Jackie Robinson Quotes
120 Jackie Robinson Quotes
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It was one thing for me out there on the playing field to be able to keep my cool in the face of insults. But it was another for all those black people sitting in the stands to keep from overreacting when they sensed a racial slur or an unjust decision.
Jackie Robinson
[On his mother] Her great dream for us was that we go to school.
Jackie Robinson
My pride in my mother was tempered with a sense of sadness that she had to bear most of our burdens. At a very early age I began to want to relieve her in any small way I could. I was happy whenever I had money to give her.
Jackie Robinson
I had a lot of free time, and a lot of freedom. Some of it I put to good use – I had a paper route, I cut grass and ran errands when I could.
Jackie Robinson
We were aware of a growing resentment at being deprived of some of the advantages the white kids had. We were allowed to swim in the local municipal pool only on Tuesdays, and once we were escorted to jail at gunpoint by the sheriff because we had gone for a swim in the reservoir.
Jackie Robinson
One of my frustrations of my teens was watching Mother work so hard. I wanted to help more, but I knew how much my college education meant to her. It seemed impossible to earn enough part-time for college expenses and still be able to provide money to relieve her of her daily grind.
Jackie Robinson
[On getting some help as a teenager from Karl Downs] It wasn’t so much what he did to help as the fact that he was interested and concerned enough to offer the best advice he could.
Jackie Robinson
I yearned to just stay in bed. But no matter how terrible I felt, I had to get up.
Jackie Robinson
I have hopes for Jesse Jackson. I think he offers the most viable leadership for blacks and oppressed minorities in America and also for the salvation of our national decency.
Jackie Robinson
I don’t owe any living person my soul, my integrity, my freedom of thought and speech.
Jackie Robinson
We’d better stop using generation gap as an alibi for alienation. Young and old are guilty of that. We’d better build a bridge over that gap.
Jackie Robinson
Just because young people are quieter today, we’ve no right to assume that the problems are solved.
Jackie Robinson
I honor… Kareem Abdul Jabbar, who, after he became a success, never forgot the ghetto from which he came.
Jackie Robinson
I’m not buying anti-white attitudes. Too many people who are not black have proven to me that being real isn’t qualified by skin color but by character.
Jackie Robinson
[On saving his eyesight in later years] I’ve always been a fighter, but this is one fight I could never have won alone.
Jackie Robinson
People in every walk of life who have written, telephoned, sent telegrams, and spared no effort to let me know that I was not a forgotten sports hero, but I am a hero whose personal struggle has reached many, black and white, and given them the courage to go on with their struggles. It seems like they have been trying to share some of the strength they feel they got from me by responding now to me in my time of need.
Jackie Robinson
I have always fought for my principles and spoken out for my ideals.
Jackie Robinson
Recognition… has given me the determination to live as many more productive years as I can.
Jackie Robinson
I had to fight hard against loneliness, abuse, and the knowledge that any mistake I made would be magnified because I was the only black man out there.
Jackie Robinson
I never cared about acceptance as much as I cared about respect.
Jackie Robinson
In the business world I always strove to learn as much as I could so I would not be just a figurehead.
Jackie Robinson
I always believed in the utmost integrity.
Jackie Robinson
In politics I believed in following principle even if the man didn’t seem to offer outstanding possibilities.
Jackie Robinson
I never believed in backing out just because things weren’t the best they could be.
Jackie Robinson
I have always fought for what I believed in.
Jackie Robinson
I was a black man in a white world.
Jackie Robinson
There is one irrefutable fact of my life which has determined much of what happened to me: I was a black man in a white world. I never had it made.
Jackie Robinson
[In 1962 on his entry into the baseball Hall of Fame] I feel inadequate. I can only say that now everything is complete.
Jackie Robinson
I could not be here without the advice and guidance of three of the of the most wonderful people I know… [Branch Rickey, his mother and his wife Rachel Robinson] All are here today, make the honor complete. And I don’t think I will ever come down from Cloud Nine.
Jackie Robinson
If I had been white with the things I did, they would never have allowed me to get out of baseball.
Jackie Robinson
Dadgummit!
Jackie Robinson
[On doing the broad/long jump] You [toe] the line and spring forward with all your strength. Then you jump – you really try to jump off the earth and your legs churn the air like you wanted to reach the moon. Then you come down to earth in soft sand and you have to remember to fall forward so that there are no marks behind the back of your heels.
Jackie Robinson
I got out of that trouble because I was an athlete.
Jackie Robinson
I’m sure if it wasn’t for Joe Louis, the color line in baseball would not have been broken for another ten years.
Jackie Robinson
[On being offered more money to play ball over the border whilst playing for Branch Rickey] I’m not interested. There’s too much at stake here. These people are my friends.
Jackie Robinson
[On Lou Rochelli] Lou was intelligent and he was a thoroughbred.
Jackie Robinson
[In 1946] I did a miserable job. There was an overflow at Ebbets Field. If they expected any miracles out of Robinson, they were sadly disappointed.
Jackie Robinson
I have learned that you can never stop thinking and that all the time you’re in the ball game you have to keep hustling.
Jackie Robinson
I was in two wars, one against a foreign enemy, the other against prejudice at home.
Jackie Robinson
[On his first bat in the International League his palms seemed] Too moist to grip the bat.
Jackie Robinson
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