The West is tough. Great teams. Great records, top to bottom.

I think I laid it all out there for 19 years, and you don't always achieve all the goals that you shoot for.

With kids and all the other activities around the house, I'm finding it harder to give my full attention to basketball.

You never think about being wide open. I don't know if I can describe the feeling. Tremendous.

I really don't look at my accomplishments. I really don't think about myself much.

I don't think you ever hear anybody shoot the last shot and say they didn't think it was in.

I really don't think of myself as the best player on the team.

Magic is the man. No one is in his class.

My impression is that the NBA always precluded anything else.

It's great to win, regardless of how you did it.

Basketball is a game of streaks. Sometimes a guy will be cold for a month and then get hot for a month.

I don't like to miss games.

Sometimes you're your own worst critic.

Why was I able to be able to pass? What did I do right that allowed me to make a pass - any given pass? There's balance; there's vision.

I love to play, and I appreciate the opportunity to be part of a good organization.

Never ask your employees to do something you wouldn't be willing to do yourself.

There are two equalizers in life: the Internet and education.

There are two types of companies: those that have been hacked, and those who don't know they have been hacked.

When you're a large company with significant market share, it's tempting to view market disruptions as a threat, but we view them as an opportunity.

If every company becomes a technology company, business models and transitions are going to occur. From a CEO's perspective, this is going to be the biggest technology transition of all times.

We'll have a sales leader go run engineering. A lawyer go run business development. A business development leader go run our consumer operations. We're going to train a generalist group of leaders who know how to learn and operate in collaboration teamwork. I think that's the future of leadership.

In France, President Francois Hollande is leveraging the next wave of the Internet to jumpstart economic reforms and create jobs for hundreds of thousands of citizens. A historically socialist government, France has had the courage to quickly implement unique partnerships with the business community to drive entrepreneurial spirit and thinking.

Widening the talent pipeline sufficiently will require a generational commitment to teaching math and science, providing technical training, and mentoring young people of all backgrounds so they understand the full range of possibilities that a career in technology affords.

Often, what I tell a new CEO asking for advice, or one of my own new leaders, is the two most important decisions that your team is going to watch is the first person you hire and the first person you promote - because you are saying that's the type of person I want.

By exciting citizens about the new digital opportunity, breaking down silos of competing groups to form a truly open innovation ecosystem and shifting day-to-day resources to focus on big long-term investments for the future, countries can ensure that they break through and bridge the digital gap.

I don't make fun of people. I call people by what they want to be called. What does your best friend call you? What does your spouse call you? It helps you emotionally connect to people.

Organized crime and rogue nation states and terrorists are very much focused on the Internet of things. The challenge that goes with connectivity is always security. The bad guys go wherever the return is, and now it's more lucrative for bad guys to focus on cybercrime than traditional crime.

Everything becomes connected, and cyber security becomes the top issue for CEOs. An average company has 40-60 security vendors, and they have a violation every three months with viruses.

The No. 1 country in the world to do business in is which one? To locate where you want to create jobs, where you want to have a great market? It's Canada. Even in Russia, you can build a Silicon Valley outside of Moscow.

When I think about developing solutions, I think about how we can use technology to make a difference.

Our success at Cisco has been defined by how we anticipate, capture, and lead through market transitions. Over the years, I've watched iconic companies disappear - Compaq, Sun Microsystems, Wang, Digital Equipment - as they failed to anticipate where the market was heading.

I wasn't always interested in technology. I had been a student for a long time - I'd earned a bachelor's degree, a law degree, and an MBA - and decided that I wanted to work in a large corporation, focusing on finance and law, in either New York or Chicago.

People who might normally have to travel hours to a distant city to see a cardiologist can now do so virtually, through Cisco technology, at their local hospital or health clinic. Clinicians use technology to share patient reports and diagnostic images and collaborate on cases.

We know that veterans have valuable skills and experiences that are highly sought after in today's workforce.

I don't enjoy politics. I like to get things done, and I like Republicans and Democrats, and that doesn't always work well.

This will be the first time in my lifetime I'm voting for a Democrat. I'm going to vote for Hillary Clinton. I've already voted.

I think at least my philosophy of leadership is you focus more on the areas you have to improve or the mistakes than you do on your successes. And that's just how I am in real life. I don't want to let down my customers, my employees, my shareholders.

As a leader, you don't get too high on the highs or let the bumps balance down. Every leader over time has probably equal amount of good luck or bad luck - or, you could argue, has good opportunities or challenges.

If you agree with everything I have said, then I have failed.

Understand what you are acquiring and protect it at all costs. You are acquiring people and next-generation products. You are making an investment that together you can grow faster, make more profits, and take more market share.

At Cisco, we are moving to collaboration teams, groups coming together that represent sales, engineering, finance, legal, etc. And we're training leaders to think across silos.

I learned another lesson from Jack Welch. It was in 1998, and at that time, we were one of the most valuable companies in the world. I said, 'Jack, what does it take to have a great company?' And he said, 'It takes major setbacks and overcoming those.'

The political gridlock in Washington leads us to conclude that policymakers don't have the ability to put the public finances of the U.S. on a sustainable footing.

What I've realized is most leaders cannot reinvent themselves at the CEO level or at the operational level.

When I look at the success of the Cisco Networking Academy program, which has reached more than 4.75 million people since 1997, I know it could have never achieved this scale without our partners. Together we provide the tools, equipment and training for our students and teachers.

Wearable technology will tell us how well we are sleeping and whether we need to exercise. Sensors in the street will help us avoid traffic jams and find parking. Telemedicine applications will allow physicians to treat patients who are hundreds of miles away.

If we're going to acquire, what are we going to do differently? We came up with six rules of thumb. Whenever I've violated two of them, I usually get into trouble.

The Internet will change the way we work, live, learn, and play.

Since I became CEO, 87 percent of the companies in the Fortune 500 are off the list. What that says is that companies that don't reinvent themselves will be left behind. I also think that's true of people. And I think it's true of countries.

To go back to a 1950s voice mentality with Title II and net neutrality would be a tremendous mistake for our country.