Jackie Robinson

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

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

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

I don’t like needing anyone for anything.

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

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.

It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.

We acquire the strength we have overcome.

He who postpones the hour of living is like the rustic who waits for the river to run out before he crosses.

We seem but to linger in manhood to tell the dreams of our childhood, and they vanish out of memory ere we learn the language.

Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny: they have only shifted it to another shoulder.

This comes of James teaching me to think for myself, and never to hold back out of fear of what other people may think of me. It works beautifully as long as I think the same things as he does.

To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs.

The subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of the senses and understanding.

You may try but you can never imagine what it is to have a man’s form of genius in you, and to suffer the slavery of being a girl.

The thirst for adventure is the vent which Destiny offers; a war, a crusade, a gold mine, a new country, speak to the imagination and offer swing and play to the confined powers.

For what is love itself, for the one we love best? An enfolding of immeasurable cares which yet are better than any joys outside our love.

Until we have seen someone’s darkness, we don’t really know who they are. Until we have forgiven someone’s darkness , we don’t really know what love is.

Put an Irishman on the spit and you can always get another Irishman to turn him.

Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. He whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a critic.

Sir, I have no objection to a man’s drinking wine, if he can do it in moderation. I found myself apt to go to excess in it, and therefore, after having been for some time without it, on account of illness, I thought it better not to return to it. Every man is to judge for himself, according to the effects which he experiences.