Billie Jean King

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.

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 wanted to use sports for social change.

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.

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.

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

Champions keep playing until they get it right.

Sports are a microcosm of society.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.