The truth is everybody does it from time to time. People dial telephone numbers and they get a wrong number only to find that they've read the last two digits backwards. Everybody does it, but dyslexics have this tendency to a higher degree.

It caused more problems as a young kid, because the simple process of perceiving words on a piece of paper was hard for me. Many people think dyslexic people see things backwards. They don't see things backwards.

The biggest problem with dyslexic kids is not the perceptual problem, it is their perception of themselves. That was my biggest problem.

If you are a kid, reading is really important stuff.

I didn't only have a perceptual problem, I was also so nervous and so upset. The process just didn't work. I lost enthusiasm for school and I flunked second grade. The teachers said I was lazy.

First of all, I try to be a positive role model.

I thought everybody else was doing much better than I was.

I always felt that my greatest asset was not my physical ability, it was my mental ability.

The truth is everybody does it from time to time. People dial telephone numbers and they get a wrong number only to find that they've read the last two digits backwards. Everybody does it, but dyslexics have this tendency to a higher degree.

If you're asking your kids to exercise, then you better do it, too. Practice what you preach.

If I wasn't dyslexic, I probably wouldn't have won the Games. If I had been a better reader, then that would have come easily, sports would have come easily... and I never would have realized that the way you get ahead in life is hard work.

If you are dyslexic, your eyes work fine, your brain works fine, but there is a little short circuit in the wire that goes between the eye and the brain. Reading is not a fluid process.

When the time comes for your brain to process the information, the second word comes up faster than the first one. So when it's in your head, all of a sudden, it comes out backwards and you think of the word backwards.

Our mission for younger people is to do our best to make exercise cool, hip - the thing to do.

We put so much pressure on kids to excel in school at such a young age.

I still have nightmares about taking tests.

Nobody has milked one performance better than me - and I'm damned proud of it.

I learned that the only way you are going to get anywhere in life is to work hard at it. Whether you're a musician, a writer, an athlete or a businessman, there is no getting around it. If you do, you'll win - if you don't, you won't.

If you're going to dedicate every second to winning the decathlon, what are you doing wasting your time in bed?

Start early and begin raising the bar throughout the day.

I was growing up in the 50's and 60's. Back then they didn't even know what dyslexia was.

I spent twelve years training for a career that was over in a week. Joe Namath spent one week training for a career that lasted twelve years.

Waving the flag at the 1976 Olympics wasn't my idea. It was too much apple pie and ice cream. Not that I don't love my country, but I felt it was my victory up there, I put all the time into it.

The biggest problem with dyslexic kids is not the perceptual problem it is their perception of themselves.That was my biggest problem.

You have to train your mind like you train your body.

I said, 'Okay, it's the year 2000, I'm getting a computer and a Palm Pilot.' I know how to check my e-mail, and I've listed some phone numbers on it. Half the time the battery has gone out so I can't use it.

It's a tough thing to know that when you're making your album, you're going to end up collaborating with, say, Wal-Mart, on your artwork. That just sucks. And the pressure behind getting the numbers real fast is, to me, dizzying.

I'm writing a book. I've got the page numbers done.

I mean it's the most objective industry in the world. If your numbers stink, you're out. If your numbers are good, you get more money. It's the most Darwinian, it's beautiful, it's brutal, it works.

You know too well the forces which compose their army to dread their superior numbers.

He's a world-famous name to people who care about his music, but there are many people who have never heard of George Gershwin and those numbers increase.

But that is the only thing that slows me down is the system. No one, two or three was big enough to slow me down, only the system. It was the system that slowed me down to make my numbers fall. Not because I am older.

I think my numbers speak for themselves.

Baseball people, and that includes myself, are slow to change and accept new ideas. I remember that it took years to persuade them to put numbers on uniforms.

For a London play, rehearsal time would be four weeks for the entire show. In films, I'd spend six weeks on the big dance numbers to get them perfect before the actual shooting.

We typically hear numbers that there are 34 million households that are in stocks in some form. Well, I say that what's occurred is if you have a job in this country, you're in stocks.

Both free speech rights and property rights belong legally to individuals, but their real function is social, to benefit vast numbers of people who do not themselves exercise these rights.

We have seen Indians in immense numbers, and all those on this coast of the Pacific contrive to make a good subsistence on various seeds, and by fishing.

Now, I feel that if somebody looks through all the numbers through all those years, they will find one for Julius Rosenberg, and it is worth finding if it is such an important issue.

I differ materially from Capt. Lewis, in my account of the numbers, manners, and morals of the Sioux.

What matters to me is that I do what I think is right and I see, I'm a numbers guy, that's my attitude. I know we have a debt tsunami coming, we are bankrupting this country and I'm in a position where I can actually advance ideas to prevent that from happening. That's exactly what I should be doing.

When we first went there we completely lacked confidence. Our manager told us our act was too long, and told us to drop certain numbers and concentrate on the exciting stuff. And he was right.

We can't afford as a nation - not because of money but because of our social fabric - to have large numbers of people who are not working.

President Bush says he is concerned about the Iraqi people, but if Iraqi people are dying in numbers, then American policy will be challenged very strongly.

France is the only nation in which astoundingly small numbers of civilized patrons reside.

They were saying computers deal with numbers. This was absolutely nonsense. Computers deal with arbitrary information of any kind.

The numbers may be said to rule the whole world of quantity, and the four rules of arithmetic may be regarded as the complete equipment of the mathematician.

The success of any great moral enterprise does not depend upon numbers.

The war is dreadful. It is the business of the artist to follow it home to the heart of the individual fighters - not to talk in armies and nations and numbers - but to track it home.