Jackie Robinson Quotes
120 Jackie Robinson Quotes
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[To his little daughter Sharon] Just put your fingertip in my tea and I won’t need any sugar.
Jackie Robinson
[On signing a standard baseball league contract for an annual salary of $5,000.00] Simple, wasn’t it? It could have happened to you. The telephone rings. You answer it… and you’re in the Big Leagues… Just like a fairy tale… I went to bed one night wearing pajamas and woke up wearing a Brooklyn Dodgers’ uniform.
Jackie Robinson
I wanted to hit him right between the eyes.
Jackie Robinson
There I was the black grandson of a slave, the son of a black sharecropper, part of a historic occasion, a symbolic hero to my people.
Jackie Robinson
The air was sparkling. The sunlight was warm. The band struck up the national anthem. The flag billowed in the wind. It should have been a glorious moment for me as the stirring words of the national anthem poured from the stands. Perhaps it was, but then again perhaps the anthem could be called the theme song for a drama called ‘The Noble Experiment’.
Jackie Robinson
[Written soon after his son passed away in a car accident] I look back on the opening game of my first World Series, I must tell you that it was Mr Rickey’s drama and that I was only a principal actor.
Jackie Robinson
[Written soon after his son passed away in a car accident] As I write this twenty years later, I cannot stand and sing the anthem. I cannot salute the flag. I know that I am a black man in a white world.
Jackie Robinson
[In accepting a plaque in honor of his rookie season in 1972] I wish Branch Rickey could be here.
Jackie Robinson
I am extremely proud and pleased, but I am going to be more pleased the day I… see a black man as a manager.
Jackie Robinson
[On his mother bringing fried chicken and hard-boiled eggs to him just before he boarded a plane to Florida] Aww, mamma, you shouldn’t have brought this. They serve food on the plane.
Jackie Robinson
[In 1945 on beginning the first Negro signed up to play baseball] I realize what I’m getting myself into. I also realize how much it means to me, my race, and baseball.
Jackie Robinson
It ain’t our government but our country.
Jackie Robinson
[On Martin Luther King Jr] I understood Martin’s inner compulsion to speak out against war and for peace. He would have been untrue to himself if he had not taken a stand for the principle in which he so deeply believed.
Jackie Robinson
[On Martin Luther King Jr] He was one of the world’s leading exponents of nonviolence, and it made as much sense to him to oppose wars throughout the world as it did to oppose violence in Montgomery, Selma, and Birmingham
Jackie Robinson
As much as I loved him, I never would have made a good soldier in Martin’s [Luther King Jr] army. My reflexes aren’t conditioned to accept nonviolence in the face of
violence-provoking attacks. My immediate instinct under threat of physical attack
to me or those I love is instant defense and total retaliation.
Jackie Robinson
The knowledge I had acquired about the business world, I considered invaluable…
Jackie Robinson
I was becoming restless; I wanted to involve myself in politics as a means of helping black people and I wanted my own business enterprises.
Jackie Robinson
I had been increasingly convinced of the need for blacks to become more integrated
into the mainstream of the economy. I was not thinking merely of job integration.
A statement Malcolm X made was most impressive. Referring to some college students who were fighting to be served in Jim Crow restaurants, Malcolm said he
wanted not only the cup of coffee but also the cup and saucer, the counter, the store, and the land on which the restaurant stood. I believed blacks ought to become producers, manufacturers, developers, and creators of businesses, providers of jobs.
Jackie Robinson
If you found a black man making shoes or candy or ice cream, he was a rarity. We
talked about not having capital, but we needed to learn to take a chance, to be
daring, to pool capital, to organize our buying power so that the millions we spent
did not leave our communities to be stacked up in downtown banks. In addition to
the economic security we could build with green power, we could use economic
means to reinforce black power. How much more effective our demands for a
piece of the action would be if we were negotiating from the strength or our own
self-reliance rather than stating our case in the role of beggar or someone crying
out for charity.
Jackie Robinson
I became increasingly persuaded that there were two keys to the advancement of
blacks in America -- the ballot and the buck.
Jackie Robinson
[On Rickey’s noble experiment] This player had to be one who could take abuse, name-calling, rejection by fans and sportswriters and by fellow players not only on opposing teams but on his own. He had to be able to stand up in the face of merciless persecution and not retaliate.
Jackie Robinson
[On Rickey’s noble experiment] On the other hand, he had to be a contradiction in human terms; he still had to have spirit.
Jackie Robinson
[More on Branch Rickey’s noble experiment] His ability to turn the other cheek had to be predicated on his determination to gain acceptance. Once having proven his ability as player, teammate, and man, he had to be able to cast off humbleness and stand up as a full-fledged participant whose triumph did not carry the poison of bitterness. Unknown to most people and certainly to me, after launching a major scouting program, Branch Rickey had picked me as that player.
Jackie Robinson
The manhunt had to be camouflaged. If it became known he [Branch Rickey] was looking for a black recruit fro the Dodgers, there would have been all kinds of trouble. The gimmick he used as a coverup was to make the world believe that he was about to establish a new Negro league….
Jackie Robinson
[Branch Rickey] He was accused of trying to uphold segregation and, at the same time, capitalize on black players. Cleverly, Mr Rickey replied that his league would be better organized than the current ones. He said its main purpose, eventually, was to be absorbed into the majors. It is ironic that by coming very close to telling the truth, he was able to conceal that truth from the enemies of integrated baseball.
Jackie Robinson
I will be forever indebted to Wendell [Smith] because, without his even knowing it, his recommendation was in the end partly responsible for my career.
Jackie Robinson
Blacks have had to learn to protect themselves by being cynical but not cynical enough to slam the door on potential opportunities.
Jackie Robinson
We go through life walking a tightrope to prevent too much disillusionment.
Jackie Robinson
[On meeting for the first time Clyde Sukeforth the dodger scout – Branch Rickey’s representative] Here we go again, I thought. Another time-wasting experience. But Sukeforth looked like a sincere person, and I thought I might as well listen.
Jackie Robinson
Branch Rickey was an impressive-looking man. He had a classic face, an air of command, a deep, booming voice, and a way of cutting through red tape and getting down to basics.
Jackie Robinson
[On being asked his first question by Branch Rickey ‘You got a girl?’] It was a heck of a question. I had two reactions: why should he be concerned about my relationship with a girl; and second, while I thought, hoped, and prayed I had a girl, the way things had been going, I was afraid she might have begun to consider me a hopeless case.
Jackie Robinson
[On being told by Branch Rickey that ‘I think you could play in the major leagues. How do you feel about it?’] My reactions seemed like some kind of weird mixture churning in a blender. I was thrilled, scared and excited. I was incredulous. Most of all, I was speechless.
Jackie Robinson
I wasn’t just another athlete being hired by a ball club. We were playing for big stakes. This was the reason Branch Rickey’s search had been so exhaustive. The search had spanned the globe and narrowed down to a few candidates, then finally to me. When it looked as though I might be the number-one choice, the investigation of my life, my habits, my reputation, and my character had become an intensified study.
Jackie Robinson
He [Branch Rickey] had some grim words of warning. ‘We can’t fight our way through this, Robinson. We’ve got no army. There’s virtually nobody on our side. No owners, no umpires, very few newspapermen. And I’m afraid that many fans will be hostile. We’ll be in a tough position. We can win only if we can convince the world that I’m doing this because you’re a great ballplayer and a fine gentlemen.’
Jackie Robinson
If hundreds of black people wanted to come to the ballpark to watch me play and Mr Rickey tried to discourage them, would I understand that he was doing it because the emotional enthusiasm of my people could harm the experiment? That kind of enthusiasm would be as bad as the emotional opposition of prejudiced white fans.
Jackie Robinson
Could I turn the other cheek? I didn’t know how I would do it. Yet I knew that I must. I had to do it for so many reasons. For black youth, for my mother, for Rae, for myself. I had already begun to feel I had to do it for Branch Rickey.
Jackie Robinson
I had become the first black player in the major leagues.
Jackie Robinson
I believe in the goodness of a free society. And I believe that society can remain good only as long as we are willing to fight for it – and to fight against whatever imperfections may exist.
Jackie Robinson
I honestly believe that baseball did set the stage for many things that are happening today, and I’m proud to have played a part in it.
Jackie Robinson
I know now that dreams do come true.
Jackie Robinson
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