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

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

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.

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.

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.

Only passions, and great passions, can raise the soul to great things. Without them there is no sublimity, either in morals or in creativity. Art returns to infancy, and virtue becomes small-minded.

My heart always timidly hides itself behind my mind. I set out to bring down stars from the sky, then, for fear of ridicule, I stop and pick little flowers of eloquence.

Do not store in your brain useless information. Learn to unmind the mind. Unlearn whatever has been of no use to you. Then only can you fill your mind with divine thoughts.

I discuss with myself questions of politics, love, taste, or philosophy. I let my mind rove wantonly, give it free rein to followany idea, wise or mad that may present itself. My ideas are my harlots.

A cheerful mind is a vigorous mind.

Body and mind, like man and wife, do not always agree to die together.

The only time we suffer is when we believe a thought that argues with what is. When the mind is perfectly clear, what is is what we want.

Hurry is the mark of a weak mind, dispatch of a strong one.