“Having grown up in a segregated environment in the south I know what it’s like to be stepped on, I know what it’s like also to see some black hero do well in the face of adversity.”

The ideal attitude is to be physically loose and mentally tight.

If I don’t ask “Why me?” after my victories, I cannot ask “Why me?” after my setbacks and disasters.

I spent many, many hours in libraries. Libraries became courts of last resort, as it were.

There is a syndrome in sports called ‘paralysis by analysis.’

I accepted the face that as much as I want to lead others, and love to be around other people, in some essential way, I am something of a loner.

I’m learning to use others’ weaknesses. I don’t hammer a man’s soft spot constantly, because he may strengthen it. I just save it as a trump up my sleeve for moments when I really need a point.

I’m learning to use others’ weaknesses. I don’t hammer a man’s soft spot constantly, because he may strengthen it. I just save it as a trump up my sleeve for moments when I really need a point.

Sometimes, a defeat can be more beautiful and satisfying than certain victories. The English have a point in insisting that it matters not who won or lost, but how you played the game.

This is my career highlight. Getting to the fourth round in the U.S. Open in my first year in the U.S. Open and first year on the tour.

When bright young minds can’t afford college, America pays the price.

My potential is more than can be expressed within the bounds of my race or ethnic identity.

Regardless of how you feel inside, always try to look like a winner.

If one’s reputation is a possession, then of all my possessions, my reputation means most to me.

Wherever I am when you feel sick at heart and weary of life, or when you stumble and fall and don’t know if you can get up again, think of me. I will be watching and smiling and cheering you on.

With what we give, we make a life.

I have tried to keep on with my striving because this is the only hope I have of ever achieving anything worthwhile and lasting.

But when I see a story on welfare on television, they only show black people.

The shadow of a mighty Negro past flits through the tale of Ethiopia the shadowy and of the Egypt the Sphinx. Throughout history, the powers of single blacks flash here and there like falling stars, and die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their brightness.

The concept of the black and white people boils down to: No light without darkness – You depend on each other!

I believe that all men, black and brown, and white, are brothers, varying, through Time and Opportunity, in form and gift and feature, but differing in no essential particular, and alike in soul and in the possibility of infinite development.

Nothing in the world is easier in the United States than to accuse a black man of crime.

Then that little man in black there, he says women can’t have as much rights as men, ’cause Christ wasn’t a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.

We must always embrace individual liberty and enforce the constitutional rights of all Americans-rich and poor, immigrant and native, black and white.

There is a terrific apprehension among some people that blacks will take over the sport… It will create problems because their behavior, speech and dress is just a completely different culture.