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Who really said it

We must reach out our hand in friendship both to those who would befriend us and those who would be our enemy

Written by Arthur Ashe 1943–1993 · American tennis champion, author and activist
Verified In copyright

The sentence is from Days of Grace: A Memoir, the book Ashe wrote with Arnold Rampersad and finished, according to Wikipedia’s account of his final months ↗, less than a week before he died in February 1993. Wikiquote’s sourced section ↗ transcribes the line inside its full paragraph and places it at p. 186 — though the widely shared card version adds two words, “and dignity,” that the sourced text does not have.

Last verified 25 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Verified quote & credit

“We must reach out our hand in friendship both to those who would befriend us and those who would be our enemy” Arthur Ashe, Days of Grace: A Memoir (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993); p. 186 in the 1994 edition. Note: the widely shared version adding "and dignity" is not the sourced wording. Verified by Quotle.info.

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Arthur Ashe’s estate and co-author Arnold Rampersad; published by Alfred A. Knopf (Penguin Random House)). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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In context

Evoking the world of Arthur Ashe — American tennis champion, author and activist. Theme: "We must reach out our hand in friendship both to those who would befriend us and those who would be our enemy". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "We must reach out our hand in friendship both to those who would befriend us and those who would be our enemy". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

Days of Grace: A Memoir (1993)

Work
Days of Grace: A Memoir
Authors
Arthur Ashe with Arnold Rampersad
First published
Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1993 (317 pp.)
Page
p. 186, per Wikiquote’s sourced citation to the 1994 edition

… We must reach out our hand in friendship both to those who would befriend us and those who would be our enemy. We must believe in the power of education. … Days of Grace, p. 186

The sentence is not free-standing advice about making friends. It sits inside a paragraph in which Ashe argues that the growing isolation of Black America — however much it reads as pride and self-affirmation — is not the answer to its problems, and which closes with him saying he sees no conflict between being proud of one’s ancestors and seeing oneself first as a member of a commonwealth of all races and creeds. The full paragraph is transcribed at Wikiquote ↗.

Scanned first edition
Days of Grace (Knopf, 1993) at the Internet Archive
Wikiquote’s sourced Arthur Ashe page (Days of Grace, p. 186)

How we checked

  • Wikiquote’s Arthur Ashe page ↗ carries the line in a sourced section headed “Days of Grace: A Memoir (1994)”, quoting the whole paragraph and citing p. 186 — wording that matches the quote under investigation exactly, with no “and dignity”.
  • The book itself checks out: Open Library’s edition record ↗ gives Days of Grace: A Memoir, Alfred A. Knopf, 1993, 317 pages, “by Arthur Ashe and Arnold Rampersad”, and the Internet Archive copy ↗ is a scan of that first edition.
  • The 1994 edition Wikiquote cites is longer than the 317-page hardcover — Open Library records the 1994 Ballantine paperback at 352 pages — which is why its page references (p. 186 here, p. 341 for Ashe’s message to his daughter Camera) run past the first edition’s length. We did not inspect the page itself; the page number is Wikiquote’s, and AZQuotes ↗ gives the same page for the same paragraph.
  • Quote Investigator ↗ has examined a different Ashe line (“True heroism is remarkably sober…”, which it credits to his 1991 Ohio Wesleyan University commencement address) but has no article on this sentence, and we found no source crediting it to anyone other than Ashe.
In copyright

Days of Grace: A Memoir was first published in 1993, so it is firmly under US copyright — nowhere near the pre-1931 line for the public domain. The sentence can be quoted with attribution, as it is here, but the surrounding paragraph and the rest of the book are not free to reproduce.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

What goes wrong with this one

Nobody has stolen this line from Arthur Ashe, and nobody has pinned it on him falsely — the authorship is sound. What has happened is smaller and sneakier: the sentence has been edited on its way around the internet, and severed from the argument it was making.

The “friendship and dignity” version Two words added

The most-shared form runs “We must reach out our hand in friendship and dignity both to those who would befriend us…” — and it travels without a page reference; Lib Quotes ↗ carries it that way. Tellingly, AZQuotes ↗ hosts both: an unsourced standalone entry with “and dignity”, and a longer entry sourced to Days of Grace, p. 186, which reads simply “in friendship”.

The quote-card reading Stripped of its argument

Detached from its paragraph the line reads as generic advice about being nice to difficult people. In the book it is one clause of a public argument: the paragraph Wikiquote transcribes ↗ is Ashe rejecting racial isolation as an answer to Black America’s problems, ending with his insistence that pride in one’s ancestors and membership in a commonwealth of all races are not in conflict.

The sentence is genuinely Arthur Ashe’s, from Days of Grace — sourced at p. 186 ↗. If you quote it, quote it without “and dignity”, and remember it was written about a country, not about a friendship.

Context

Why it mattered

Ashe wrote Days of Grace against a clock. He had announced in April 1992 that a transfusion during 1980s heart surgery had left him HIV-positive; he finished the manuscript less than a week before he died on 6 February 1993, and Alfred A. Knopf published it that year. A book written under those conditions tends to say what its author actually thinks, and this passage is one of the places where he does.

The sentence is not a pleasantry. It sits in a paragraph where Ashe argues against the pull toward racial isolation — conceding that it can look like pride and self-affirmation, and answering that it is still not the answer. Reaching a hand to “those who would be our enemy” is the practical edge of that argument, not a general rule about being gracious.

It is an argument about isolation, not a greeting card about friendship.

More on the book, and a note on the page number

The memoir’s chapter list, recorded in the Internet Archive’s catalogue entry for the Knopf first edition ↗, shows how much ground it covers: “My outing”, “Middle passage”, “Stars and stripes: a captain in the Davis Cup wars”, “Protest and politics”, “The burden of race”, “The striving and achieving”, “The beast in the jungle”, “Sex and sports in the age of AIDS”, “Stepping up”, “The threads in my hands” and “My dear Camera”. That last chapter is the farewell letter to his daughter which supplies the book’s other most-quoted passages.

A note on the page number: Wikiquote cites p. 186 of the 1994 edition, which is the longer paperback — Open Library records it at 352 pages against the 1993 hardcover’s 317 — so its pagination does not map onto the first edition. We have not inspected the page itself; the citation is Wikiquote’s, and AZQuotes gives the same page for the same paragraph.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Kindness Friendship Courage

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Arthur Ashe — Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

The sourced section transcribes the full paragraph and cites Days of Grace: A Memoir, p. 186 — the anchor for this page.
Days of Grace: A Memoir (Knopf, 1993)archive.org

Scan of the first edition; the catalogue record lists the chapters, including “The burden of race” and “My dear Camera”.
Days of Grace — Open Library edition recordopenlibrary.org

Alfred A. Knopf, 1993, 317 pages, “by Arthur Ashe and Arnold Rampersad”, ISBN 0679423966.
Arthur Ashe — Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

Life and career: three Grand Slam singles titles, the January 1985 anti-apartheid arrest, the April 1992 HIV announcement, and the note that he finished Days of Grace less than a week before his death.
Quote Investigator on Ashe’s “True heroism” linequoteinvestigator.com

QI credits Ashe for a different quotation, tracing it to his 12 May 1991 Ohio Wesleyan commencement address. It has no investigation of this sentence.
Lib Quotes — the “and dignity” variantlibquotes.com

Shows the altered wording as it circulates: “in friendship and dignity”, credited to Days of Grace but with no page reference.

The man who wrote it

Arthur Ashe

Arthur Ashe

1943–1993 · American tennis champion, author and activist

Arthur Ashe was born in Richmond, Virginia in 1943 and became the only Black man ever to win the singles title at Wimbledon, the US Open and the Australian Open. Off the court he was an organiser and an arguer — captain of the US Davis Cup team from 1981 to 1985, arrested outside the South African embassy in Washington in January 1985 at an anti-apartheid rally, and, after announcing in April 1992 that a blood transfusion had left him HIV-positive, one of the most prominent AIDS campaigners in the country. He wrote Days of Grace with Arnold Rampersad in his last months, finishing the manuscript less than a week before his death on 6 February 1993; that June he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source

Arthur Ashe with Arnold Rampersad, Days of Grace: A Memoir (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993). The sentence appears at p. 186 of the 1994 edition, per Wikiquote’s sourced transcription of the full paragraph.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘We must reach out our hand in friendship both to those who would befriend us and those who would be our enemy’?” Last verified 25 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/we-must-reach-out-our-hand-in-friendship-both-to-those-who/

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