“There’s not an American in this country free until every one of us is free.”

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.

I know that I am a black man in a white world. I know that I never had it made.

Pop flies, in a sense, are just a diversion for a second baseman. Grounders are his stock trade.

A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.

You’re going to be a great player, kid.

Life is not a spectator sport. If you’re going to spend your whole life in the grandstand just watching what goes on, in my opinion you’re wasting your life.

It’s not easy to be a martyr in the field of race relations.

Above anything else, I hate to lose.

I think Clapton is brilliant. He’s the only one who moved me. The only one who made me want to play the guitar.

Holdsworth is so damned good that I can’t cop anything. I can’t understand what he’s doing. I’ve got to do this [does two-hand tapping], whereas he’ll do it with one hand.

No one predicts the future. No one tries to.

What is this enigmatic impulse that does not allow one to settle down in the achieved, the finished? I think it is a quest for reality.

Not to be born surpasses all reckoning. The next best thing by far, when one has been born is to go back as swiftly as possible whence one came.

God lets everything happen for a reason. It’s all a learning process, and you have to go from one level to another.

If all men were to bring their miseries together in one place, most would be glad to take each his own home again rather than take a portion out of the common stock.

The motto of chivalry is also the motto of wisdom; to serve all, but love only one.