Above anything else, I hate to lose.
Life is not a spectator sport.
How you played in yesterday’s game is all that counts.
The right of every American to first-class citizenship is the most important issue of our time.
At the beginning of the World Series of 1947, I experienced a completely new emotion when the National Anthem was played. This time, I thought, it is being played for me, as much as for anyone else.
The many of us who attain what we may and forget those who help us along the line we’ve got to remember that there are so many others to pull along the way. The farther they go, the further we all go.
There’s not an American in this country free until every one of us is free.
The way I figured it, I was even with baseball and baseball with me. The game had done much for me, and I had done much for it.
I never cared about acceptance as much as I cared about respect.
I don’t think it matters what I believe, only what I do.
Pop flies, in a sense, are just a diversion for a second baseman. Grounders are his stock trade.
Relationships may change throughout the gift of time, memories stay the same forever in my mind.
If I had to choose between baseball’s Hall of Fame and first class citizenship for all of my people. I would say first-class citizenship.
I don’t like needing anyone for anything.
Baseball, like some other sports, poses as a sacred institution dedicated to the public good, but it is actually a big, selfish business with a ruthlessness that many big businesses would never think of displaying.
You’re going to be a great player, kid.
It kills me to lose. If I’m a troublemaker, and I don’t think that my temper makes me one, then it’s because I can’t stand losing. That’s the way I am about winning, all I ever wanted to do was finish first.
It’s not easy to be a martyr in the field of race relations.
I ought to break this trophy into 32 pieces.
This ain’t fun. But you watch me, I’ll get it done.
If Jesus ever had PMS, he totally would have sinned.