Top 72 Quotes About Jackie Robinson
#1. He struck a mighty blow for equality, freedom and the American way of life. Jackie Robinson was a good citizen, a great man, and a true American champion.
Ronald Reagan
#2. Electing Barack Obama president was a glorious Jackie Robinson moment for the United States of America. Obama didn't just win; he became the first Democrat since Jimmy Carter to win a popular-vote majority.
Timothy Noah
#3. Probably the easiest and most efficient approach was to hate everybody. Where have you gone, Jackie Robinson?
Robert B. Parker
#4. Every time I look at my pocketbook, I see Jackie Robinson.
Willie Mays
#5. All though I didn't meet him. His legend and his saga and his story is just that. Jackie Robinson, we all have to tip our hat to him. Because he made the game available to guys like me.
Dave Winfield
#6. Mine was an easy ride compared to Jackie Robinson's.
Sidney Poitier
#7. When I were a young man, I used to play baseball and steal bases just like Jackie Robinson. If the empire would rule me out, I would get mad and hit the empire.
Langston Hughes
#9. He (Jackie Robinson) was the greatest competitor I've ever seen. I've seen him beat a team with his bat, his ball, his glove, his feet and, in a game in Chicago one time, with his mouth.
Duke Snider
#10. If I was the Jackie Robinson of golf, I sure didn't do a very good job of it. Jackie was followed by hundreds of great black ballplayers who have transformed their sport ... But there are hardly any black kids coming up through the ranks of golf today.
Charlie Sifford
#11. Major League Baseball should retire Roberto Clemente's number, just like they did Jackie Robinson's.
Carlos Beltran
#12. Jackie Robinson stole home and he's safe."...Nobody could hurt him again. He wouldn't hear the name-calling. He would only hear the cheers and somehow I could fantasize my own little story about where he was and how he was doing and let him rest in peace.
Ken Burns
#13. I don't plan on writing biographies of great sports stars who are still playing ball. But I did write one on Jackie Robinson, who was playing ball in the 20th century.
David A. Adler
#14. All the courage and competitiveness of Jackie Robinson affects me to this day. If I patterned my life after anyone it was him, not because he was the first black baseball player in the majors but because he was a hero.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
#15. I used to tell Jackie (Robinson) sometimes when they were throwing at him, 'Jackie, they aren't throwing at you because you are black. They are throwing at you because they don't like you.
Pee Wee Reese
#16. There was never a man in the game who could put mind and muscle together quicker and with better judgment than (Jackie) Robinson.
Branch Rickey
#17. I've taken a lot of crap from a lot of people. Probably more than anybody in the history of this sport. I know Hank (Aaron) and Jackie (Robinson) took a good deal of crap, but I guarantee it wasn't for six years. I just keep thinking: How much am I supposed to take?
John Rocker
#18. Some people would view Jackie Robinson as a very safe African-American, a docile figure who had a tendency to try to get along with everyone, and when you look at his history, you learn that he has this fire that allows him to take this punishment but also figure out savvy ways of giving it back.
Chadwick Boseman
#19. Whether your name is (Lou) Gehrig or (Cal) Ripken, (Joe) DiMaggio or (Jackie) Robinson, or that of some youngster who picks up his bat or puts on his glove, you are challenged by the game of baseball to do your very best day in and day out. That's all I've ever tried to do.
Cal Ripken Jr.
#20. Every year we discuss Jackie Robinson Day, which is April 15. We talk about it throughout baseball, promote it throughout baseball.
Curtis Granderson
#21. I jack, I rob, I sin. Aw man, I'm Jackie Robinson 'Cept when I run base, I dodge the pen
Jay-Z
#22. To be compared to Jackie Robinson is an enormous compliment, but I don't think it's necessarily deserved.
Sidney Poitier
#23. After Jackie Robinson the most important black in baseball history is Reggie Jackson, I really mean that.
Reggie Jackson
#24. I liked Jackie Robinson because he was cool to watch, not because he was black. Every time you turned around, he was hitting a triple or making a great play in the field or, best of all, stealing home.
Cheech Marin
#25. As much as I loved Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Junior Gilliam, and Don Newcombe, I loved watching Willie Mays play more than all of them combined, even if he played for the 'bad guys!'
Cheech Marin
#26. A champion, he said, wins a World Series or an Olympic and is hoisted on the shoulders of teammates and fans. A hero carries the people on his shoulders. Champions live for the moment- heroes, like Jackie Robinson, transcend time.
Sharon Robinson
#27. In baseball, there is something electrifying about the big leagues. I had read so much about (Stan) Musial, (Ted) Williams and (Jackie) Robinson. I had put those guys on a pedestal. They were something special. I really thought they put their pants on different, rather than one leg at a time.
Hank Aaron
#28. Jackie Robinson, as an athlete and as someone who was trying to make a stand for equality, he was exemplary.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
#29. This guy don't come to the ballpark to beat you. He comes to beat you bad. This (Jackie) Robinson, he plays a ton.
Leo Durocher
#30. I noticed when I was driving around that they changed the name of the Interborough Parkway to the Jackie Robinson Parkway. And the Interborough family is very upset about this ...
Andy Kindler
#31. The catch off Bobby Morgan
(a backhanded grab of the Brooklyn Dodger's line drive in September 1951 at Ebbets Field) in Brooklyn was the best catch I ever made. Jackie Robinson
and (Giants manager) Leo Durocher
were the first people I saw when I opened my eyes
Willie Mays
#32. It's not every day you get to be in a movie about Jackie Robinson, so you want to do it as right as you can.
Andre Holland
#33. I guess what really made me a Dodgers fan from the beginning was that the team had Jackie Robinson, the first 'Negro' in the major leagues.
Cheech Marin
#34. He (Jackie Robinson) knew he had to do well. He knew that the future of blacks in baseball depended on it. The pressure was enormous, overwhelming, and unbearable at times. I don't know how he held up. I know I never could have.
Duke Snider
#35. I wake the dead. I bring Jackie Robinson and the Roosevelts to life. Who do you think Im trying to wake up?
Ken Burns
#36. Jim Crow was king ... and I heard a game in which Jackie Robinson was playing, and I felt pride in being alive.
Lou Brock
#37. When I went to Brooklyn in 1948 Jackie Robinson was at the height of his brilliant career.
Ernie Harwell
#38. I let my game do the talking. I've had incidents like that but when I compare my own story to the stories that have happened forty or fifty years ago particularly to Jackie Robinson for example.
Maurice Ashley
#39. Robinson was important to all blacks. To make it into the majors and to take all the name calling, he had to be something special. He had to take all this for years, not just for Jackie Robinson, but for the nation.
Willie Mays
#40. Some day I'm going to have to stand before God, and if He asks me why I didn't let that [Jackie] Robinson fellow play ball, I don't think saying 'because of the color of his skin' would be a good enough answer.
Branch Rickey
#41. 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.
Jackie Robinson
#42. I'm not concerned with your liking or disliking me. All I ask is that you respect me as a human being.
Jackie Robinson
#45. Baseball, like some other sports, poses as a sacred institution dedicated to the public good, but it is actually a big, selfish business with a ruthlessness that many big businesses would never think of displaying.
Jackie Robinson
#47. I know that I am a black man in a white world ... I know that I never had it made.
Jackie Robinson
#48. A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.
Jackie Robinson
#50. 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.
Jackie Robinson
#51. I am not concerned with being liked or disliked. I am concerned with being respected
Jackie Robinson
#53. A life isn't significant except for its impact on other lives.
Jackie Robinson
#54. At the beginning of the World Series of 1947, I experienced a completely new emotion when the National Anthem was played. This time, I thought, it is being played for me, as much as for anyone else.
Jackie Robinson
#55. How you played in yesterday's game is all that counts.
Jackie Robinson
#58. Next time I go to a movie and see a picture of a little ordinary girl become a great star ... I'll believe it. And whenever I hear my wife read fairy tales to my little boy, I'll listen. I know now that dreams do come true.
Jackie Robinson
#59. The right of every American to first-class citizenship is the most important issue of our time.
Jackie Robinson
#60. Baseball is like a poker game. Nobody wants to quit when he's losing; nobody wants you to quit when you're ahead.
Jackie Robinson
#61. There's not an American in this country free until every one of us is free.
Jackie Robinson
#62. 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.
Jackie Robinson
#63. The many of us who attain what we may and forget those who help us along the line we've got to remember that there are so many others to pull along the way. The farther they go, the further we all go.
Jackie Robinson
#64. Pop flies, in a sense, are just a diversion for a second baseman. Grounders are his stock trade.
Jackie Robinson
#65. The most luxurious possession, the richest treasure anybody has, is his personal dignity.
Jackie Robinson
#67. I don't think that I or any other Negro, as an American citizen, should have to ask for anything that is rightfully his. We are demanding that we just be given the things that are rightfully ours and that we're not looking for anything else.
Jackie Robinson
#69. When he (Richard Nixon) took the oath of office, he pledged to be the president for 100% of the people, and I challenge the president to prove that he is being the president for 100% of the people.
Jackie Robinson
#70. I never cared about acceptance as much as I cared about respect.
Jackie Robinson
#71. 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.
Jackie Robinson
#72. If I had to choose between baseball's Hall of Fame and first class citizenship for all of my people. I would say first-class citizenship.
Jackie Robinson
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