Billie Jean King

"Champions keep playing until they get it right."

"I wanted to use sports for social change."

"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."

"Sports are a microcosm of society."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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!"

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

"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."