“Baseball is like a poker game. Nobody wants to quit when he’s losing; nobody wants you to quit when you’re ahead.”

I don’t like needing anyone for anything.

Baseball, like some other sports, poses as a sacred institution dedicated to the public good, but it is actually a big, selfish business with a ruthlessness that many big businesses would never think of displaying.

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.

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.

Without the anticipation of better things ahead, we will have no heart for the journey.

I’ll take a break for a couple weeks for a project that is paying me money like a television project which I try to stay away from just to stay financially ahead of the game.

Pre-heat the oven? Really? If I was the sort of person who planned ahead

Focus on the moment, not the monsters that may or may not be up ahead.

In science, the best precept is to alter and exchange our ideas as fast as science moves ahead.

Ruminating about the past will get you nowhere. So go ahead and learn from the past whatever you can, and then put it behind you.

The end is in the beginning and lies far ahead.

See I’m not a monster, I’m just ahead of the curve.