Quotes by Branch Rickey

• How to use your leisure time is the biggest problem of a ballplayer.
• Leisure is the handmaiden of the devil.
• Trade a player a year too early rather than a year too late.
• Thou shalt not steal. I mean defensively. On offense, indeed thou shall steal and thou must.
• Thinking about the devil is worse than seeing the devil.
• The man with the ball is responsible for what happens to the ball.
• The greatest untapped reservoir of raw material in the history of our game is the black race.
• Problems are the price you pay for progress.
• Only in baseball can a team player be a pure individualist first and a team player second, within the rules and spirit of the game.
• Never surrender opportunity for security.
• Luck is the residue of design.
• All I had was natural ability.
• I find fault with my children because I like them and I want them to go places - uprightness and strength and courage and civil respect and anything that affects the probabilities of failure on the part of those that are closest to me, that concerns me - I find fault.
• A great ballplayer is a player who will take a chance.
• It is not the honor that you take with you, but the heritage you leave behind.
• Baseball is a game of inches.
• Baseball people, and that includes myself, are slow to change and accept new ideas. I remember that it took years to persuade them to put numbers on uniforms.
• Cobb lived off the field as though he wished to live forever. He lived on the field as though it was his last day.
• Ethnic prejudice has no place in sports, and baseball must recognize that truth if it is to maintain stature as a national game.
• If things don't come easy, there is no premium on effort. There should be joy in the chase, zest in the pursuit.
• A full mind is an empty bat.
• Luck is the residue of design