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.

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

Above anything else, I hate to lose.

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

During my life, I have had a few nightmares which happened to me while I was wide awake.

I’m grateful for all the breaks and honors and opportunities I’ve had, but I always believe I won’t have it made until the humblest black kid in the most remote backwoods of America has it made.

Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning.

When you know better you do better.

The longer we live the more we think and the higher the value we put on friendship and tenderness towards parents and friends.

People wish to be settled. It is only as far as they are unsettled that there is any hope for them.

I know not any thing more pleasant, or more instructive, than to compare experience with expectation, or to register from time to time the difference between idea and reality. It is by this kind of observation that we grow daily less liable to be disappointed.

If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.

He who has begun has half done. Dare to be wise; begin.

Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.

The true art of memory is the art of attention.

The true artist has the planet for his pedestal; the adventurer, after years of strife, has nothing broader than his shoes.

That things are changed, and that nothing really perishes, and that the sum of matter remains exactly the same, is sufficiently certain.

While I know myself as a creation of God, I am also obligated to realize and remember that everyone else and everything else are also God’s creation.

This is the foundation of all. We are not to imagine or suppose, but to discover, what nature does or may be made to do.

No pain, no palm; no thorns, no throne; no gall, no glory; no cross, no crown.

Standing beneath this immense, bejeweled, star-spangled dome, breathing in its life, boundaries fall away, possibilities open up and my wings unfold. And I thought that you were the one who was the angel.