In our monogamous part of the world, to marry means to halve one’s rights and double one’s duties

The closing years of life are like the end of a masquerade party when the masks are dropped.

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone.

Drummed into me, above all, by my dad, by the whole family, was that without your good name, you would be nothing

With what we give, we make a life

I may not be walking with you all the way, or even much of the way, as I walk with you now.

Do not feel sorry for me if I am gone

Throughout my formal education, I spent many, many hours in public and school libraries. Libraries became courts of last resort, as it were. The current definitive answer to almost any question can be found within the four walls of most libraries

It’s an abnormal world I live in. I don’t belong anywhere. It’s like I’m floating down the middle. I’m never quite sure where I am

I’m learning to use others’ weaknesses. I don’t hammer a man’s soft spot constantly, because he may strengthen it. I just save it as a trump up my sleeve for moments when I really need a point.

I strongly believe the black culture spends too much time, energy and effort raising, praising, and teasing our black children about the dubious glories of professional sports.

This is my career highlight. Getting to the fourth round in the U.S. Open in my first year in the U.S. Open and first year on the tour.

I don’t care who you are, you’re going to choke in certain matches. You get to a point where your legs don’t move and you can’t take a deep breath. You start to hit the ball about a yard wide, instead of inches.

In America, you’re conditioned to regard everything as a contest. You have to make the Ten Best Dressed List, win this, win that. It drives me nuts sometimes. Who cares, for Christ’s sake?

I have always drawn strength from being close to home.

Sometimes, a defeat can be more beautiful and satisfying than certain victories. The English have a point in insisting that it matters not who won or lost, but how you played the game

I have tried to keep on with my striving because this is the only hope I have of ever achieving anything worthwhile and lasting.

We blacks look for leadership in men and women of such youth and inexperience, as well as poverty of education and character, that it is no wonder that we sometimes seem rudderless… We see basketball players and pop singers as possible role models, when nothing could be further, in most cases, from their capacities

I keep sailing on in this middle passage. I am sailing into the wind and the dark. But I am doing my best to keep my boat steady and my sails full

My humanity, in common with all of God’s children, gives the greatest flight to my full range of my possibilities

I would like to flood South Africa with black personages of all sorts of persuasions: writers, educators, businessmen, you name it. If you are black and have any clout at all, I would like to see you go to South Africa and look for yourself and come back and try to use the tools that you have at your command to try and help the brothers down there

My potential is more than can be expressed within the bounds of my race or ethnic identity.

You’ve got to make a lot of sacrifices and spend a lot of time if you really want to achieve with this sport, or in any sport, or in anything truly worthwhile

You come to realize that life is short, and you have to step up. Don’t feel sorry for me. Much is expected of those who are strong

Some folks call tennis a rich people’s sport or a white person’s game. I guess I started too early because I just thought it was something fun to do. Later, I discovered there was a lot of work to being good in tennis. You’ve got to make a lot of sacrifices and spend a lot of time if you really want to achieve with this sport, or in any sport, or in anything truly worthwhile.

Some folks call tennis a rich people’s sport or a white person’s game. I guess I started too early because I just thought it was something fun to do. Later, I discovered there was a lot of work to being good in tennis. You’ve got to make a lot of sacrifices and spend a lot of time if you really want to achieve with this sport, or in any sport, or in anything truly worthwhile.

There were times when I asked myself whether I was being principled or simply a coward…. I was wrapped in the cocoon of tennis early in life, mainly by blacks like my most powerful mentor, Dr. Robert Walter Johnson of Lynchburg, Virginia. They insisted that I be unfailingly polite on the court, unfalteringly calm and detached, so that whites could never accuse me of meanness. I learned well. I look at photographs of the skinny, frail, little black boy that I was in the early 1950s, and I see that I was my tennis racquet and my tennis racquet was me. It was my rod and my staff

Racism is not an excuse to not do the best you can.

Having grown up in a segregated environment in the south I know what it’s like to be stepped on, I know what it’s like also to see some black hero do well in the face of adversity

A wise person decides slowly but abides by these decisions

I don’t want to be remembered for my tennis accomplishments. That’s no contribution to society. [Tennis] was purely selfish; that was for me

There is a syndrome in sports called ‘paralysis by analysis.’

Every time you win, it diminishes the fear a little bit. You never really cancel the fear of losing; you keep challenging it.

When bright young minds can’t afford college, America pays the price

I have become convinced that we blacks spend too much time on the playing field and too little time in libraries.

We must believe in the power of education. We must respect just laws. We must love ourselves, our old and or young, our women as well as our men.

I have always tried to be true to myself, to pick those battles I felt were important. My ultimate responsibility is to myself. I could never be anything else.

Trust has to be earned, and should come only after the passage of time

If I don’t ask “Why me?” after my victories, I cannot ask “Why me?” after my setbacks and disasters

I take the good with the bad, and I try to face them both with as much calm and dignity as I can muster

Let me put it this way: I think Republicans tend to keep the ball in play, Democrats go for broke.

I know I could never forgive myself if I elected to live without humane purpose, without trying to help the poor and unfortunate, without recognizing that perhaps the purest joy in life comes with trying to help others.

We must reach out our hand in friendship and dignity both to those who would befriend us and those who would be our enemy

Wherever I am when you feel sick at heart and weary of life, or when you stumble and fall and don’t know if you can get up again, think of me. I will be watching and smiling and cheering you on.

If I were to say, ‘God, why me?’ about the bad things, then I should have said, ‘God, why me?’ about the good things that happened in my life.

Fear isn’t an excuse to come to a standstill. It’s the impetus to step up and strike

Regardless of how you feel inside, always try to look like a winner

True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost

You’ve got to get to the stage in life where going for it is more important than winning or losing

One important key to success is self-confidence. An important key to self-confidence is preparation

From what we get, we can make a living; what we give, however, makes a life.

Start where you are, use what you have

God is like the sun at high noon, always giving all he has

The only atheism is the denial of truth

History is full of surprises

The prerequisite of originality is the art of forgetting, at the proper moment, what we know.

From what we get, we can make a living; what we give, however, makes a life

One important key to success is self-confidence. An important key to self-confidence is preparation.

True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the courage to surpass others at whatever cost, but the courage to serve others at whatever the cost.