Tennis Player Quotes

“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.”

“The ideal attitude is to be physically loose and mentally tight.”

“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.”

“...I spent many, many hours in...libraries. Libraries became courts of last resort, as it were.”

“Success is a journey, not a destination. The doing is often more important than the outcome.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“Later, I discovered there was a lot of work to being good in tennis.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“It is not just the more talented player who wins. Some players may try a little harder.”

“Clothes and manners do not make the man; but when he is made, they greatly improve his appearance.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“If one's reputation is a possession, then of all my possessions, my reputation means most to me.”

“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.”

“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.”

“A wise person decides slowly but abides by these decisions.”