That’s difficult for someone to talk about themselves. If I’ve helped improve the game of golf and if I’ve helped improve people’s outlook on life and the game of golf, that would be something that I would be very happy for. I would really like to think that maybe I have left something that other people will look at and say, when people come in back of them, that they have given them the same opportunity that we had. And that means give our kids the opportunities that we’ve had through these years. And if I can do that and leave something along those lines to people, I’ll be very happy for that.

If you go into the field of medicine, I think any, very active protein like, let’s say interferons have been isolated, thanks to these techniques and then the question was, how should one apply them? In which kind of medical problems? Some, there were some deceptions but there were also discoveries that in certain other fields these products were very useful. Another example which has been widely successful is the product of human insulin which made medicine largely independent of insulins harvested from living animals and I think if one looks at these things these are really very good examples.

I’m very happy and I’m very proud, because to be in the line which contains so many really great writers and poets gives me power to use my original language, the Hungarian language. I am really very proud and very happy to use this little language.

Proud that I believe I have the respect of my fellow soldiers. And by soldiers, I mean all the members of the armed forces that I served with. No medal, no nice introduction, no awards could substitute just for the knowledge I have that I’m reasonably well respected by my fellow soldiers. If I didn’t have that, I would have considered this to be a busted career.

I have followed that advice - with, I confess, occasional lapses not only at home, but in the places I have worked, even in relating to my colleagues at the Supreme Court. It is important to be a good listener if you are to work with others effectively, but it also pays, sometimes, to be a little deaf - for example, in my current position, when a colleague, academic commentator, or journalist writes that an opinion on which I labored endless hours, worrying over every word, is "sloppy," "smug," "strange," or "profoundly misguided." I am making none of those up.

Having advanced well beyond what the French call "a certain age," I am often asked to convey to younger people helpful advice and counsel. So I will open these remarks with the best advice I ever received. The advice, which I have several times shared with others, was given to me by my mother-in-law on my wedding day. She had a prescription for a happy, enduring marriage: "It pays," she said, "it pays sometimes to be a little deaf."

My mother-in-law’s advice, which she gave me on the day of our wedding — we were married in Marty’s home, and his mother took me into the bedroom, her bedroom and said, “Dear, I’d like to tell you the secret of a happy marriage.” “Yes. What is the secret?” “It helps sometimes to be a little deaf.” And I found that advice — it stood me in very good stead not only in a wonderful marriage that lasted well over half a century, but in every workplace I’ve served, dealing with my faculty colleagues when I was a law teacher, and even now with my colleagues on the Supreme Court. When an unkind word is said, a thoughtless word, best to tune out.