I'm not comfortable being preachy, but more people need to start spending as much time in the library as they do on the basketball court. If they took the idea that they could escape poverty through education, I think it would make a more basic and long-lasting change in the way things happen. What we need are positive, realistic goals and the willingness to work. Hard work and practical goals. --Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor, Jr.)

You can't win unless you learn how to lose. --Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

If I weren't earning more than $3 million a year to dunk a basketball, most people on the street would run in the other direction if they saw me coming. --Charles Barkley