Iconic Quotes About Life and Baseball by the Great Babe Ruth

It's impossible to ignore the mark that George Herman "Babe" Ruth left on the sports world. His 22-season Major League Baseball career is one of the most well-known of all time.

He began his career as a star pitcher for the Boston Red Sox before transitioning to a lauded career as a slugging outfielder for the New York Yankees. Many people consider Ruth to be the greatest baseball player of all time. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame as one of its "first five" members during the inauguration of the museum. He had a reputation as an outstanding pitcher who could also hit long home runs, a unique set of traits at the time.

Ruth was a popular player despite more than occasional bouts of bad behavior, especially in the areas of drinking and womanizing. Let's examine some of this legend's motivational and insightful words of wisdom.

To populate this list, we looked at large compendiums of quotes. We selected the ones that were most prevalent across multiple sources, using that as evidence of the notoriety of the quotes. We tried to only pick quotes that were particularly motivational, insightful, or funny, which was difficult as Ruth had a lot of character that showed through during interviews. Editorial discretion was used to select quotes from larger compendiums. We checked sources as thoroughly as possible to avoid misattributing quotes. However, it is possible that some quotes attributed to Ruth were quotes of others that he, himself, had quoted in interviews. In some cases, there are several versions of a quote attributed to Ruth. We included all versions where applicable. (Next, check out some quotes from another baseball icon, Lou Gehrig.)

"Aw, everybody knows that game, the day I hit the homer off ole Charlie Root there in Wrigley Field, the day October first, the third game of that thirty–two World Series. But right now I want to settle all arguments. I didn't exactly point to any spot, like the flagpole. Anyway, I didn't mean to, I just sorta waved at the whole fence, but that was foolish enough. All I wanted to do was give that thing a ride… outta the park… anywhere."

"How to hit home runs: I swing as hard as I can, and I try to swing right through the ball…The harder you grip the bat, the more you can swing it through the ball, and the farther the ball will go. I swing big, with everything I've got. I hit big or I miss big. I like to live as big as I can."

"Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. You know how bad my voice sounds. Well, it feels just as bad. You know, this baseball game of ours comes up from the youth. That means the boys. And after you're a boy and grow up to play ball, then you come to the boys you see representing clubs today in your national pastime. The only real game in the world, I think, is baseball. As a rule, people think that if you give boys a football or a baseball or something like that, they naturally become athletes right away. But you can't do that in baseball. You got to start from way down, at the bottom, when the boys are six or seven years of age. You can't wait until they're 14 or 15. You got to let it grow up with you, if you're the boy. And if you try hard enough, you're bound to come out on top, just as these boys here have come to the top now. There have been so many lovely things said about me today that I'm glad to have had the opportunity to thank everybody."

"Sometimes when I reflect on all the beer I drink, I feel ashamed. Then I look into the glass and think about the workers in the brewery and all of their hopes and dreams. If I didn't drink this beer, they might be out of work and their dreams would be shattered. I think, 'It is better to drink this beer and let their dreams come true than be selfish and worry about my liver.'"

"A part of control is learning to correct your own weaknesses. The person doesn't live who was born with everything. Sometimes he has one weak point, generally he has several. The first thing is to know your faults. And then take on a systematic plan of correcting them. You know the old saying about a chain only being as strong as its weakest link. The same can be said in the chain of skills a man forges."

(When asked why he should be paid more than the president after signing an $80,000 contract in 1930)

"I've heard people say that the trouble with the world is that we haven't enough great leaders. I think we haven't enough great followers. I have stood side by side with great thinkers – surgeons, engineers, economists, people who deserve a great following – and have heard the crowd cheer me instead."