I wanted to use sports for social change.
Billie Jean King

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

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.
Billie Jean King

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

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

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

In 1973, a woman could not get a credit card without her husband or father or a male signing off on it.
Billie Jean King

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.
Billie Jean King

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.
Billie Jean King

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.
Billie Jean King

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

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

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

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

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.
Billie Jean King

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.
Billie Jean King

No one changes the world who isn't obsessed.
Billie Jean King

Sports are a microcosm of society.
Billie Jean King

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.
Billie Jean King

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