“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.”

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.

Are you looking for a Negro who won’t fight back?

I don’t think it matters what I believe, only what I do.

This ain’t fun. But you watch me, I’ll get it done.

Next time I go to a movie and see a picture of a little ordinary girl become a great star… I’ll believe it. And whenever I hear my wife read fairy tales to my little boy, I’ll listen. I know now that dreams do come true.

How you played in yesterday’s game is all that counts.

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’m not concerned with your liking or disliking me. All I ask is that you respect me as a human being.

I never cared about acceptance as much as I cared about respect.

Baseball is like a poker game. Nobody wants to quit when he’s losing; nobody wants you to quit when you’re ahead.

The most luxurious possession, the richest treasure anybody has, is his personal dignity.

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.

Life is not a spectator sport.

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.

Relationships may change throughout the gift of time, memories stay the same forever in my mind.

The right of every American to first-class citizenship is the most important issue of our time.

One cannot be avenged for every wrong; according to the occasion, everyone who knows how, must use temperance.

When I lose my temper, honey, you can’t find it any place.

To have his path made clear for him is the aspiration of every human being in our beclouded and tempestuous existence.

Neither prosperity nor empire nor heaven can be worth winning at the price of a virulent temper, bloody hands, an anguished spirit, and a vain hatred of the rest of the world.

In the jungle, life and food depend on keeping your temper.

I think judicial temperament is a willingness to step back from your own committed views of the correct jurisprudential approach and evaluate those views in terms of your role as a judge.

An awful lot has been written about my temper.

Men’s views of things are the result of their understanding alone. Their conduct is regulated by their understanding, their temper, and their passions.