The way in which sports focuses more on the peccadilloes, lives and putative personalities of athletes and less on the finer points of playing games, I've become less interested in it. I don't want to write sports profiles.
The key to a better life: Complain less, appreciate more. Whine less, laugh more. Talk less, listen more. Want less, give more. Hate less, love more. Scold less, praise more. Fear less, hope more.
What does labor want? We want more schoolhouses and less jails; more books and less arsenals; more learning and less vice; more leisure and less greed; more justice and less revenge; in fact, more of the opportunities to cultivate our better natures, to make manhood more noble, womanhood more beautiful, and childhood more happy and bright.
I think that there's more jealousy in sports than racism, really. I think racism exists in the works, but when I faced racism in hockey, a lot of times from jealousy, because when I was young, I was always one of the better players. And I think a lot of people were threatened by that.
Racism is not about hurtful words, bruised feelings, political correctness, or refusing to call short people 'vertically challenged.' Racism is about the power to treat entire groups of people as something less than human—for the benefit of that power. That’s why a Native American sports mascot is far from harmless.
I don't want to die for a few pictures. I want to live for every sunrise I can clap my eyes on; I want to see my family get older; I want to see the world try and get a bit more peaceful and understanding, which unfortunately I don't think I'll ever see.
I want to see more families have more compassion, more empathy in understanding that not every family is sitting there intentionally saying, 'I don't care about everybody else.' They're just trying to do the best that they can.
It's great to learn more about sports I'm probably less familiar with - stock car racing, rodeo, e-sports - and realize that a lot of the people at the center of those sports bring the same level of passion, commitment and disciple that I try to with football. Sports is a way of life for billions of people around the planet.
I think the hardest thing is that all of us would love to just stick to sports - but if you want us to be role models to kids, then you need to stand for more than just sports.
I would love to see more African-American females engaged in all aspects of sports. All of the research tells us that participation in sports has a very positive impact in both the short and long term. Girls who participate in sports have a higher self-esteem and are more likely to graduate from college, and 80 percent of female executives played team sports growing up.
In the South, there is more overt racism. It's more willfully ignorant and brazen. But it's not as if by moving I'm going to be able to escape institutionalized racism. It's not as though my life won't be twisted and impacted by racism anymore. It will.
Many European countries are fascinated with minorities from the United States. They still see this country as a world power and they covet that power...I was approached by a professor once at the Sorbonne in Paris and asked about racism in this country, and when I reflected on racism on the streets of Paris - you know, I'd be considered an Arab there -well, she didn't want to address that...It just goes to show it was easier for Europeans to study racism in the United States than it is from within the belly of the beast.
Any time there's racism somewhere in sports, we should get it out of there because sports is a place where everything's supposed to be fair.
Voluntary simplicity means going fewer places in one day rather than more, seeing less so I can see more, doing less so I can do more, acquiring less so I can have more.
We want to see ourselves - but differently. We want to see these dream versions of ourselves. We want to be surprised; we want to be entertained. I think primarily, especially in this country, we ask that movies entertain us, which seems to be something they're less and less likely to do on a continual basis.