You are among the two or three most talented people I have ever met in politics. - Bob Kerrey

I don't think we prepare young people very well to make the tough decisions. The thing we do with children- and it was done when I was raised- is we remove them from the adults when the adults are making decisions, and so we don't show them that adults make bad decisions. And that's what you have to figure out in life. You have to figure out how to make good decisions. You're going to make good ones, and you're going to make bad ones, and they get tough. The toughest ones are the ones that come very quick and that are connected to ethics.

I didn't feel like I was a hero when they presented me the medal. I didn't go to Vietnam for any other reason than it was my duty. I went over there, and I was there a relatively brief time. I didn't come back feeling that I was a hero. I don't today. I did my three years in the Navy, which was enormously beneficial to me. I loved the Navy, I loved SEAL Team One, but I came back, hung up my uniform, put on my civilian clothes, and became a civilian again. And I received the Medal for people who got nothing. I don't say that with any false modesty. I say that genuinely and sincerely believing the action warranted no recognition beyond, you know, it's just anither guy going over and doing what he's told to do.

Cynicism is poisonous to the person who feels it. It's actually less poisonous to the person who's on the receiving end. It's the person who becomes a cynic- and I would guess that's where I was in 1970- who says I doubt any human being has the capacity to do good. The thing that cynicism does is it closes you off to receipt, and you shrivel up in a hurry. Your heart becomes a walnut. It's better to recieve than to give. I don't think you can give unless you're able to receive and say, 'You are a good person for giving that to me.' There are times when you're given something by somebody you don't like and you don't want to like. And it's inconvenient for you to like them.
Skepticism is good. The skeptic merely comes and says I want you to prove it. I'm doubtful. But cynicism is poisonous. Also self-indulgence, which I think is the worst sin, in some ways the only sin worth worrying about. It's the sin that produces bad things. It's self-centeredness that causes you to say, 'I'm the most important thing on earth- my safety, my security, my health, my wealth- you become a slave to all these fears that you're going to lose something.