Jackie Robinson

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

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

In my opinion, baseball is as big a business as anything there is. It has to be a business, the way it is conducted.

In all my years of baseball, I have always expected to be traded. I never liked the idea.

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

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.

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

The way I figured it, I was even with baseball and baseball with me. The game had done much for me, and I had done much for it.

A new breed of Republicans has taken over the GOP. It is a new breed which is seeking to sell to Americans a doctrine which is as old as mankind - the doctrine of racial division, the doctrine of racial prejudice, the doctrine of white supremacy.

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.

I had no future with the Dodgers, because I was too closely identified with Branch Rickey. After the club was taken over by Walter O'Malley, you couldn't even mention Mr. Rickey's name in front of him. I considered Mr. Rickey the greatest human being I had ever known.

I want everybody to understand that I am an American Negro first before I am a member of any political party.

The old Dodgers were something special, but of my teammates overall, there was nobody like Pee Wee Reese for me.

I'm not concerned with your liking or disliking me... All I ask is that you respect me as a human being.

Today, Negroes play on every big league club and in every minor league. With millions of other Negroes in other walks of life, we are willing to stand up and be counted for what we believe in. In baseball or out, we are no longer willing to wait until Judgment Day for equality - we want it here on earth as well as in Heaven.

During my life, I have had a few nightmares which happened to me while I was wide awake. One of them was the National Republican Convention in San Francisco, which produced the greatest disaster the Republican Party has ever known - Nominee Barry Goldwater.

This ain't fun. But you watch me, I'll get it done.

When I look back at what I had to go through in black baseball, I can only marvel at the many black players who stuck it out for years in the Jim Crow leagues because they had nowhere else to go.

I'm not concerned with your liking or disliking me. All I ask is that you respect me as a human being.

Many people resented my impatience and honesty, but I never cared about acceptance as much as I cared about respect.

How you played in yesterday's game is all that counts.

Above anything else, I hate to lose.

The most luxurious possession, the richest treasure anybody has, is his personal dignity.

I guess you'd call me an independent, since I've never identified myself with one party or another in politics. I always decide my vote by taking as careful a look as I can at the actual candidates and issues themselves, no matter what the party label.

I speak to you only as an American who happens to be an American Negro and one who is proud of that heritage. We ask for nothing special. We ask only that we be permitted to compete on an even basis, and if we are not worthy, then the competition shall, per se, eliminate us.

The right of every American to first-class citizenship is the most important issue of our time.

I cannot salute the flag; I know that I am a black man in a white world. In 1972, in 1947, at my birth in 1919, I know that I never had it made.