I didn't say I was that smart, I said I went to class and I enjoyed what I was doing.

I don't compare 'em, I just catch 'em.

I played with the Birmingham Black Barons. I was making 500 at 14. That was a lot of money in those days.

People talk about that catch and, I've said this many times, that I've made better catches than that many times in regular season. But of course in my time, you didn't have a lot of television during the regular season. A lot of people didn't see me do a lot of things.

When I was in Birmingham I used to go to a place called Redwood Field. I used to get there for a two o'clock game. Where can you make this kind of money playing sports? It was just a pleasure to go out and enjoy myself and get paid for it.

In 1950, when the Giants signed me, they gave me $15,000. I bought a 1950 Mercury. I couldn't drive, but I had it in the parking lot there, and everybody that could drive would drive the car. So it was like a community thing.

When I'm not hitting, I don't hit nobody. But, when I'm hitting, I hit anybody.

I'm a very lucky guy. I had so many people help me over the years that I never had many problems. If I had a problem, I could sit down with someone and they would explain the problem to me, and the problem become like a baseball game.

That's how easy baseball was for me. I'm not trying to brag or anything, but I had the knowledge before I became a professional baseball player to do all these things and know what each guy would hit.

Maybe I was born to play ball. Maybe I truly was.

Every time I look at my pocketbook, I see Jackie Robinson.

I was very fortunate to play sports. All the anger in me went out. I had to do what I had to do. If you stay angry all the time, then you really don't have a good life.

I would try and help everybody, because the game was so easy for me. It was just like walking in the park.

The greatest challenge I think is adjusting to not playing baseball. The reason for that is I had to come out of baseball and come into the business world, not being a college graduate, not being educated to come into the business world the way I should have.

I think I was the best baseball player I ever saw.

I don't mean to be bashful, but I was.

In order to excel, you must be completely dedicated to your chosen sport. You must also be prepared to work hard and be willing to accept constructive criticism. Without one-hundred percent dedication, you won't be able to do this.

If you can do that - if you run, hit, run the bases, hit with power, field, throw and do all other things that are part of the game - then you're a good ballplayer.

I was very blessed with a good body. Never got hurt. Never was in the hospital. The only time I was in the hospital was when I would get exhausted a little bit, and go in for a check-up or something.

Yes, I had to learn how to live life outside, but I had so many people help me.

When I got to professional ball I used to play 150 games every year. It depends on how many games there was.

And my father didn't have money for me to go to college. And at that particular time they didn't have black quarterbacks, and I don't think I could have made it in basketball, because I was only 5' 11". So I just picked baseball.

I think I was programmed to do good things when I came into the majors. I knew how to play.

At ten I was playing against 18-year-old guys. At 15 I was playing professional ball with the Birmingham Black Barons, so I really came very quickly in all sports.

It's not hard. When I'm not hitting, I don't hit nobody. But when I'm hitting, I hit anybody.

I was a baseball player, I taught baseball, and all of a sudden I was in the business world. Now I used the baseball world to talk about their product. Not too much, just enough to keep going. Just be yourself and you'll never have a problem. That's what I did.

Robinson was important to all blacks. To make it into the majors and to take all the name calling, he had to be something special. He had to take all this for years, not just for Jackie Robinson, but for the nation.

I always enjoyed playing ball, and it didn't matter to me whether I played with white kids or black. I never understood why an issue was made of who I played with, and I never felt comfortable, when I grew up, telling other people how to act.

Defense to me is the key to playing baseball.

I didn't say I was that smart, I said I went to class and I enjoyed what I was doing.

They throw the ball, I hit it. They hit the ball, I catch it.

Baseball is a game, yes. It is also a business. But what is most truly is is disguised combat. For all its gentility, its almost leisurely pace, baseball is violence under wraps.

Baseball is a game yes. It is also a business. But what it most truly is is disguised combat. For all its gentility its almost leisurely pace baseball is violence under wraps.

It isn't hard to be good from time to time in sports. What is tough, is being good every day

I'm getting a wider circle of fans now. More women, more middle class people.

The best thanks we could offer those who went before and raised the Irish working class from their knees was to press forward with determination and enthusiasm towards the ultimate goal of their efforts, a Co-operative Commonwealth for Ireland.

Make no mistake: The organization of the working class must be both economic and political. The capitalist is organized upon both lines. You must attack him on both.

In economic panics throughout history, the wiping out of the savings accounts of lower earners and the middle class has often led to social revolution, sometimes violent upheavals.

It is the tendency of the social burdens to crush out the middle class, and to force society into an organization of only two classes, one at each social extreme.

I once said, "We will bury you," and I got into trouble with it. Of course we will not bury you with a shovel. Your own working class will bury you.

I certainly did feel inferior. Because of class. Because of strength. Because of height. I guess if I'd been able to hit somebody in the nose, I wouldn't have been a comic.

I grew up in Michigan, in a very small town, Centreville. In my graduating class, I had like 92 people.

These interests of the workers, as the exploited and oppressed, class of society, are the same in all countries.

We need to work together, on a bipartisan basis, to create new jobs, increase job training, enact real and substantive middle class tax relief, and reward companies that create jobs at home.

At one point in college I was so shy that I'd drop out of a class if asked to speak in front of other people.

I recommend the same therapies for all humans with HIV. There is no reason to believe that physiologic responses to therapy will vary across lines of class, culture, race or nationality.

After some minor pieces of theoretical study that I worked on, a student in my statistical mechanics class brought to my attention a problem in polyelectrolytes.

There is no class so pitiably wretched as that which possesses money and nothing else.

I was a class clown.