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

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.

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.

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.