Jackie Robinson

Plenty of times I wanted to haul off when somebody insulted me for the color of my skin, but I had to hold to myself. I knew I was kind of an experiment. The whole thing was bigger than me.

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

I think if we go back and check our record, the Negro has proven beyond a doubt that we have been more than patient in seeking our rights as American citizens.

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

I don’t let my mouth say nothin’ my head can’t stand.

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

We mustn’t be stiff and stand-off, you know. We must be thoroughly democratic, and patronize everybody without distinction of class.

It’s easy to have faith in yourself and have discipline when you’re a winner, when you’re number one. What you got to have is faith and discipline when you’re not a winner.

The good news is that the moment you decide that what you know is more important than what you have been taught to believe, you will have shifted gears in your quest for abundance. Success comes from within, not from without.

In war as in life, it is often necessary when some cherished scheme has failed, to take up the best alternative open, and if so, it is folly not to work for it with all your might.

True, there are architects so called in this country, and I have heard of one at least possessed with the idea of making architectural ornaments have a core of truth, a necessity, and hence a beauty, as if it were a revelation to him. All very well perhaps from his point of view, but only a little better than the common dilettantism.

The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue; and no genius can long or often utter anything which is not invited and gladly entertained by men around him.

Strivers achieve what dreamers believe.

The wonder is always new that any sane man can be a sailor.

If people misunderstand you, do not worry…it is your voice that they hear, but what goes through their mind is…their own thoughts.

The maxim of the British people is Business as usual.

But that intimacy of mutual embarrassment, in which each feels that the other is feeling something, having once existed, its effect is not to be done away with.

Reading Proust isn’t just reading a book, it’s an experience and you can’t reject an experience.

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.

So many objections may be made to everything, that nothing can overcome them but the necessity of doing something.

Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.