Billie Jean King Sports Quotations

When they take surveys of women in business, of the Fortune 500, the successful women, 80% of them, say they were in sports as a young woman.

When we reach the point where the women athletes are getting their pick of dates just as easily as the men athletes, then we've really and truly arrived. Parity at last!

Tennis is a perfect combination of violent action taking place in an atmosphere of total tranquillity.

Champions keep playing until they get it right.

Be bold. If you're going to make an error, make a doozy, and don't be afraid to hit the ball.

A champion is afraid of losing. Everyone else is afraid of winning.

There is no life for girls in team sports past Little League. I got into tennis when I realized this, and because I thought golf would be too slow for me, and I was too scared to swim.

Sports teaches you character, it teaches you to play by the rules, it teaches you to know what it feels like to win and lose-it teaches you about life.

Women's sports is still in its infancy. The beginning of women's sports in the United States started in 1972, with the passage of Title 9 for girls to finally get athletic scholarships.

In the seventies we had to make it acceptable for people to accept girls and women as athletes. We had to make it okay for them to be active. Those were much scarier times for females in sports.

I would just never out anybody. I think everyone has to find it in their own way and their own time.

Women get the attention when we get into the men's arena, and that's sad.

I wanted to use sports for social change.

Ever since that day when I was 11 years old, and I wasn't allowed in a photo because I wasn't wearing a tennis skirt, I knew that I wanted to change the sport.

In 1973, women got 59 cents on the dollar; now we are getting 74 cents on the dollar. In the area of finance and business, we are at 68 cents on the dollar.

I love to promote our sport. I love grass-roots tennis. I love coaching. I love all parts of the sport. I love the business side.

I always liked co-ed events best so we have two men and two women on each team.

At 62 you want to keep moving; that's important.

In 1973, a woman could not get a credit card without her husband or father or a male signing off on it.

A girl didn't get an athletic scholarship until the fall of 1972 for the very first time.

I like entrepreneurial people; I like people who take risks.

Men still get a lot more opportunity. It is still a big part of the old boy network. They have more companies they can get money from.

Martina and I went through a very bad five years. Everything's very good between us now, but it was a long haul.

I always wanted to help make tennis a team sport.

I didn't really care if I had a coach that much, me personally, because I was brought up to think for myself.

I have a lot to say, and if I'm not No. 1, I can't say it.

I like putting money back into what made my life, and tennis has been great to me.

I would love to be a player today. I had the right personality for it.

Female athletes are stereotyped by the general population--and usually as homosexuals.

I've never cared that much for cementing my place in history. Sports is so transitory, so ephemeral. It just seems like so much nonsense comparing me to Helen Wills Moody or Suzanne Lenglen or anybody else from some other time. One lesson you learn from sports is that life goes on without you.

Champions take responsibility. When the ball is coming over the net, you can be sure I want the ball.

There is no life for girls in team sports past Little League. I got into tennis when I realized this, and because I thought golf would be too slow for me, and I was too scared to swim.

You've got to win in sports - that's talent - but you've also got to learn how to remind everybody how you did win, and how often. That comes with experience.

Sports are a microcosm of society.

I try to perfect my strong points and make my weaknesses adequate.

Natural talent only determines the limits of your athletic potential. It's dedication and a willingness to discipline your life that makes you great.

I have often been asked whether I am a women or an athlete. The question is absurd. Men are not asked that. I am an athlete. I am a women.