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.

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.

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.

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.

Stop trying to make a living and begin to live

How quickly someone else's life can enter through the cracks we don't know are there until this foreign thing is inside of us. We are more porous than we know.

There is a big difference between a tree and a wood! There is a big difference between a thinking society and an unthinking society!

The eternal struggle in the law between constancy and change is largely a struggle between history and reason, between past reason and present needs.

The things that prey on my mind in London seem to disappear as soon as I find myself in a different environment. Survival mode kicks in.

I still believe that the university is a place where people can develop their minds and learn skills, but also they can develop their personalities and their spiritual life.

I want to show America who I am and inspire young kids.

No labor is hopeless.

Explore an idea until you've exhausted it, really go to all the different parameters of it.

There are definitely some stories worth telling and I think there's something to be said for telling your story.