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Jackie Robinson Quotes

By Jessica McElrath, About.com

  • 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.

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

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

  • The right of every American to first-class citizenship is the most important issue of our time.

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

  • Above anything else, I hate to lose.

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

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

  • 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.

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

  • The way I figured it, I was even with baseball and baseball with me. The game had done much for me, and I had done much for it.

  • 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.

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

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