Quotes from Jackie Robinson

on Staten Island. The

I don't like needing anyone for anything.

I don't let my mouth say nothin' my head can't stand

Yell. Heckle. Do anything you want. We came here to play baseball.

A life has no importance except in the impact it has on other lives

I'm grateful for all the breaks and honors and opportunities I've had, but I always believe I won't have it made until the humblest black kid in the most remote backwoods of America has it made.

It isn't a perfect America and it isn't run right, but it still belongs to us. As

A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives

became a swellhead, a wise guy, an "uppity" nigger. When a white player did it, he had spirit. When a black player did it, he was "ungrateful," an upstart, a

There was a popular saying once that in the North the white man didn't care how close the black man came if he didn't climb too high, and in the South the white man didn't care how high the black man climbed if he didn't come too close.

XIX The Influence of Martin Luther King, Jr.

United States—and unfairly, I feel—the greatest purveyor of violence on earth.