When we played softball, I’d steal second base, feel guilty and go back.

The game of golf would lose a great deal if croquet mallets and billiard cues were allowed on the putting green.

When I looked at the third base coach, he turned his back on me.

Phil Niekro and his brother were pitching against each other in Atlanta. Their parents were sitting right behind home plate. I saw their folks more that day than they did the whole weekend.

I’ve always been an unselfish guy, and that’s the only way I know how to play on the court and I try to play to the maximum of my ability – not only for myself but for my teammates.

A lot of people tell me a lot of things about my conduct, my game, my future… but I try to stay away from their words of wisdom. I don’t let it distract me. On the field, you will be facing the ball alone. If you fail, you will the only one to blame. So, you should be the one deciding for yourself.

Sonny Liston is nothing. The man can’t talk. The man can’t fight. The man needs talking lessons. The man needs boxing lessons. And since he’s gonna fight me, he needs falling lessons.

WIth football you can have up to 28 guys you consider starters, and if they can pick up the slack when some aren’t playing so well, you don’t have to turn those two game losing streaks into six-game losing streaks.

It’s the philosophies of being an athlete that carry me today.

Losing is not an option in Kolkata. It’s not easy, a lot of players even quit.

I don’t have time to be lonely. And I get fearful of relationships because I feel guilty about wanting someone to be completely faithful and loyal, when I can’t even give them 10 percent of the attention that they need. It’s just the reality of my time, my life, my schedule.

To be honest, there are no problems between me and Messi. People have their own opinions about who they think is the better player. It is what it is, but there is no rivalry beyond games and what happens on the pitch.

It is better to risk saving a guilty man than to condemn an innocent one.

Keeping score is for games, not friendships.

The nice thing is that when people come up to me, it’s the football they remember, not all the other rubbish.

I feel like I want to take care of everyone and I also feel this terrible guilt if I am unable to. And I have felt this way ever since all this success started.

Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.

A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession.

I used to dream about taking the ball ‚round the keeper, stopping it on the line, and then getting on my hands and knees and heading it into the net. When I scored against Benfica in the 1968 European Cup final, I nearly did it. I left the keeper for dead, but then I chickened out.

I used to tease Joe Louis by reminding him that I was the greatest of all time. But Joe Louis was the greatest heavyweight fighter ever.

That’s what you live for as a sportsman. You have to put up a fight.

The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don’t play together, the club won’t be worth a dime.

I was a very shy character, always feeling uncomfortable because everybody was stronger than I, and always afraid I would look like a sissy. Everybody else played baseball; everybody else did all kinds of athletic things.

Some people feel guilty about their anxieties and regard them as a defect of faith but they are afflictions, not sins. Like all afflictions, they are, if we can so take them, our share in the passion of Christ.

I refuse to feel guilty. I feel guilty about too much in my life but not about money. I went through periods when I had nothing, so somebody in my family has to get stinkin‘ wealthy.

One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.

I believe many people feel like God is mad at them.

If I do the right things on and off the field that’s how a player is going to learn.

I think that at the start of a game, you’re always playing to win, and then maybe if you’re ahead late in the game, you start playing not to lose. The true competitors, though, are the ones who always play to win.

I know what I do for my team and what my teammates expect of me on both ends of the floor.

I like the celebrations when I see my teammates do it, when I see fellow footballers on the international scene do it. I think it looks good, it suits most of them, if you know what to do, synchronise, then do it.

In law a man is guilty when he violates the rights of others. In ethics he is guilty if he only thinks of doing so.

Before broadcasting for 50-some years, I did TV, played 10 years in the big leagues, won a world championship – and played a big part in that, too, letting the Cardinals inject me with hepatitis. Takes a big man to do that.

I have never smuggled anything in my life. Why, then, do I feel an uneasy sense of guilt on approaching a customs barrier?

Obviously everybody, if you’re playing in the league, you’ve got to have somewhat of an ego about how you play the game.

Sometimes you can’t prioritise family and you feel guilty.

I always bring out the best in men I fight, but Joe Frazier, I’ll tell the world right now, brings out the best in me. I’m gonna tell ya, that’s one helluva man, and God bless him.

The true competitors, though, are the ones who always play to win.

Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.

Some people take defeat and losses a certain way. You see how some fighters take losses.

You must keep raising this game to higher and higher levels, as on the pool table – mastering eventually the psychological angles. Your playing is a pleasure, all the way to the end, to death, when the game is over.

Let’s face it. Umpiring is not an easy or happy way to make a living. In the abuse they suffer, and the pay they get for it, you see an imbalance that can only be explained by their need to stay close to a game they can’t resist.

Even the best and biggest teams in the world do not reach finals of tournaments.

Believe me, I’m much easier to be around when we win than when we lose.

The way to catch a knuckleball is to wait until it stops rolling and then pick it up.

Any top-level athlete, it’s always the same. There’s always that hint of arrogance there… It’s hard to be humble when you’re the best.

Once you get on the playing field it’s not about whether you’re liked or not liked. All that matters is to play at a high level and do whatever it takes to help your team win. That’s what it’s about.

A lot of guys are able to separate how they act off the court versus how they act on the court.

It is a hard thing to let go of mistakes we’ve made and sins. God wants us to do that because He knows the guilt and the condemnation will keep us from becoming who He has created us to be.

Rather leave the crime of the guilty unpunished than condemn the innocent.

Endorsements are a reward for good performance on the field, and the commitments made after signing them need to be done.

To make America the greatest is my goal, so I beat the Russian and I beat the Pole. And for the U.S.A. won the medal of gold. The Greeks said, ‚You’re better than the Cassius of old.‘

Baseball hasn’t forgotten me. I go to a lot of old-timers games and I haven’t lost a thing. I sit in the bullpen and let people throw things at me. Just like old times.

I didn’t mean to hit the umpire with the dirt, but I did mean to hit that bastard in the stands.

I hate letting my teammates down. I know I’m not going to make every shot. Sometimes I try to make the right play, and if it results in a loss, I feel awful. I don’t feel awful because I have to answer questions about it. I feel awful in that locker room because I could have done something more to help my teammates win.

He incurs a fearful amount of guilt who in the least promotes the aim of the Evil One by trampling upon a tender conscience in a child.

To cut short the question of the law of retaliation, we must note that even in its primitive form it can operate only between two individuals of whom one is absolutely innocent, and the other absolutely guilty. The victim, to be sure, is innocent. But can the society that is supposed to represent the victim lay claim to innocence?

I’m not going to fight because I mean too much to our team, and I can’t afford to be suspended for a game or do something stupid to get me kicked out of a playoff game.

I played football for a team called the East Dragons on the east side of town. We only had six regular season games. And six games I played tail back and I had 18 touchdowns in six games. That’s when I knew I had some athletic ability.

To all the positions, I just bring the determination to win. Me being an unselfish player, I think that can carry on to my teammates. When you have one of the best players on the court being unselfish, I think that transfers to the other players.

It never bothered me when people would say, ‚You only win championships because you’re playing with Shaq.‘ It bothered me when he said it.