“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.”

“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.”

“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 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 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'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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“The most luxurious possession, the richest treasure anybody has, is his personal dignity.”

“The old Dodgers were something special, but of my teammates overall, there was nobody like Pee Wee Reese for me.”

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

“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.”

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

“This ain't fun. But you watch me, I'll get it done.”

“When I look back at what I had to go through in black baseball, I can only marvel at the many black players who stuck it out for years in the Jim Crow leagues because they had nowhere else to go.”