Top 29 Quotes & Sayings by John Amaechi

You can't be a part-time man of principle.

In my experience, it's only people who don't play sport at a professional level who think that there is anything remotely erotic about a locker room.

I think there is unnecessary conflict right now between the vehemently religious and the LGBT community. The extremes of religion I think and the LGBT community have an issue and because a lot of black families in America are more religious, I think that is where the conflict comes into play.

I thought kissing was good with girls, but I always thought you know it probably could be better, so there was nothing really.

I wasn't going to let Jerry Sloan embarrass me, because basketball had a proper role in my life. I suspected my basketball philosophy wasn't the bottom line anyway.

There was certainly nothing really sexual about my youth growing up, simply because the fact remains if you're the fat kid in a school and I was the only fat black kid in the school - in fact, I was the only black kid in the school - but if you are kind of ostracized on many different levels in your school the last thing you're worried about is sex.

I consider myself a pretty rounded guy. I've done pretty elite things in business, sport and academics and all of a sudden I woke up one morning and I'm a 'big, black, British, gay guy'. That was frustrating at times.

You are axes, in a world of wood. And the wood remembers when it has been cut, even if the axe forgets.

I think in an ideal world celebrities do have a responsibility in many different areas to be role models.

I always think coming out is something that you do for people who really deserve it. It should be.

I grew up thinking the best job in the world would be a Jedi and being a psychologist is the closest thing I could get, so I wanted to be a Jedi and I don't want to be a Sith, so that is what keeps me on the straight and narrow.

I just wanted to fit in, so probably early on I knew, but it was... social life was such a distant part of my existence when I was in school that I didn't even think about it too much.

I suppose I knew I was gay at age 11 or so.

Combining the lack of emotional literacy they may be imbued with, with the fact that if you're black you're not supposed to be that smart and if you... as a boy you're not even supposed to like school. All of the sudden you've got kids who are afraid, black kids and Latino kids who are afraid to be great, afraid to bask in the enjoyment of education, lest they be labeled less than black, less than Latino, less they be called the oreo.

We need to accept that some people are camp and some people are butch. Some people are pretty and some people are average, but we all fit.

In the NBA you need a little bit more than that when Jordan is front of you. You need a little bit more than that when it is Barkley or Karl Malone or Shaq or whoever else. You need a lot more than that frankly if you're the English kid who can't jump.

We need to get past the point where being black and a male means that I am likely to mug you for your wallet, likely to have a minus 15 on my IQ, likely to not go to college and likely to wear my pants below my arse.

I would just never want to have someone come out for the greater good who was a celebrity and then find them slipping into like Lohanville with alcohol or drugs or something else just because they couldn't cope.

I don't need to think that I'm being loomed over my shoulder in order to behave in a way that's moral.

I'd probably have to leave home in order to become a basketball player of any note.

There are some people the gestation period is like an elephant's and it's just years and years before they're ready.

I'm a nerd. I like to sit in the library. I don't like to sweat.

In a country like America, there are places, many states here still where coming out means you lose your job, where coming out means division, where it means potentially abuse.

Knowing yourself, knowing where you want to get, combining those things gives you the pragmatic steps.

I've been captivated by the idea of being on a basketball court and being surrounded by people who made me look a little bit less like a freak.

I think it's too easy to just say that there is a direct and necessary conflict between black identity and gay identity. I think it's more nuanced than that simply because I think black is a color and then people layer on top of it all kinds of socio-cultural elements.

I was a man who played basketball and after I played basketball and before I played basketball I was going to be a psychologist, whereas most people who play their occupation is their definition - and then when they stop doing who they are, they become nothing.

I think that we ill-prepare athletes from the very beginning. From the moment they pick up a ball or kick or whatever it is they're doing. We ill-prepare them. Especially with the major sports. What you see is this cycle of entitlement that gets thrown their way, so the kid who is in junior high and hasn't finished his test, but still gets to play because he is an athlete, fails the test and still gets to play because they're an athlete, gets to get away with not doing chores at home because they've got practice.

My particular interest area is working in issues of emotional literacy. What I see of the way that we educate boys and more than that, the way we socialize boys within their families and then in schools to me is tantamount to just removing any element of emotional intelligence from them.