Billie Jean King's Quotes

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 think it's impossible to judge whether another person should come out. You just hope they will on their own time and their own terms.

I used to be told if I talked about my sexuality in any way that we wouldn't have a tennis tour.

I was always in the tennis business-from 1968. I was in tournaments and also on World Team Tennis teams as well.

I will tell you King's First Law of Recognition: You never get it when you want it, and then when it comes, you get too much.

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

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

If your partner wants to be private, you have to respect that.

It's fun to meet people from throughout the world who you don't have to explain yourself to.

It's just really important that we start celebrating our differences. Let's start tolerating first, but then we need to celebrate our differences.

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

Martina's gone with people who don't want to be out, and it drives her crazy because she'd rather be open.

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.

No one changes the world who isn't obsessed.

That is where the power, opportunity, and choice come from-when you have money. Money equals opportunity. There is no question.

Victory is fleeting. Losing is forever.

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

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.

The old boy network is still very strong and very true. Just look at the stock exchange and how many men and women are there. It is still very much run by men.

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.

It is very hard to be a female leader. While it is assumed that any man, no matter how tough, has a soft side... and female leader is assumed to be one-dimensional.

Men can have a huge turnover of sponsorship and still survive a lot better than the women. But the women's ratings are better, at least at home in the United States than in the men's tennis.

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.

They're not put on earth to be martyrs; they have to want to come out. It depends on your culture, where you work, where you live. Each person's circumstances are unique.

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!