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All Quotes by author - Jackie Robinson

" Above anything else, I hate to lose. "

" After two years at UCLA, I decided to leave. I was convinced that no amount of education would help a black man get a job. "

" A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives. "

" A new breed of Republicans has taken over the GOP. It is a new breed which is seeking to sell to Americans a doctrine which is as old as mankind - the doctrine of racial division, the doctrine of racial prejudice, the doctrine of white supremacy. "

" Baseball is like a poker game. Nobody wants to quit when he's losing; nobody wants you to quit when you're ahead. "

" Blacks have had to learn to protect themselves by being cynical but not cynical enough to slam the door on potential opportunities. We go through life walking a tightrope to prevent too much disillusionment. "

" During my life, I have had a few nightmares which happened to me while I was wide awake. One of them was the National Republican Convention in San Francisco, which produced the greatest disaster the Republican Party has ever known - Nominee Barry Goldwater. "

" How you played in yesterday's game is all that counts. "

" I cannot possibly believe that I have it made while so many black brothers and sisters are hungry, inadequately housed, insufficiently clothed, denied their dignity as they live in slums or barely exist on welfare. "

" I cannot salute the flag; I know that I am a black man in a white world. In 1972, in 1947, at my birth in 1919, I know that I never had it made. "

" I felt unhappy and trapped. If I left baseball, where could I go, what could I do to earn enough money to help my mother and to marry Rachel? The solution to my problem was only days away in the hands of a tough, shrewd, courageous man called Branch Rickey, the president of the Brooklyn Dodgers. "

" If I had been white with the things I did, they never would have allowed me to get out of baseball. "

" I guess you'd call me an independent, since I've never identified myself with one party or another in politics. I always decide my vote by taking as careful a look as I can at the actual candidates and issues themselves, no matter what the party label. "

" I had no future with the Dodgers, because I was too closely identified with Branch Rickey. After the club was taken over by Walter O'Malley, you couldn't even mention Mr. Rickey's name in front of him. I considered Mr. Rickey the greatest human being I had ever known. "

" I had practiced with the team, and the first scheduled game was with the University of Missouri. They made it quite clear to the Army that they would not play a team with a black player on it. Instead of telling me the truth, the Army gave me leave to go home. "

" I have always been grateful to Colonel Longley. He proved to me that when people in authority take a stand, good can come out of it. "

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

" In all my years of baseball, I have always expected to be traded. I never liked the idea. "

" In my opinion, baseball is as big a business as anything there is. It has to be a business, the way it is conducted. "

" I speak to you only as an American who happens to be an American Negro and one who is proud of that heritage. We ask for nothing special. We ask only that we be permitted to compete on an even basis, and if we are not worthy, then the competition shall, per se, eliminate us. "

" 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. "

" It kills me to lose. If I'm a troublemaker, and I don't think that my temper makes me one, then it's because I can't stand losing. That's the way I am about winning, all I ever wanted to do was finish first. "

" It would make everything I worked for meaningless if baseball is integrated but political parties were segregated. "

" I want everybody to understand that I am an American Negro first before I am a member of any political party. "

" 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. "

" Many people resented my impatience and honesty, but I never cared about acceptance as much as I cared about respect. "

" My problem was my inability to spend much time at home. I thought my family was secure, so I went running around everyplace else. I guess I had more of an effect on other people's kids than I did my own. "

" My protest about the post exchange seating bore some results. More seats were allocated for blacks, but there were still separate sections for blacks and for whites. At least I had made my men realize that something could be accomplished by speaking out, and I hoped they would be less resigned to unjust conditions. "

" Pop flies, in a sense, are just a diversion for a second baseman. Grounders are his stock trade. "

" The black press, some liberal sportswriters, and even a few politicians were banging away at those Jim Crow barriers in baseball. I never expected the walls to come tumbling down in my lifetime. "

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