I've been a very lucky guy. I played on championship teams. I played for Canada. I've won some awards and I'm very proud of those accomplishments. But I don't think there's anything greater than to come home and to be recognized at home. This is the pinnacle.
Interpretation
True achievement is not only about personal accolades but also about recognition from one's community.
In this quote, Bobby Orr emphasizes that while individual accomplishments, such as awards and championships, are significant, the deepest sense of fulfillment comes from being acknowledged and celebrated by one's own community. The pinnacle of success, he suggests, is the recognition and love from home, highlighting that personal success is best when it is shared with those who matter most.
In practice
During a motivational speech about success and community recognition.
Growing up, if I hadn't had sports, I don't know where I'd be. God only knows what street corners I'd have been standing on and God only knows what I'd have been doing, but instead I played hockey and went to school and stayed out of trouble.
The biggest thing we get out of it is seeing the kids smile. And hopefully we will also see that the lessons we're teaching - not only the fundamentals of hockey, but also the life values - are sinking in.
Once you turn pro and you're making the big money and kids are buying your sneakers and your skates and your gloves and so on, you are a member of that role model club.
Minor sports in the community is fun and recreation for everyone, not just the elite. I think back to my days in minor hockey and those are my fondest memories, having fun.
I was the happiest guy in the world when I was on the ice. You're being paid to play a game! That's pretty special.
If you're going to help somebody, sneak in, sneak out, do what you can. I just sneak along and do my thing and meet wonderful people, some people I've never met, new friends.
It is not the rich man's son that the young struggler for advancement has to fear in the race for life, nor his nephew, nor his cousin. Let him look out for the dark horse in the boy who begins by sweeping out the office.
There isn't anything I wanted to do that I haven't. At the same time, there isn't anything I've ever done that I didn't want to do better.
Many of the most successful men I have known have never grown up. They have retained bubbling-over boyishness. They have relished wit, they have indulged in humor. They have not allowed ‘dignity’ to depress them into moroseness. Youthfulness of spirit is the twin brother of optimism, and optimism is the stuff of which American business success is fashioned. Resist growing up!
A startup is the largest endeavor over which you can have definite mastery. You can have agency not just over your own life, but over a small and important part of the world. It begins by rejecting the unjust tyranny of Chance. You are not a lottery ticket.
There's a long way to fall when you pretend that you're so far away from the earth, far away from reality, floating in a bubble that's protected by fame or success. It's scary, and it's the thing I fear the most: to be swallowed up by that bubble. It can be poison to you, fame.
I just remember watching Federer the first year he won Wimbledon. He was struggling with his back problem. I remember it vividly. It looked like there was a chance he was not going to finish. He had that look in his eye. Then, somehow, he found the wherewithal to dig a little deeper, and suddenly he wins the thing, and he's a different player.
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