T.S.] Eliot wrote. 'But less talent was wasted.
I feel like I've lived the dream for sure, I'm the luckiest guy in the world and I never forget that. I always feel like I'm proof of positive thought and manifestation, and that faith is more important than talent. But if you have both you're really doing something.
I've got so much wisdom and have lived through so much life that I feel more powerful than I ever have.
I don't have any hesitation saying I've traveled more miles than any human being who ever lived. I've been doing it for 60 years.
For sure, the American people have access to more information now than any other people who have ever lived on earth. And I think we do a pretty good job of sorting out what's important.
I never thought, when I was a kid, that there was a sense of competition or animosity towards poor blacks. I just thought there was a recognition that they lived differently - they primarily lived on the other side of town. And we're both poor, but that's kind of it. There wasn't much explicit statement of kinship or of the lack of kinship.
I never grew up a runner. I never thought of myself as somebody that was fit or somebody that could advocate for that and then the more people kind of have caught onto it, it's inspired me to keep going, the more I keep doing it. And it's just kind of become something that I really like and I think it's relatable in the sense of I'm not an athlete.
But if you'd only ever lived in small wooden house in the middle of wilderness, it sounded much better. Especially because it provided intense community, and these people lived in incredible isolation.
Coolidge made less speeches and got more votes than any man that ever run. (William Jennings) Bryan was listened to and cheered by more people than any single human in politics, and he lost. So there is a doubt just whether talking does you good or harm.
More than any other place, New York is where I felt I belonged. I prefer the Lower East Side to any place on the planet. I can be who I am there, and I couldn't do that anywhere I lived as a child. I never fit in when I lived in California, even though that's where my roots are.
I'm happy that people think of me as the greatest tap-dancer that ever lived. But it's just a rumor. Because the greatest dancer that ever lived knows everything, and I don't. I'm still learning. I still have a lot of work to do.
I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.