“Don’t complain. Just work harder.” – Jackie Robinson
47 Jackie Robinson Quotes
- “A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives”
2. “The most luxurious possession, the richest treasure anybody has, is his personal dignity.”
3. “We’re in a real crisis situation where many times people are being turned away at the door.”
4. “A life has no importance except in the impact it has on other lives”
5. “Blacks have had to learn to protect themselves by being cynical but not cynical enough to slam the door on potential opportunities.”
6. “Don’t complain. Just work harder.”
7. “Above anything else, I hate to lose.”
8. “I cannot possibly believe that I have it made while so many black brothers and sisters are hungry, inadequately housed, insufficiently clothed, denied their dignity as they live in slums or barely exist on welfare.”
9. “I don’t think it matters what I believe, only what I do.”
10. “We have a social responsibility and we are held to a higher standard than other institutions.”
11. “I don’t let my mouth say nothin’ my head can’t stand”
12. “No matter how much or how little I knew technically, I was able to get the best out of people I worked with.”
Jackie Robinson Quotes About Life
13. “I don’t let my mouth say nothin’ my head can’t stand.”
14. “A life isn’t significant except for its impact on other lives.”
15. “How you played in yesterday’s game is all that counts.”
16. “During my life, I have had a few nightmares which happened to me while I was wide awake.”
17. “I don’t like needing anyone for anything.”
18. “This ain’t fun. But you watch me, I’ll get it done.”
19. “The way I am about winning, all I ever wanted to do was finish first.”
20. “I want everybody to understand that I am an American Negro first before I am a member of any political party.”
21. “I’d get mad. But I’d never let them know it.”
22. “Baseball is like a poker game. Nobody wants to quit when he’s losing; nobody wants you to quit when you’re ahead.”
23. “In my opinion, baseball is as big a business as anything there is. It has to be a business, the way it is conducted.”
24. “I had to fight hard against loneliness, abuse, and the knowledge that any mistakes I made would be magnified because I was the only black man out there… I never cared about acceptance as much as I cared about respect.”
Famous Quotes From Jackie Robinson
25. “I’m not concerned with your liking or disliking me. All I ask is that you respect me as a human being.”
26. “A life isn’t significant except for its impact on other lives.”
27. “There’s nothing like faith in God.”
28. “It would make everything I worked for meaningless if baseball is integrated but political parties were segregated.”
27. “After two years at UCLA, I decided to leave. I was convinced that no amount of education would help a black man get a job.”
28. “I cannot stand and sing the Anthem. I cannot salute the flag; I know that I am a black man in a white world.”
29. “Many people resented my impatience and honesty, but I never cared about acceptance as much as I cared about respect.”
30. “The right of every American to first-class citizenship is the most important issue of our time.”
31. “If I had been white with the things I did, they never would have allowed me to get out of baseball.”
32. “No matter how much or how little I knew technically, I was able to get the best out of people I worked with.”
33. “It’s not easy to be a martyr in the field of race relations.”
34. “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.
35. “We are demanding that we just be given the things that are rightfully ours and that we’re not looking for anything else.”
36. “Relationships may change throughout the gift of time, memories stay the same forever in my mind.”
Jackie Robinson Inspirational Quotes
37. “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.”
38. “There’s not an American in this country free until every one of us is free.”
39. “But as I write these words now I cannot stand and sing the National Anthem. I have learned that I remain a black in a white world.”
40. “God built me to last.”
41. “The colonel replied that he didn’t care how my men had got the job done. He was happy that it had been accomplished. He said that, obviously, no matter how much or how little I knew technically, I was able to get the best out of people I worked with.”
42. “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.”
43. “In all my years of baseball, I have always expected to be traded. I never liked the idea.”
44. “I do believe that what I was able to attain came to be because we put behind us the dogmas of the past: to discover the truth of today; and perhaps the greatness of tomorrow.”
45. “I was naïve about the elaborate lengths to which racists in the Armed Forces would go to put a vocal black man in his place.”
46. “Plenty of times I wanted to haul off when somebody insulted me for the color of my skin, but I had to hold to myself. I knew I was kind of an experiment. The whole thing was bigger than me.”
47. “Blacks have had to learn to protect themselves by being cynical but not cynical enough to slam the door on potential opportunities. We go through life walking a tightrope to prevent too much disillusionment.”
Additional Read: Jackie Robinson was an American professional baseball player, became the first African American to play in Major League Baseball (MLB) in the modern era. When Robinson began playing first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947, he broke the color barrier in baseball. Black players had been relegated to the Negro leagues since the 1880s, so when the Dodgers signed Robinson, it signaled the end of racial segregation in professional baseball. In 1962, Robinson was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.