In sports, you simply aren't considered a real champion until you have defended your title successfully. Winning it once can be a fluke; winning it twice proves you are the best.

Being champion is all well and good, but you can't eat a crown.

In the field of sports you are more or less accepted for what you do rather than what you are.

No matter what accomplishments you make, somebody helped you.

Shaking hands with the Queen of England was a long way from being forced to sit in the colored section of the bus going into downtown Wilmington, North Carolina.

I hope that I have accomplished just one thing: that I have been a credit to tennis and my country.

I don't want to be put on a pedestal. I just want to be reasonably successful and live a normal life with all the conveniences to make it so.

Most of us who aspire to be tops in our fields don't really consider the amount of work required to stay tops.

I was nervous and confident at the same, nervous about going out there in front of all those people, with so much at stake, and confident that I was going to go out there and win.

Winning once can be a fluke; winning twice proves you are the best.

I think I've already got the main thing I've always wanted, which is to be somebody, to have an identify. I'm Althea Gibson, the tennis champion. I hope it makes me happy.

Greatness rarely comes easy.

Our greatest opportunities are to let go and surrender to that which is greater than our egoistic needs and desires.

I wish I could learn that just three drinks is enough, but I have not learned that.

I'm very protective of how much I let people see.

How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to.

I believe in gender equality and I love that I can represent strong modern-day women.

Yet still there whispers the small voice within, Heard through Gain's silence, and o'er Glory's din; Whatever creed be taught or land be trod, Man's conscience is the oracle of God.

When we walk in the sun our shadows are like barges of silence.

Truth and reason are eternal. They have prevailed. And they will eternally prevail; however, in times and places they may be overborne for a while by violence, military, civil, or ecclesiastical.