Bob Kerrey

"Cynicism is poisonous to the person who feels it. Its actually less poisonous to the person whos on the receiving end. Its the person who becomes a cynic- and I would guess thats 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. Its better to recieve than to give. I dont think you can give unless youre able to receive and say, You are a good person for giving that to me. There are times when youre given something by somebody you dont like and you dont want to like. And its inconvenient for you to like them. Skepticism is good. The skeptic merely comes and says I want you to prove it. Im doubtful. But cynicism is poisonous. Also self-indulgence, which I think is the worst sin, in some ways the only sin worth worrying about. Its the sin that produces bad things. Its self-centeredness that causes you to say, Im the most important thing on earth- my safety, my security, my health, my wealth- you become a slave to all these fears that youre going to lose something."

"I think for the most part theyre ordinary guys who did an extraordinary thing and most of us recognize that, you know, there but for the grace of God goes somebody else. And most of them feel that they received it for others and that their own actions were not especially heroic."

"I dont 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 dont show them that adults make bad decisions. And thats what you have to figure out in life. You have to figure out how to make good decisions. Youre going to make good ones, and youre 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."

"When I was, say, fifteen years old in 1958, I could have gone and talked to a veteran of World War I or World War II and said, Tell me your story. They could have taught us with these men who had experience in war, instead of giving us a dry history book. I think that to understand history, to be excited by history, a human being needs something. You need the capacity to feel sympathy for the people youre reading about in the story."

"In general, all human beings have harsh experiences. Its the great voyage of human life to suffer losses."

"I didnt feel like I was a hero when they presented me the medal. I didnt 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 didnt come back feeling that I was a hero. I dont 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 dont say that with any false modesty. I say that genuinely and sincerely believing the action warranted no recognition beyond, you know, its just anither guy going over and doing what hes told to do."

"Today we are much closer to a general acknowledgment that government must encourage business to expand and grow. Bill Clinton, Paul Tsongas, Bob Kerrey and others have, I believe, changed the debate of our party. We intuitively know that to create job opportunities we need entrepreneurs who will risk their capital against an expected payoff. Too often, however, public policy does not consider whether we are choking off those opportunities."

"I read War and Peace from cover to cover last summer, and what I found remarkable was how Tolstoy was able to bring his own philosophy of life into the story without distracting you from it. His big theme was that history was not the sum of actions of great men. It was the sum of actions by lots of individuals. It is true that your actions get hemmed in by contingency but there is no great master plan up there. There is no inevitability. You choose. The moment comes. You choose."