I played seven years without ever hitting the ball.

It's unbelievable how much you don't know about the game you've been playing all your life.

A team is where a boy can prove his courage on his own. A gang is where a coward goes to hide.

Somebody once asked me if I ever went up to the plate trying to hit a home run. I said, 'Sure, every time.'

I leaned on him for support when I got out of the cab, and he just crumpled to the ground. That's how we found out.

After I hit a home run I had a habit of running the bases with my head down. I figured the pitcher already felt bad enough without me showing him up rounding the bases.

If I had played my career hitting singles like Pete (Rose), I'd wear a dress.

I thought I raised a ballplayer. You're nothing but a coward and a quitter.

You never have to wait long, or look far, to be reminded of how thin the line is between being a hero or a goat.

Well, baseball was my whole life. Nothing's ever been as fun as baseball.

I've often wondered how a man who knew he was going to die could stand here and say he was the luckiest man on the face of the earth, but now I guess I know how he felt.

Sam gave Captain Suicide a droll stare. "How did you die again? Oh wait, I know this. 'I can take 'em. I don't need to wait for reinforcements. I can do it myself.' How'd that work out for you again?

What a man knows at fifty that he did not know at twenty is, for the most part, incommunicable.

Art is far feebler than necessity.

Education is, quite simply, peace-building by another name. It is the most effective form of defense spending there is.

How could you be a Great Man if history brought you no Great Events, or brought you to them at the wrong time, too young, too old?

It's not about who's got powers, morons. It's about who's not afraid. And who's going to do what has to be done.

Fighting is not physical, fighting is spiritual. It's the determination and the will in the guy.

i laced my shoes with sorrow and walked a weary road dead end streets don't come undone with double knots wing tipped shoes that walk on air through vacant lots

I think I always enjoyed the energy of a crowd, of being onstage. It started when I was even younger doing public speaking at school and just kept going from there.