Arthur Ashe Quotes
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It doesn't have to glitter to be gold.
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I have tried to keep on with my striving because this is the only hope I have of ever achieving anything worthwhile and lasting.
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I'm waiting for the alarm clock to go off and I'm going to wake up, ... I can't believe how well things are going. This is a dream come true.
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A couple of times a day I sit quietly and visualize my body fighting the AIDS virus. It's the same as me sitting and seeing myself hit the perfect serve. I did that often when I was an athlete.
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Start where you are, use what you have.
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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.
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Martina's like the old Green Bay Packers. You know exactly what she's going to do, but there isn't a thing you can do about it.
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Always have the situation under control, even if losing. Never betray an inward sense of defeat.
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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.
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Trust has to be earned, and should come only after the passage of time.
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You really are never playing an opponent. You are playing yourself.
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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.
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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.
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What it is controlled cool, in a way. Always have the situation under control, even if losing. Never betray an inward sense of defeat.
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I have become convinced that we blacks spend too much time on the playing field and too little time in libraries.
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My potential is more than can be expressed within the bounds of my race or ethnic identity.
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Fear isn't an excuse to come to a standstill. It's the impetus to step up and strike.
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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.
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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.
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If I were to say, 'God, why me?' about the bad things, then I should have said, 'God, why me?' about the good things that happened in my life.
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...I spent many, many hours in...libraries. Libraries became courts of last resort, as it were.
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Every time you win, it diminishes the fear a little bit. You never really cancel the fear of losing; you keep challenging it.
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The ideal attitude is to be physically loose and mentally tight.
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With what we give, we make a life.