Quotes from Colin Kaepernick

I never felt that I was supposed to be white. Or black, either. My parents just wanted to let me be who I needed to be.

The NFL is a performance-based business, so you should have to perform to earn some of your money. At the same time, I realize that my success isn't just because of what I do out there.

If intimidation is your game plan, I hope you have a better one.

Most people don't want to change. They're comfortable and set in their ways. But in order to change, you have to be able to agitate people at times. And I think that's something that's very necessary for us to improve as a country.

I'm here to play football.

I don't look at film that closely about my mechanics of where's my elbow at.

I have a very high expectation for everything I do. And when I go out and compete, I expect myself to make every play.

You have to take care of the ball to win football games.

People can talk all they want; that doesn't affect how I go about my business.

I have great respect for the religion. I know a lot of people that are Muslim and are phenomenal people.

I never weighed myself when I was at my lightest because I didn't want to know.

I don't believe in pressure. The pressure is not being prepared for what you want to do.

I think, between the tattoos, the way I dress, the way I talk, people don't think it should go together with a franchise quarterback or someone that's leading the team or representing the organization.

To me, tattoos are a way of people being able to express themselves and have other people look at them and get a little insight into who they are, without ever even saying a word to them.

All my tattoos, they've been thought out, thought over, been a work in progress for at least a year before I've got them. So I'm not walking into a tattoo shop, picking tattoos off a wall. It's something that means something to me. It's something that I believe in.

I've had times where one of my roommates was moving out of the house in college, and because we were the only black people in that neighborhood, the cops got called, and we had guns drawn on us. Came in the house, without knocking, guns drawn on my teammates and roommates. So I have experienced this.

I have great teammates around me who make plays.

The support I've gotten from my teammates has been great.

Teammates tell me to bring it down a notch in practice or that their hands are hurting. Randy Moss told me I was the first person to ever dislocate one of his fingers.

This stand wasn't because I feel like I'm being put down in any kind of way. This is because I'm seeing things happen to people that don't have a voice: people that don't have a platform to talk and have their voices heard and affect change. So I'm in the position where I can do that, and I'm going to do that for people that can't.

Nobody cares if you're black, white, straight, gay, Christian, Jewish, whatever it may be. When you step on that field, you're a member, in my case, the 49ers. That's your job, your occupation.

To try to prey on athletes' livelihoods while one is going through a tough time is embarrassing to me.

I think that's something that's hard for this country to address, is what the real issues are and coming to the point where we can admit that these are issues. Once we admit that, we can deal with it, we can fix them, and we can make this country and these communities a better place.

If I got a football scholarship, I was going to be a football player.