Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Baseball Player
1947-04-16
Quotes by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
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Many of the people I write about were deliberately left out of the history books that we were forced to read in school. For me, that history was written wrong and needed to be corrected. My intention was to make them visible so they could be role models for others. To show how each, in his or her own way, dribbled gracefully around that obstacle in the narrow corridor.
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You have to be able to center yourself, to let all of your emotions go. Don't ever forget that you play with your soul as well as your body.
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Many of the people I write about were deliberately left out of the history books that we were forced to read in school. For me, that history was written wrong and needed to be corrected. My intention was to make them visible so they could be role models for others. To show how each, in his or her own way, dribbled gracefully around that obstacle in the narrow corridor.
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You have to be able to center yourself, to let all of your emotions go. Don't ever forget that you play with your soul as well as your body.
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Black people don't have an accurate idea of their history, which has been either suppressed or distorted.
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I was getting hot flashes and sweats on a regular basis. That's not normal, even for my age.
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One man can be a crucial ingredient on a team, but one man cannot make a team.
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A lot of players think the game is all about individual performances when it's really all about a team game.
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A lot of young players don't really know much about the history of the game and a lot of them are missing out on what the game is all about, especially the whole concept of sportsmanship and teamwork.
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I try to do the right thing at the right time. They may just be little things, but usually they make the difference between winning and losing.
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My biggest accomplishment has been making a transition from athlete to author.
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I'm not exaggerating when I say that the 761st was Patton's best tank unit and nobody knew about it.
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You can't win if you don't play as a unit.
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The '80s made up for all the abuse I took during the '70s. I outlived all my critics. By the time I retired, everybody saw me as a venerable institution. Things do change.
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I think that the good and the great are only separated by the willingness to sacrifice.
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You can't win unless you learn how to lose.
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Five guys on the court working together can achieve more than five talented individuals who come and go as individuals.
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When I was 17, I worked in a mentoring program in Harlem designed to improve the community. That's when I first gained an appreciation of the Harlem Renaissance, a time when African-Americans rose to prominence in American culture. For the first time, they were taken seriously as artists, musicians, writers, athletes, and as political thinkers.
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It's hard for young players to see the big picture. They just see three or four years down the road.
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