We Used To Have A Lot Of

"she (minnie Ruth Solomon) Was Unusual Because Even Though I Knew Her Family Was As Poor As Ours, Nothing She Said Or Did Seemed Touched By That. Or By Prejudice. Or By Anything The World Said Or Did. It Was As If She Had Something Inside Her That Somehow Made All That Not Count. I Fell In Love With Her Some The First Time We Ever Talked, And A Little Bit More Every Time After That Until I Thought I Couldn't Love Her More Than I Did. And When I Felt That Way, I Asked Her To Marry Me . . . And She Said She Would."

Joe Louis And I Were The First Modern National Sports Figures Who Were Black... But Neither Of Us Could Do National Advertising Because The South Wouldn't Buy It. That Was The Social Stigma We Lived Under.

It Dawned On Me With Blinding Brightness. I Realized: I Had Jumped Into Another Rare Kind Of Stratosphere - One That Only A Handful Of People In Every Generation Are Lucky Enough To Know.

Although I Wasn't Invited To Shake Hands With Hitler, I Wasn't Invited To The White House To Shake Hands With The President Either.

There Is Something That Can Happen To Every Athlete And Every Human Being; The Instinct To Slack Off, To Give In To Pain, To Give Less Than Your Best; The Instinct To Hope You Can Win Through Luck Or Through Your Opponent Not Doing His Best, Instead Of Going To The Limit And Past Your Limit Where Victory Is Always Found. Defeating Those Negative Instincts That Are Out To Defeat Us, Is The Difference Between Winning And Losing - And We All Face That Battle Every Day.