Calm open debate and logical thought drive strength to its maximum effectiveness.

Actually I always dreamed about getting a gold medal in the 100-meter freestyle in Olympic swimming. I always thought that would be the epic award in sports to get.

Monday Night Football started in 1970 and when it started it was something extremely special because sports had not been aired in prime time. So it was a novelty and a lot of people thought it wouldn't work and of course it worked spectacularly well.

Cheerleading gave me a love of sports which I brought to the Senate. I can talk to the good ol' boys about college sports because I follow it like they do.

I never thought I'd make the pages of 'Sports Illustrated ' because I've always been skinny.

Louie and Seabiscuit were both Californians and both on the sports pages in the 1930s. I was fascinated. When I learned about his World War II experiences I thought 'If this guy is still alive I want to meet him.'

I keep getting these extraordinary letteres really weird ones from American sports stars - I've always thought you were one pretty lady and now that you're single I want to meet you for a drink.

Everyone thought I was going to die like a year later they didn't know. So I helped educate sports and then the world that a man living with HIV can play basketball. He's not going to give it to anybody by playing basketball.

There is no life for girls in team sports past Little League. I got into tennis when I realized this and because I thought golf would be too slow for me and I was too scared to swim.

One thing you learned as a Cubs fan: when you bought you ticket you could bank on seeing the bottom of the ninth.

I've always thought of acting as a tool to change society. I watch a lot of actors and I see panic in their eyes because they don't know why they act and I know why I act. Whether I'm a good or a bad actor I know why I do it.

Because society places a value on masculinity gay men aspire to it. If you go to a gay club and the doorman says 'You do realise this is a gay club don't you lads?' you get all excited because you think 'Wow he thought I was straight!'

And to say that society ought to be governed by the opinion of the wisest and best though true is useless. Whose opinion is to decide who are the wisest and best?

Every teenager deals in his or her own sexuality and has to face it and figure out how it can coincide with the rest of their lives in a healthy manner. And try to navigate it in our modern society which is wrought with stigma and taboo and repression and sort of as a result these inner monsters that some teenagers really struggle with.

Every society all government and every kind of civil compact therefore is or ought to be calculated for the general good and safety of the community.

I'm very old-fashioned in some ways because of my father who thought that being a public servant was an honor. Everyone must find a capacity in which they can serve because we all benefit from society.

Society has to change but the political powers we have at the moment are not enough to effect this change. The whole democratic system would have to be rethought.

Well we ought to be stirred even to tears by society's ills.

The question I asked Georges has now become a general one - You who thought you were superfluous who thought there was no place for you in society not only are you not superfluous you are needed and so those who were beggars become givers.

But if you say that we should not educate children who have come into our state for no other reason than they've been brought there by no fault of their own I don't think you have a heart. We need to be educating these children because they will become a drag on our society.

I am now quite cured of seeking pleasure in society be it country or town. A sensible man ought to find sufficient company in himself.

The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought.

Similarly thought is a system. That system not only includes thought and feelings but it includes the state of the body it includes the whole of society - as thought is passing back and forth between people in a process by which thought evolved from ancient times.

One of the marks of a truly vigorous society is the ability to dispense with passion as a midwife of action - the ability to pass directly from thought to action.