“Martina’s like the old Green Bay Packers. You know exactly what she’s going to do, but there isn’t a thing you can do about it.”

You learn about equality in history and civics, but you find out life is not really like that.

Always have the situation under control, even if losing. Never betray an inward sense of defeat.

I know I could never forgive myself if I elected to live without humane purpose, without trying to help the poor and unfortunate, without recognizing that perhaps the purest joy in life comes with trying to help others.

I have always tried to be true to myself, to pick those battles I felt were important. My ultimate responsibility is to myself. I could never be anything else.

We must believe in the power of education. We must respect just laws. We must love ourselves, our old and or young, our women as well as our men.

I don’t want to be remembered for my tennis accomplishments. That’s no contribution to society. Tennis was purely selfish; that was for me.

Every time you win, it diminishes the fear a little bit. You never really cancel the fear of losing; you keep challenging it.

My humanity, in common with all of God’s children, gives the greatest flight to my full range of my possibilities.

It doesn’t have to glitter to be gold.

Trust has to be earned, and should come only after the passage of time.

I take the good with the bad, and I try to face them both with as much calm and dignity as I can muster.

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.

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

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

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

Racism is not an excuse to not do the best you can.

The older you get, the more you realize that it’s okay to live a life other’s don’t understand.

Following the light of the sun, we left the Old World.

It’s hard to say a favorite song of my father’s. I listen to all his stuff; a lot of the old stuff before the ’70s.

Finding old music you used to listen to is like getting back in touch with an old friend.

I am so old that I can remember when other people’s achievements were considered to be an inspiration, rather than a grievance.

Too chaste a youth leads to a dissolute old age.

You leave old habits behind by starting out with the thought, I release the need for this in my life.

The most important thing is growing old gracefully.