Famous quotes containing the words american, professional and/or basketball:
“Our security depends on the Allied Powers winning against aggressors. The Axis Powers intend to destroy democracy, it is anathema to them. We cannot provide that aid if the public are against it; therefore, it is our responsibility to persuade the public that aid to the victims of aggression is aid to American security. I expect the members of my administration to take every opportunity to speak to this issue wherever they are invited to address public forums in the weeks ahead.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“I sometimes wonder whether, in the still, sleepless hours of the night, the consciences of ... professional gossips do not stalk them. I myself believe in a final reckoning, when we shall be held accountable for our misdeeds. Do they? If so, they have cause to worry over many scoops that brought them a day’s dubious laurels and perhaps destroyed someone’s peace forever.”
—Mary Pickford (1893–1979)
“Perhaps basketball and poetry have just a few things in common, but the most important is the possibility of transcendence. The opposite is labor. In writing, every writer knows when he or she is laboring to achieve an effect. You want to get from here to there, but find yourself willing it, forcing it. The equivalent in basketball is aiming your shot, a kind of strained and usually ineffective purposefulness. What you want is to be in some kind of flow, each next moment a discovery.”
—Stephen Dunn (b. 1939)