If you're successful in what you do over a period of time, you'll start approaching records, but that's not what you're playing for. You're playing to challenge and be challenged.

Jim Crow was king... and I heard a game in which Jackie Robinson was playing, and I felt pride in being alive.

Your bat is your life. It's your weapon. You don't want to go into battle with anything that feels less than perfect.

When I was a kid, I used to imagine animals running under my bed. I told my dad, and he solved the problem quickly. He cut the legs off the bed.

If you're successful in what you do over a period of time, you'll start approaching records, but that's not what you're playing for. You're playing to challenge and be challenged.

The baseball held was my fantasy of what life offered.

I don't think about goals and records. Competition is what keeps me playing.

The stiffer the penalty, the greater the message is sent.

Show me a guy who's afraid to look bad, and I'll show you a guy you can beat every time.

You can't be afraid to make errors! You can't be afraid to be naked before the crowd, because no one can ever master the game of baseball, or conquer it. You can only challenge it.

We have to make some radical move to get the attention of everyone. Cheaters can't win and steroids has put us in the position that it's OK to cheat.

I had a job on college campus. I lost that job, but on my way home I heard an inner voice that said go out for the baseball team. I was a walk-on, and I was actually petrified as a walk-on because you're not an athlete.

I was not in the church, but we claim, like so many people, 'Yeah, I grew up in the church.' Well yeah, I grew up in the church and went to church, but I knew nothing about the Lord. I had no idea what it meant about walking in faith.

If I had any interest in coming back to baseball, it would be as a general manager and not as a manager.

Some players tell me that since retiring they've had the urge to go somewhere every three days. To satisfy that urge, they may even jump in the car and drive around the block.

Stealing bases was put to me almost as a prerequisite for staying in the game. They didn't give me a handbook on how to do it; they said do it. Under those conditions you go out and develop your own handbook.

There is a definite loneliness in the game. Most people stay away from you since they think they're intruding upon your time. And after the ball game, when it's 11 o'clock and you want to eat dinner some place, the restaurants are closed.

They will look at my career as the guy who gave it all but at the same time did it with integrity. That's what we all aim for - the respect of the game as well as the honesty that's played a part of that game.

You can't hide God in you. God was not meant to become part of you, and you hide out in the closet. I don't think He wanted that. I think He wanted people to see the Christ in you that reflects Him.

Competition is what keeps me playing the psychological warfare of matching skill against skill and wit against wit.

One of the trademarks of a champion is that he can outlast you.

Roosevelt's magic lay in one facet of his personality: He knew how to take the risk. No other man in public life I knew could so readily take the challenge of the new.

To do the Ozzfest again would be great. I'd like to finish with a final Sabbath album. You always feel that it is still a challenge.

People are not perfect... very often the relationships that are strongest are those where people have worked through big crises, but they've had to work through them. So the challenge to us is to work through that.

Every single book is a challenge.

Critics are sentinels in the grand army of letters, stationed at the corners of newspapers and reviews, to challenge every new author.

The lopsided attitudes of college professors pose a serious challenge to learning because students are so susceptible to becoming lopsided sheep.

I really enjoy comedy. It's a real challenge.

I had a hard time with that hockey. I hadn't grown up skating, so that was my biggest challenge. We worked on it and worked on it. But then when we first shot it, it was so hard for me.

The challenge is to practice politics as the art of making what appears to be impossible, possible.

Change can either challenge or threaten us. Your beliefs pave your way to success or block you.

My greatest challenge has been to change the mindset of people. Mindsets play strange tricks on us. We see things the way our minds have instructed our eyes to see.

I'd say that it's important for music to be there that gives you a challenge, that rearranges things in your head.

I like good stories. Quality products and character are what's important. Even if the script isn't that strong, if I challenge myself with a great character, I'll go for it.

I tend to arrive in the rehearsal process with very strongly developed ideas about what I want to do. But I don't like those ideas to be things that are not subject to change, or subject to development, or subject to challenge.

I'm not looking to set a standard... but, I believe I have offered a challenge to others with my work.

If you live a life of make-believe, your life isn't worth anything until you do something that does challenge your reality. And to me, sailing the open ocean is a real challenge, because it's life or death.

And, I'd never done Tennessee Williams, and I had done Broadway musicals, so it was a challenge.

When you remove the risk, you remove the challenge. When you remove the challenge, you wither on the vine.

After Land I wanted to continue exploring the theme but I needed a new challenge so turned to colour. I explored Bradford and produced a series of urban landscapes that I liked, but because Land had made such an impact on the general public my colour work wasn't reviewed.

The worlds I paint leave a lot to engage the imagination by hinting at what lies beyond the four edges of the painting. I think getting beyond the four edges of an opportunity or challenge is one of the basic skills you need in business.

For me, it's a bigger challenge, it's much harder to do and much more rewarding to do well, then just to think up stuff of your own, hit or miss, because you've got to see to it that you don't torpedo any of his punch lines.

This same habitual blindness to spiritual, substantive dimensions of every significant challenge continues to handicap Hollywood.

Every artist has to grow, and has to challenge themselves with a new form of expression.

The next challenge for Christianity is to remind Europeans that we are called to seek the truth.

Give yourself an even greater challenge than the one you are trying to master and you will develop the powers necessary to overcome the original difficulty.

The biggest challenge has been simulating a tornado with wind machines and dirt and debris. Right when you walk on the set, you feel the energy of a tornado. But the hardest thing is trying to get dialogue out in all of that.

I look at raising funds for The Perlman Music Program as a challenge and as a way to provide opportunities for people who care about the future of classical music.

My father instilled in me the attitude of prevailing. If there's a challenge, go for it. If there's a wall to break down, break it down.