Top 45 Martina Navratilova Quotes

If I feel strongly, I say it. I know I can do more good by being vocal than by staying quiet. I’d have a whole lot more money if I lied, but I wouldn’t enjoy spending it.

People in the States used to think that if girls were good at sports their sexuality would be affected.

Just go out there and do what you have to do.

I didn’t realize until I was doing commentary what a gladiator-like competition tennis is – other than no one dies. The crowd is waiting for the players to come, and they walk through the tunnel, and they get on the court, and they get out their rackets, their weapons, and now they start.

After I retired, I was in Aspen, and after two months of being at home, I started to go nuts. I needed to go somewhere because that was the longest I never travelled.

The more people come out, the less it will be an issue.

I regret that I had to leave my country. But I had to do it in order to achieve and decide my own fate. I was forced into it. Democracy came about 15 years too late for me. But I have to say that it’s there now, and Czech Republic is a fantastic country; it always was but just had the wrong regime at the top.

I am just sorry my own mother had to live under that regime for most of her life. I was lucky. I got out and, 14 years later, Czechoslovakia became a free country. So I feel anger, even fury, at this bloody system that ruined so many people’s lives for no reason whatsoever.

You can’t live in the past, there’s nothing you can do about it.

I’ve been in the twilight of my career longer than most people have had their career.

The Czech tennis federation wasn’t holding me back, but they could still pull the plug anytime they wanted.

Tennis has given me soul.

I know propaganda when I see it, and I can speak with authority on it.

We’re criminalizing economic inability to stay out of the system. Women get penalized more than men for the same crime; blacks get penalized more than whites for the same crime. We need to bring out more into the light, because it’s not fair… I applaud Colin Kaepernick for speaking out.

That’s the media now. They get lazy. Rumors become fact. Some blogger says something, next thing you know, it’s in ‘USA Today.’

Julia, I promise to love you, to cherish you, in sickness and in health. No matter what, I will be there for you and our family. I promise not to make the social media another member of our family.

My mom told me to cover up my arms ever since I was little because I was muscular. She wanted me to be feminine, which did not come easy to me. My body was what it was, and I worked it to be a better tennis player.

I think the key is for women not to set any limits.

Tennis is the purest form of democracy. There was a symbiotic, chicken-and-egg relationship for me between democracy and tennis.

Variety is what I would recommend: As variety is the spice of life in food, so it is in exercise. Change it up. But most of all, don’t overdo it.

My worst memory is of my first dance lesson as a 14-year old in Prague. My mother put me in this silver and pink lame dress. My hair was all curled, and it was the first time I wore a garter belt. I felt so out of place!

The mark of great sportsmen is not how good they are at their best, but how good they are their worst.

Just by being out you’re doing your part. It’s like recycling. You’re doing your part for the environment if you recycle; you’re doing your part for the gay movement if you’re out.

I really couldn’t come out until after I got my citizenship, because it was a disclaim – back then, it could have been a disqualifier. I could have been denied my U.S. citizenship because I was gay. So I didn’t – I stayed quiet.

Gender is irrelevant. Certainly the tennis ball doesn’t know what the gender was of the tennis coach.

I just try to concentrate on concentrating.

Life is about challenges and how we face up to them and the attitude we take into every day life so hopefully we’ll be able to motivate people to do more with their life.

I’ve been active in animal rights and all kinds of environmental stuff and children’s charities over the years.

Disability is a matter of perception. If you can do just one thing well, you’re needed by someone.

When you make a lot of money, it just means you made a lot of money. It doesn’t make you a better person.

The difference between involvement and commitment is like ham and eggs. The chicken is involved; the pig is committed.

My life is very well managed. I have a lot on my plate, and at the same time, there were still holes, and what I do and where I am dovetails nicely with what Agnieszka needs. I don’t think I could be a coach for a Madison Keys because she needs somebody more hands-on. But Agnieszka is almost a finished product.

I’m 58 years old. I got married for the first time – it’s about time, right? Growing up as a gay woman, you just don’t ever think about that, and then I thought, about 10 years ago, ‘You know, I think within 10 years gay marriage will be legal.’ And here we are, 10 years later, making it legal.

I shouldn’t say I’m looking forward to leading a normal life, because I don’t know what normal is.

You can have a coach for five or six years, and eventually, that coach has so little new to say. So get somebody else to give a different point of view. Somebody will see something I don’t see and vice versa. You evolve with your game and your coaches.

Players are saying, ‘I don’t have to have a coach who has only played a little bit. Instead, I can have somebody who won something’.

There was a joke in Czechoslovakia: The Communist Party dance, it’s one step forward, two steps backward, and everyone is still clapping.

I tell you, if I was in the same position I was in 1975, trying to leave a communist country and trying to live a free life, America is not the country that I would think about going to considering how many rights the GOP is trying to take away.

I’ve given many lessons in many sports over the years to many different people.

I do get pissed off when I’m at some gay event, and there’s a 25-year-old, and he has no idea who I am. And I say, ‘You need to know more about your gay history, boy.’ I think the younger generation takes it a little bit for granted.

The tennis ball doesn’t know how old I am. The ball doesn’t know if I’m a man or a woman or if I come from a communist country or not. Sport has always broken down these barriers.

Goodbye 2010. If you were a fish, I’d throw you back.

I’ll do some running with the dogs, ride a bike; if I go to gym it’s usually for cardio. I don’t do weights as much; every once in while, I throw in some pushups and do leg exercises to strengthen my legs.

I just wanted to play tennis. It wasn’t a job. It was an ambition. I knew I could make money at it. I was 18 – old enough to think I could do it, young enough not to consider the consequences.

I’ve always been a rebel, always curious about the world around me.