For some reason, we're brainwashed to think if you're not a thug or an idiot, you're not black enough. If you go to school, make good grades, speak intelligent, and don't break the law, you're not a good black person.
Charles BarkleyRead
Kids are great. That's one of the best things about our business, all the kids you get to meet. It's a shame they have to grow up to be regular people and come to the games and call you names.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the joy and innocence of children, while acknowledging the bittersweet transition to adulthood.
Charles Barkley's quote reflects the unique and joyful perspective that children bring, emphasizing the wonderful interactions adults have with them in a business context. However, it also conveys a sense of nostalgia and sadness about the inevitable maturation of children into adults who can sometimes be critical or harsh, suggesting that growing up may strip away some of that innocence and joy.
In practice
In a motivational speech about the importance of nurturing our youth, I might quote Charles Barkley.
For some reason, we're brainwashed to think if you're not a thug or an idiot, you're not black enough. If you go to school, make good grades, speak intelligent, and don't break the law, you're not a good black person.
Kids are born into the situation they're born into, and obviously, they have no control over that. And we, as adults, it's up to us to take care of kids - that's part of your moral responsibility. I always tell people, 'There's two groups we should take care of - old people and young people.'
What I told [my teammates] after the game was I'm just fortunate [for] my 16 years because, this [injury] can happen every single night you go out and play... It can be over in one instant, so you should appreciate everyday.
I don't believe professional athletes should be role models. I believe parents should be role models.
I don't believe professional athletes should be role models. I believe parents should be role models.... It's not like it was when I was growing up. My mom and my grandmother told me how it was going to be. If I didn't like it, they said, Don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out. Parents have to take better control.
I always laugh when people ask me about rebounding techniques. I've got a technique. It's called just go get the damn ball.
If I was ever a rare fine summer person, that's long ago. Most of us are half-and-half. The August noon in us works to stave off the November chills. We survive by what little Fourth of July wits we've stashed away. But there are times when we're all autumn people.
Four or five years - nothing at all. But no one over thirty could understand this peculiarly weighted and condensed time, from late teens to early twenties, a stretch of life that needed a name, from school leaver to salaried professional, with a university and affairs and death and choices in between. I had forgotten how recent my childhood was, how long and inescapable it once seemed. How grown up and how unchanged I was.
After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die.
I have always lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights of sleeping, worked too hard and too long in glory, or slobbed for a time in utter laziness. I've lifted, pulled, chopped, climbed, made love with joy and taken my hangovers as a consequence, not as a punishment.
Grief is the agony of an instant. The indulgence of grief the blunder of a life.
This is what youth must figure out: Girls, love, and living. The having, the not having, The spending and giving, And the meloncholy time of not knowing. This is what age must learn about: The ABC of dying. The going, yet not going, The loving and leaving, And the unbearable knowing and knowing
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