Arthur Ashe Quotes
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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.
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I'm very happy for him. . . . He was heartbroken here once, ... But that's all over now. I told him he had to face these things in life . . . to make a man of himself.
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It doesn't have to glitter to be gold.
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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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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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When bright young minds can't afford college, America pays the price.
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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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Clothes and manners do not make the...
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From what we get, we can make a living; what we give, however, makes a life.
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There is a terrific apprehension among some people that blacks will take over the sport... It will create problems because their behavior, speech and dress is just a completely different culture.
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Always have the situation under control, even if losing. Never betray an inward sense of defeat.
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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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If I didn't play tennis I probably would have to see a psychiatrist.
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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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You really are never playing an opponent. You are playing yourself.
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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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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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...I spent many, many hours in...libraries. Libraries became courts of last resort, as it were.
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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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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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The ideal attitude is to be physically loose and mentally tight.
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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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With what we give, we make a life.
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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.