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Andrew Young

Civil rights leader, US Ambassador to the United Nations, Mayor of Atlanta

Recorded said elsewhere, not written here
Everything I did, and I think everything Martin Luther King did, was because we allowed our lives to be in tune with what we felt to be a divine purpose. And it didn’t matter whether we lived or died. It didn’t matter how much money we made, or what we accomplished.

Academy of Achievement interview, 14 August 2013 source ↗

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Ruth Bader Ginsburg Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, 1993–2020; Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit 1980–1993
Having advanced well beyond what the French call "a certain age," I am often asked to convey to younger people helpful advice and counsel. So I will open these remarks with the best advice I ever received. The advice, which I have several times shared with others, was given to me by my mother-in-law on my wedding day. She had a prescription for a happy, enduring marriage: "It pays," she said, "it pays sometimes to be a little deaf."
Recorded New York Law School Law Review dinner, on accepting the Froessel Award, New York Law School Law Review (digitalcommons.nyls.edu), 12 February 1999 source ↗
Shinya Yamanaka Stem cell biologist; Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine, 2012
Well, I will bring this technology to clinics. I really want to help as many patients as possible. As you may know, I started my career as a surgeon 25 years ago. But it turned out that I am not talented as a surgeon
Recorded Adam Smith, Telephone interview recorded shortly after the prize announcement, October 2012, Nobel Prize Outreach, 1 October 2012 source ↗
Winston Churchill Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 1940–1945 and 1951–1955; Member of Parliament 1900–1964
Come on now all you young men, all over the world. You are needed more than ever now to fill the gap of a generation shorn by the War. You have not an hour to lose. You must take your places in life's fighting line. Twenty to twenty-five! These are the years! Don't be content with things as they are. 'The earth is yours and the fulness thereof'. Enter upon your inheritance, accept your responsibilities. Raise the glorious flags again, advance them upon the new enemies, who constantly gather upon the front of the human army, and have only to be assaulted to be overthrown. Don't take No for an answer. Never submit to failure.
Recorded Chapter of his autobiography, written at Chartwell in 1930, Winston S. Churchill, My Early Life (Thornton Butterworth, 1930), Project Gutenberg Canada, October 1930 source ↗
J.K. Rowling Novelist and screenwriter
So given a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.
Recorded Harvard University Commencement, 2008, Harvard Gazette, 5 June 2008 source ↗

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Question Which decision paid off only after many years, when its value could not yet be proved? Time & hindsight
I knew what I had done wrong. I had followed the experts and put the money I had in television. The second time around I spent almost no money on television. The only money I spent on television, I spent on Ted Turner's station, late at night on something called Creature Feature and wrestling. Because those were things that I knew people looked at. But we spent most of our money organizing people door-to-door.
Recorded Academy of Achievement interview, 28 June 1996 source ↗

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Edmund Hillary, Frank M. Johnson Jr., Lee Kuan Yew, Lech Wałęsa, Benazir Bhutto, Winston Churchill

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