Princeton ignited my intellectual curiosity and introduced me to a new social world. It... challenged me on the most fundamental levels imaginable. It was where I became a man.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the transformative power of education and social experiences in shaping one's identity.
Bill Bradley emphasizes how his time at Princeton was pivotal in fostering his intellectual growth and expanding his social horizons. He highlights the challenges he faced, which contributed significantly to his personal development and maturity, indicating that such experiences are crucial for becoming a well-rounded individual.
In practice
In a speech to students about the importance of higher education, you might share this quote to illustrate its life-changing impact.
Why do we fully tax some kinds of income from capital, like interest and dividends; partially tax other kinds like capital gains; defer tax on other kinds, like IRAs; and impose no tax at all on still other types of capital income, like interest on municipal bonds? This simply is not rational. These distinctions don't have any inherent logic.
Respect your fellow human being, treat them fairly, disagree with them honestly, enjoy their friendship, explore your thoughts about one another candidly, work together for a common goal and help one another achieve it. No destructive lies. No ridiculous fears. No debilitating anger.
Becoming number one is easier than remaining number one.
Every time I have some moment on a seashore, or in the mountains, or sometimes in a quiet forest, I think this is why the environment has to be preserved.
Basketball can serve as a kind of metaphor for ultimate cooperation. It is a sport where success, as symbolized by the championship, requires that the dictates of community prevail over selfish impulses.
We need to get beyond the politics of the moment, the deficit of the hour, the military count of the day, the numbers that rarely shape events. Our long-term interests must be in people and in the values of democracy and individual liberty.
Acquire new knowledge whilst thinking over the old, and you may become a teacher of others.
We feel strongly that the spirit characteristic of America at its noblest, above all the pursuit of higher learning, cannot admit of any conditions as to personnel other than those designed to promote the objects for which this institution is established, and particularly with no regard whatever to accidents of race, creed, or sex.
One's life is more formed, I sometimes think, by books than by human beings: it is out of books one learns about love and pain at second hand. Even if we have the happy chance to fall in love, it is because we have been conditioned by what we have read, and if I had never known love at all, perhaps it was because my father's library had not contained the right books.
I feel very strongly about contraception even though I know people say that, as a good Catholic girl, I shouldn't. But I disagree because I think one of the keys to women's progression in the 20th century is being able to control their fertility.
I see children, all children, as humanity's most precious resource, because it will be to them that the care of the planet will always be left.
There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we spent with a favorite book.
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