“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.”

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’ve got to get to the stage in life where going for it is more important than winning or losing.

I don’t care who you are, you’re going to choke in certain matches. You get to a point where your legs don’t move and you can’t take a deep breath. You start to hit the ball about a yard wide, instead of inches.

I don’t care who you are, you’re going to choke in certain matches. You get to a point where your legs don’t move and you can’t take a deep breath. You start to hit the ball about a yard wide, instead of inches.

I strongly believe the black culture spends too much time, energy and effort raising, praising, and teasing our black children about the dubious glories of professional sports.

You’ve got to make a lot of sacrifices and spend a lot of time if you really want to achieve with this sport, or in any sport, or in anything truly worthwhile.

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.

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.

If I didn’t play tennis I probably would have to see a psychiatrist.

I have always drawn strength from being close to home.

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

True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost.

If I were to say, ‘God, why me?’ about the bad things, then I should have said, ‘God, why me?’ about the good things that happened in my life.

Someone once told me that God figured that I was a pretty good juggler. I could keep a lot of balls in the air at one time. So He said, “Let’s see if he can juggle another one.”

I may not be walking with you all the way, or even much of the way, as I walk with you now.

Seven out of 10 black faces you see on television are athletes. The black athlete carries the image of the black community. He carries the cross, in a way, until blacks make inroads in other dimensions.

It was an unwritten law that black comics were not permitted to work white nightclubs. You could sing and you could dance, but you couldn’t stand flat-footed and talk; that was a no-no.

I never thought I’d see the day that I would see white folks as frightened, or more so than black folks was during the civil rights movement when we were in Mississippi.

In the early days, we just wore black onstage. Very bold, my dear. Then we introduced white, for variety, and it simply grew and grew.

Abortion is black genocide, What happens to the mind of a person and the moral fabric of a nation that accepts the aborting of the life of a baby without a pang of conscience?

Even though he understood the depths of racism and black oppression, Ali lived his life as a free man—a free loving and lovable man.

The burden of being black is that you have to be superior just to be equal. But the glory of it is that, once you achieve, you have achieved, indeed.

I am really enjoying the new Martin Luther King Jr stamp – just think about all those white bigots, licking the backside of a black man.

When we’re unemployed, we’re called lazy; when the whites are unemployed it’s called a depression.