African Americans

"(After kicking an extra point in a Bengals preseason game) Esteban' Ochocinco is back, the most interesting footballer in the world. Everyone has to remember, I've always said that soccer is my No. 1 sport. I think Ronaldinho would be proud of me right now."

"There are two things for Brother Harris this week. The bad thing is, he has to cover me. The good is he can save 15 percent by switching his auto insurance to Geico."

"It was this penchant for power hitting to the "wrong" field that caused Stan Musial to describe Aaron as an "arrogant" hitter. "He thinks there's nothing he can't hit,' says Musial. "He'll have to learn there are some pitches no hitter can afford to go for. He still has something to learn about the strike zone.""

"It worked out just right. I've had to try to catch Aaron virtually all my career. But he's the home run king, so that means he's the cleanup hitter. That means I got into the Hall of Fame before he did."

"Aaron is the only man in baseball who can fall asleep between pitches, then wake up and knock the next one out of the park."

"There were now men on first and second. The batter was Henry Aaron. I walked him on four straight balls, which was probably the smartest thing I did all year. There have been many times since when I wished I had been wild enough to walk Henry Aaron. I'm usually backing up third as I am wishing it."

"Sure, Henry Aaron has a hitting weakness. It's a pitch with something on it right across the letters and in close. But that's the batting weakness of every great hitter, regardless of what else he can or can't hit."

"I would have to say myself, but it would not look good for me to say it. I just have confidence I am the best because I believe in myself. If I had to pick another player, it would be Hank Aaron. He does everything so well."

"Sure, Aaron's a bad-ball hitter and always will be, but it would be a mistake to try to change him. Clemente got only 13 bases on balls all last season, so this spring we tried to get him to look over the pitches more carefully. He got to taking strikes and got himself so fouled up generally that we told him to forget the whole thing and go back to doing what comes naturally. You don't try to change a hitter like Aaron. In my book he's a better hitter than Willie Mays. He's going to get better, too. He'll be the one to beat for the batting championship for ten years, maybe more. He's the first N.L. player since Bill Terry with something better than an outside chance to hit .400 before he's through."

"In the decades to come, the memory of the scene might blur. But the memory of the sound will remain with everyone who was here. Not the sound of the cheers, or the sound of Henry Aaron saying "I'm thankful to God it's all over," but the sound of Henry Aaron's bat when it hit the baseball tonight... At home plate, surrounded by an ovation that came down around him as if it were a waterfall of appreciation, he was met by his teammates who attempted to lift him onto their shoulders. But he slipped off into the arms of his father Herbert Sr., and his mother Estella, who had hurried out of the special box for the Aaron family near the Braves' dugout. "I never knew," Aaron would say later," that my mother could hug so tight.""

"Guessing what the pitcher is going to throw is 80 percent of being a successful hitter. The other 20 percent is just execution. The mental aspects of hitting were especially important to me. I was strictly a guess hitter, which meant I had to have a thorough knowledge of every pitcher I came up against and develop a strategy for hitting him. My method was to identify the pitches a certain pitcher had and eliminate all but one or two and then wait for them. One advantage I had was quick wrists. Another advantage — and one that all good hitters have — was my eyesight. Sometimes I could read the pitcher's grip on the ball before he ever released it and be able to tell what pitch he was throwing. I never worried about the fastball. They couldn't throw it past me, none of them."

"The way I see it, it's a great thing to be the man who hit the most home runs, but it's a greater thing to be the man who did the most with the home runs he hit. So as long as there's a chance that maybe I can hammer out a little justice now and then, or a little opportunity here and there, I intend to do as I always have — keep swinging."

"When he was healthy, there was nobody better than Campanella as both a catcher and a hitter. But I played with Del Crandall a long time and he was a match for anybody defensively."

"There wasn't any pitcher I felt I couldn't get a hit off."

"I'm not trying to make anyone forget the Babe; but only to remember Hank Aaron."

"Terrible. It took me 17 years to get three thousand hits in baseball. I did it in one afternoon on the golf course."

"He was my favorite hitter. He could do almost anything he wanted to do at bat. He was a scientific hitter. I've seen him deliberately go for the home run late in a game and get it. Even if it meant pulling an outside pitch, he'd pull because he'd made up his mind to do it. Another thing I liked about him was the power he generated when he hit the ball between the infielders. This is a sure sign of a great hitter."

"Hello, Stonefingers."

"[W]hen I was a little boy, my daddy said to me, "Henry, never hurry unless you have to." I've remembered that all my life and here I am in the major leagues."

"Didn't come up here to read. Came up here to hit."

"I like those lefties, but when you're hitting, all pitchers look alike. I don't care too much who's throwing or what he throws. When my timing is off, I have trouble; when it ain't, I don't."

"I never smile when I have a bat in my hands. That's when you've got to be serious. When I get out on the field, nothing's a joke to me. I don't feel like I should walk around with a smile on my face."

"But I think people, especially white people, have to come to understand that the language of the ghetto is a language of its own, and as the party- whose members for the most part come from the ghetto- seeks to talk to the people, it must speak the people's language."

"When we use the term pig, for example, we are referring to the people who systematically violate the peoples' constitutional rights- whether they be monopoly capitalists or police. The term is now being adopted by radicals, hippies, and minority peoples. Even the workers, when the pigs supported strike-breakers like they did as Union Oil where 100 local police came in a cracked strikers' heads, began to call them by their true name."

"We're hip to the fact that Superman never saved no black people. You got that?"

"I still want my right to defend myself. A railroad operation, and you know it, from Nixon on down. they got you running around violating my constitutional rights."

"The only solution to pollution is a people's humane revolution."

"I really don't think the government practically cares whether it is right or wrong or even if it can win the case. I think the whole attempt is to simply grind you down, a process of harassment and intimidation, a process of tying up peoples' energies and money so that nothing can be done…Like the case of Bobby Seale. His years in prison can't be returned. Still he is a man under a stigma. The whole adventure was so ambivalent so that there has to be a doubt left in the public mind-which is the point."

"Racism and ethnic differences allow the power structure to exploit the masses of workers in this country, because that's the key by which they maintain their control. To divide the people and conquer them is the objective of the power structure. It's the ruling class, the very small minority, the few avaricious, demagogic hogs and rats who control and infest the government. The ruling class and their running dogs, their lackeys, their bootlickers, their Toms and their black racists, their cultural nationalists - they're all the running dogs of the ruling class. These are the ones who help to maintain and aid the power structure by perpetuating their racist attitudes and using racism as a means to divide the people. But it's really the small, minority ruling class that is dominating, exploiting, and oppressing the working and laboring people."

"All I did in Chicago was to exercise my legal right to speak on my own behalf and I was given four years in jail as a result. But I think the most serious injustice perpetrated by the court system in America is the inability of a black man to get a jury of his peers."

"I love to play bid whist as much as I love football."

"In order to achieve great things in your life, you have to be consistent in what you are doing."

"Your biggest fear is the transition from football to business. You feel inferior at the beginning. You don't have the knowledge to compete. But once you start focusing and understanding, then you start relating to things."

"What I accomplished definitely wasn't achieved by myself. Without others, none of this would have been possible."

"History has never seen Emmitt Smith. I don't care what has come before me. That's why they call it history you create new history."

"He's got great balance and great vision, and Emmitt has earned his starting spot."

"Emmitt Smith is in a position, in my opinion, where he should be the highest-paid running back in football. He's a guy who has gone out and led the league in rushing and been productive."

"Emmitt Smith is someone that I have great respect for - as a player, a competitor and a person. His contributions to the organization and the NFL speak for themselves."

"We've got a lot of young guys. A lot of good, young guys. But young guys can go out there and learn how to win quickly. I feel good about the guys behind me. I know that if I'm not in there, they'll do just as well as me."

"Football is a team sport, and there is no one individual who is bigger than the next person."

"It's nice to know that people are paying attention to you on the other side of the ball, but it's also kind of sad because you feel like you're a man that's being hunted down by some vicious animal. I feel they're going to come after me and do whatever they can to shut down the run, and that makes a difference with me in going out and doing my job."

"My idea, my dream, my goal, is to go out and legitimize this sport and compete at the Olympic Games with my peers in the football arena."

"I got the rebound and he tackled me. I know this is Sunday, but this is the wrong field."

"Optics is an example of the different ways a human is able to see things in the world. The same goes for the color of a person's skin and even though optics present that there are differences in color, these do not state that they should necessarily be treated as different."

"You come to Paris, you get true originality, and it's wonderful."

"Most of the Vogue girls are so thin, tremendously thin, because Miss Anna don't like fat people."

"I'm sick of playing all of these games It's not about taking ties."

"It's not bad to wear a promise ring, because not everybody, guy or girl, wants to be a slut," explained Jordin Sparks-- during Sunday's VMA show in response to jokes made by host Russell Brand about chastity."

"You're still a part of everything I do, you're on my heart just like a tattoo, Just like a tattoo, I'll always have you."

"I can't waste time so give me the moment I realize nothing's broken No need to worry about everything I've done Lived every second like it was my last one."