Playing baseball for a living is like having a license to steal.

My father taught me that the only way you can make good at anything is to practice, and then practice some more.

When you play this game twenty years, go to bat ten-thousand times, and get three-thousand hits, do you know what that means? You've gone zero for seven-thousand.

Brooks Robinson belongs in a higher league.

See the ball; hit the ball.

Sliding headfirst is the safest way to get to the next base, I think, and the fastest. You don't lose your momentum, and there's one more important reason I slide headfirst, it gets my picture in the paper.

I'd walk through hell in a gasoline suit to play baseball.

With the money I'm making, I should be playing two positions.

Some players you pat their butts, some players you kick their butts, some players you leave alone.

Playing baseball for a living is like having a license to steal.

It's a round ball and a round bat, and you got to hit it square.

I'm just like everybody else. I have two arms, two legs and four-thousand hits.

When I get the record, all it will make me is the player with the most hits. I'm also the player with the most at bats and the most outs. I never said I was a greater player than Cobb.

I've never looked forward to a birthday like I'm looking forward to my new daughter's birthday, because two days after that is when I can apply for reinstatement.

There is an old saying that money can't buy happiness. If it could, I would buy myself four hits every game.

The greatest competitor was Bob Gibson. He worked so fast out there and he always had the hood up. He always wanted to close his own deal. He never talked to you because he was battling so hard. I sure as hell don't miss batting against him, but I miss him in the game.

The manager of a team is like a stagecoach, he can't move unless he has the horses.

Doctors tell me I have the body of a thirty year old. I know I have the brain of a fifteen year old. If you've got both, you can play baseball.

I was born on the day Lincoln was shot and the Titanic sank.

Never bet on baseball.

The team that wins two-thirds of its one run games usually wins the pennant.

Somebody's gotta win and somebody's gotta lose and I believe in letting the other guy lose.

Am I still in uniform? Then I ain't retired.

A lot of these catchers don't understand that they are blocking the plate and they don't have the ball. You're not allowed to block the plate without the ball.

A team will take on its manager's personality. If it's a laid back manager, you'll have a laid back personality. The players will see that if it's OK for the Manager to be laid back, then you'll have a laid back team.

Are you tall? Are you strong? How big are your hands? You must be honest with yourself or you will end up using the wrong bat.

Back in 1960 at Christmas time, I did work loading and unloading boxcars for Railway Express. That was a kind of weight training that helped me. I weighed about 160 when I started. I began to gain weight and kept right on gaining until I reached 195 pounds.

Baseball and the players association have rules. If you stay within the rules - which say that you can play while you're appealing - I don't see what anyone would be in arms about.

Baseball is an individual game, but it should never be a personal game.

Can you be a nicer gentleman, or a better man for your sport or your kids than Joe Paterno?

Hillary Clinton wrote a book. She got paid. I don't understand why I can't.

I actually went to some Gamblers Anonymous classes, and I sat there for three or four of them, and I'm trying to figure out what I have in similarities with these other people, and I could never find anything. It just seems like it wasn't the right place for me.

I admitted I bet on baseball, but I wasn't suspended from baseball for betting on baseball.

I always liked the defensive part of baseball.

I am grateful that I live in a nation where most believe that one's punishment should fit their wrongdoing and that ours is a nation that judges an individual by both what he has done and how he has changed.

I bet on the game of baseball and I bet on my team, even the mistakes I made, I have to take a different look at someone betting against their own team... that's throwing the game.

I came to Vegas because I work 20 days a month here; I couldn't live anywhere else.

I can't remember, I wish I could remember the first time I bet on baseball.

I don't go to bed every night worried about getting back into baseball.

I don't think there's any honor bigger than going to your Hall of Fame for your sport.

I get accused of talking about records. But it's the guys who interview me who ask about them.

I had an addiction to play baseball.

I like Barack Obama as a person. He's articulate, he knows sports, his brother-in-law's a coach. He always has the athletes to the White House. But I don't know about some of his policies and some of these people in Congress.

I love WWE.

I love the fans, I love the game of baseball, and I love Cincinnati baseball.

I met Gerald Ford. I met Richard Nixon. I met Jimmy Carter. I met Dwight Eisenhower when he was a general. George Bush senior. I haven't met Bill Clinton or George W. Bush, although I got a letter from him.

I never gave up as a player, and I won't give up as someone who wants to go to the Hall of Fame, because it's the ultimate goal for a baseball player or a football player or a basketball player.

I never picked up my phone and called a bookmaker and bet on a baseball game from the clubhouse. Never.

I owe baseball. Baseball don't owe me a damn thing.