Top 30 Jackie Robinson Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.”

— Jackie Robinson

Featured in: Changing the World Quotes, Quotes About Humanity, Caring Quotes, Quotes About People, Basketball Quotes

2. “Life is not a spectator sport.”

— Jackie Robinson

3. “I am not concerned with being liked or disliked. I am concerned with being respected.”

— Jackie Robinson

4. “I never cared about acceptance as much as I cared about respect.”

— Jackie Robinson

5. “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.”

— Jackie Robinson

6. “This ain’t fun. But you watch me, I’ll get it done.”

— Jackie Robinson

7. “I don’t think it matters what I believe, only what I do.”

— Jackie Robinson

8. “A life isn’t significant except for its impact on other lives.”

— Jackie Robinson

9. “The most luxurious possession, the richest treasure anybody has, is his personal dignity.”

— Jackie Robinson

10. “There’s not an American in this country free until every one of us is free.”

— Jackie Robinson

11. “The way I figured it, I was even with baseball and baseball with me. The game had done much for me, and I had done much for it.”

— Jackie Robinson

Featured in: Baseball Quotes

12. “Baseball is like a poker game. Nobody wants to quit when he’s losing; nobody wants you to quit when you’re ahead.”

— Jackie Robinson

13. “If I had to choose between baseball’s Hall of Fame and first class citizenship for all of my people. I would say first-class citizenship.”

— Jackie Robinson

14. “You’re going to be a great player, kid.”

— Jackie Robinson

15. “The right of every American to first-class citizenship is the most important issue of our time.”

— Jackie Robinson

16. “Above anything else, I hate to lose.”

— Jackie Robinson

17. “It kills me to lose. If I’m a troublemaker, and I don’t think that my temper makes me one, then it’s because I can’t stand losing. That’s the way I am about winning, all I ever wanted to do was finish first.”

— Jackie Robinson

18. “At the beginning of the World Series of 1947, I experienced a completely new emotion when the National Anthem was played. This time, I thought, it is being played for me, as much as for anyone else.”

— Jackie Robinson

19. “How you played in yesterday’s game is all that counts.”

— Jackie Robinson

20. “I don’t like needing anyone for anything.”

— Jackie Robinson

21. “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.”

— Jackie Robinson

22. “Relationships may change throughout the gift of time, memories stay the same forever in my mind.”

— Jackie Robinson

23. “I ought to break this trophy into 32 pieces.”

— Jackie Robinson

24. “I don’t let my mouth say nothin’ my head can’t stand.”

— Jackie Robinson

25. “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.”

— Jackie Robinson

26. “It isn’t a perfect America and it isn’t run right, but it still belongs to us. As.”

— Jackie Robinson

27. “Pop flies, in a sense, are just a diversion for a second baseman. Grounders are his stock trade.”

— Jackie Robinson

28. “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.”

— Jackie Robinson

29. “It’s not easy to be a martyr in the field of race relations.”

— Jackie Robinson

30. “I guess you’d call me an independent, since I’ve never identified myself with one party or another in politics. I always decide my vote by taking as careful a look as I can at the actual candidates and issues themselves, no matter what the party label.”

— Jackie Robinson

31. “Baseball, like some other sports, poses as a sacred institution dedicated to the public good, but it is actually a big, selfish business with a ruthlessness that many big businesses would never think of displaying.”

— Jackie Robinson

32. “If Jesus ever had PMS, he totally would have sinned.”

— Jackie Robinson

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

— Jackie Robinson