A Quote by John F. Kerry
In 1970, as a 26 year-old, I joined in the effort in my home state of Massachusetts to organize for Earth Day. But what made the event so successful was that I was only one of about 20 million Americans of all ages and backgrounds who got involved.
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Well, perhaps the greatest achievement, and we didn't know it at the time, was we held an Earth Day in 1970, and out of that Earth Day a lot of students got involved in saving the environment, or trying to.
I'm officially near-famous. If you've got four year old kids and you've got cable, then you've got no choice but to know who I am. But if you're one of my peers - a 26-year old guy who lives in Manhattan - you have no idea who I am. I'm only famous if you're four.
The lesson here is very simple. But it is striking how often it is overlooked. We are so caught in the myths of the best and the brightest and the self-made that we think outliers spring naturally from the earth. We look at the young Bill Gates and marvel that our world allowed that thirteen-year-old to become a fabulously successful entrepreneur. But that's the wrong lesson. Our world only allowed one thirteen-year-old unlimited access to a time sharing terminal in 1968. If a million teenagers had been given the same opportunity, how many more Microsofts would we have today?
There is one day that is ours. There is one day when all we Americans who are not self-made go back to the old home to eat saleratus biscuits and marvel how much nearer to the porch the old pump looks than it used to. Thanksgiving Day is the one day that is purely American.
I like to joke that I already married a 26-year-old and divorced a 29-year-old, so I wasn't going to do that again when I got remarried.
The year I turned 26, as the head of my own brokerage firm, I made $49 million, which really pissed me off because it was three shy of a million a week.
I always loved and secretly wanted to do 'Company.' It was produced on Broadway in 1970, and it's about a successful 35-year-old guy who's starting to think he should get married.
As the population is, in general, aging, there is more interest in what a 50-year-old, a 60-year-old, a 70-year-old, an 80-year-old is like. And one of the things that just naturally started to happen as I got older - and I could feel younger people looking up to me in a certain way and wanting to know things that I knew - I got interested in the women, in particular, who were 20 years older than me. Because I understand in a way that I didn't 20, 30 years ago, how much they know.
When you talk about Social Security, it's not just enough to say, we're looking at you, this really matters. It's the fact that a million Americans think it matters. Oh, wait, it's 2 million Americans think it matters. No, it's 4 million Americans. It's 6 million, wait, it's 10 million, it's 50 million Americans who care about this. That's how we're going to make change.
It's true. somewhere inside us we are all the ages we have ever been. We're the 3 year old who got bit by the dog. We're the 6 year old our mother lost track of at the mall. We're the 10 year old who get tickled till we wet our pants. We're the 13 year old shy kid with zits. We're the 16 year old no one asked to the prom, and so on. We walk around in the bodies of adults until someone presses the right button and summons up one of those kids.
Short of baseball and my family, it was gaming. And gaming is a $20-million to $200-million multi-year effort. It's an insane, stupid and utterly irresponsible act. But I did it.
For example, it's only about 20 years ago the people in that community would have got telephone lines, and it would be only about in the 1950s that electricity came to that part of the world. Television wouldn't have come till 1970.
When I was 15, I fought a guy who was 26 and he was 20-0, undefeated. It was a way for my dad to show me that I was better than I thought. I ended up beating the brakes off this 26-year-old guy. After the fight, the announcer asked my opponent how it felt. He answered, 'I wonder why I stepped in the ring with that boy.'
I joined Sunderland, a great club, to be successful, to feel at home again. It hasn't worked out, but that's not through lack of effort.
Now, as a 29-year-old, you're a little bit different than a 26-year-old. But I actually felt really comfortable in Boston. I felt that I was one of the best players in the league at the time. I thought Boston was going to be the home for me for the rest of my career.
I think my shows can draw an audience of 12 million because I ask, 'What can make a 7-year-old, a 17-year-old, a 30-year-old and a 77-year-old laugh?'
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