Arthur Ashe Quotes - Page 2

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

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

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.

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

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 always drawn strength from being close to home.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Someone once told me that God figured that I was a pretty good juggler. I could keep a lot of balls in the air at one time. So He said, "Let's see if he can juggle another one."

There is a syndrome in sports called 'paralysis by analysis.'

It doesn't have to glitter to be gold.

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

I wish more of us could understand that our increasing isolation, no matter how much it seems to express pride and self-affirmation, is not the answer to our problems. Rather, the answer is a revival of our ancient commitment to God, who rules over all the peoples of the world and exalts no one over any other, and to the moral and spiritual values which were once legendary in America. We must reach out our hand in friendship both to those who would befriend us and those who would be our enemy.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.