Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American athlete Colin Kaepernick.
Last updated on December 21, 2024.
Colin Rand Kaepernick is an American civil rights activist and football quarterback who is a free agent. He played six seasons for the San Francisco 49ers in the National Football League (NFL). In 2016, he knelt during the national anthem at the start of NFL games in protest of police brutality and racial inequality in the United States.
We have a presidential candidate who's deleted emails and done things illegally and is a presidential candidate. That doesn't make sense to me, because if that was any other person, you'd be in prison. So what is this country really standing for?
I don't believe in pressure. The pressure is not being prepared for what you want to do.
Whatever the offense dictates to allow me doing what I or this offense needs to do to win games, I'm going to do it.
Its a touchy subject, 'cause I never want to take it there, where it seems like it's all about race. But I feel like that's something that comes along with the territory of being a black quarterback. When you have success - 'Oh, you're a freak athlete.' Not, 'Oh, you're a good quarterback.'
People don't realize what's really going on in this country. There are a lot things that are going on that are unjust. People aren't being held accountable for. And that's something that needs to change. That's something that this country stands for: freedom, liberty and justice for all.
I love America.
I'm going to speak the truth when I'm asked about it.
Nobody cares if you're black, white, straight, gay, Christian, Jewish, whatever it may be. When you step on that field, you're a member, in my case, the 49ers. That's your job, your occupation.
What other people think of how I play and how I go about things really isn't something I worry about.
If you work hard and perform well, it doesn't matter whether you're 20 or 40. People are going to follow, and you can go in there and run the show.
I was not going to let people tell me what I'm capable of.
The biggest thing is I watch myself: What I need to improve on, what I can do different.
To try to prey on athletes' livelihoods while one is going through a tough time is embarrassing to me.
When you step on the field, you want to be a starter. You want to be the person everybody looks to and says, 'If we need a play to be made, let's go to him.'
I realize that men and women of the military go out and sacrifice their lives and put their selves in harm's way for my freedom of speech and my freedoms in this country, and my freedom to take a seat or take a knee, so I have the utmost respect for them, and I think what I did was taken out of context and spun a different way.
I have a very high expectation for everything I do. And when I go out and compete, I expect myself to make every play.
I'm not incapable of going through things.
When it comes down to it, you're playing football regardless of what offense you're in.
I have great respect for people's right to believe what they want to believe. And I don't think anybody should be prosecuted or judged based on what their beliefs are.
In the heat of the battle, it's always different than when you go back and look at it on film.
At the end of the day, you have to look at, 'Are they knowledgeable? Are they doing their job?' Not what their appearance is.
It was just something - I didn't agree with what the flag was representing at this time, and you know, if you look at the original picture where people addressed it, I was trying to sit behind the coolers and out of the way, 'cause I didn't want to interrupt anybody else's right to stand and hold attention to the flag.
I'll never take the easy way out.
There's a lot of things that need to change. One specifically? Police brutality.
Most people don't want to change. They're comfortable and set in their ways. But in order to change, you have to be able to agitate people at times. And I think that's something that's very necessary for us to improve as a country.
A lot of them have families to feed, and I think it's a tragic situation where players aren't comfortable speaking what's on their mind or what's right because they're afraid of consequences that come along with it. That's not an ideal environment for anybody.
Sometimes, when things are going really well, I feel like I've already seen things - it's the flashback feeling in a good way. Like I'm watching a rerun, because I've studied this defense and know what comes next. Now, that is a good feeling, when your mind is working fast because you've studied, and you realize, 'I've seen this before.'
If you're going to do something, you're going to do it to be the best.
I don't look like my high school self anymore. I feel like I look more like an adult now.
Teammates tell me to bring it down a notch in practice or that their hands are hurting. Randy Moss told me I was the first person to ever dislocate one of his fingers.
I don't think I can be too hard on myself.
Every time I step on the field, I step on the field to make plays.
The support I've gotten from my teammates has been great.
When I'm actually getting off the bus, I still have my gospel playing. That's the way-to-the-game kind of music.
I trained with a few Olympic runners and jumpers. Just to try to get a little bit faster, a little bit better. Anything I could do to try to get a little bit better and stay ahead of the competition.
People can talk all they want; that doesn't affect how I go about my business.
Thankfully, God blessed me with some legs that move pretty good, and we also get to wear pads, so I should be alright.
All my life, I've had these flashbacks, these dreams, nightmares, daymares, like visions, where I relive certain plays. Only the bad plays. I see them over and over, as if somebody's rewinding a tape and forcing me to watch.
I don't want people to think you have to look a certain way or be a certain mold to be able to be a quarterback.
Unless you're being carted off, you should be on the field.
Feelings aren't going to help me win a game.
You have to take care of the ball to win football games.
This stand wasn't because I feel like I'm being put down in any kind of way. This is because I'm seeing things happen to people that don't have a voice: people that don't have a platform to talk and have their voices heard and affect change. So I'm in the position where I can do that, and I'm going to do that for people that can't.
I'm going to continue to stand with the people that are being oppressed.
I do want to be a representative of the African community, and I want to hold myself and dress myself in a way that reflects that. I want black kids to see me and think, 'Okay, he's carrying himself as a black man, and that's how a black man should carry himself.'
I don't watch too much TV when it comes to sports or news or things like that.
I think being shy or a little bit more mild-mannered is more how you treat people and how you go about your business, not necessarily how you dress or things of that nature.
Whether football's here or not, I will be fine. I go out, I play to win.
We have a lot of people that are oppressed. We have a lot of people that aren't treated equally, aren't given equal opportunities. Police brutality is a huge thing that needs to be addressed. There are a lot of issues that need to be talked about, need to be brought to life, and we need to fix those.
I'm still trying to improve. Everything I can do to improve every part of my game - I'm going to do it.
There are a lot of details to running that I never even thought about. I just went out and ran. I think I can be faster. I think I can be quicker.
I refuse to take shortcuts.
All my tattoos, they've been thought out, thought over, been a work in progress for at least a year before I've got them. So I'm not walking into a tattoo shop, picking tattoos off a wall. It's something that means something to me. It's something that I believe in.
I'd say that, 99 percent of the time at Nevada, I knew what the coverage was and where I was probably going before the ball was snapped. It makes it very easy when I only had to read one person and know that I was going from here to here, and if not, I'm checking it down.
I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color.
Mental health, for me, is doing everything I can to help this team win. Sitting around not doing anything isn't something I've been too big on since I was young.
I'm going out to play, and to play to win.
To me, I've played full seasons and had success. Mentally, I've been through it before. I'm not incapable of going through this.
You have to be able to do everything as a quarterback, and that's not necessarily taking care of your job but making sure you're preparing everyone else to go out and play well. And make sure you have them in the right mindset when they step on the field.