“Tennis is only a sport, and we don’t intend to get involved in politics.”

Source: Saturn's Children (2008), Chapter 9, “Coin-Operated Boy” (p. 157)

In Understanding Power, 2002.
Quotes 2000s, 2002
Context: ... another thing you sometimes find in non-literate cultures is development of the most extraordinary linguistic systems: often there's tremendous sophistication about language, and people play all sorts of games with language. So there are puberty rites where people who go through the same initiation period develop their own language that's usually some modification of the actual language, but with quite complex mental operations differentiating it -- then that's theirs for the rest of their lives, and not other people's. And what all these things look like is that people just want to use their intelligence somehow, and if you don't have a lot of technology and so on, you do other things. Well, in our society, we have things that you might use your intelligence on, like politics, but people really can't get involved in them in a very serious way -- so what they do is they put their minds into other things, such as sports. You're trained to be obedient; you don't have an interesting job; there's no work around for you that's creative; in the cultural environment you're a passive observer of usually pretty tawdry stuff; political and social life are out of your range, they're in the hands of the rich folks. So what's left? Well, one thing that's left is sports -- so you put a lot of the intelligence and the thought and the self-confidence into that. And I suppose that's also one of the basic functions it serves in the society in general: it occupies the population, and keeps them from trying to get involved with things that really matter.

In Zee News: Winning Grand Slams is Sania's motivation after London Games http://zeenews.india.com/sports/tennis/winning-grand-slams-is-sania-s-motivation-after-london-games_747629.html, Zee News, August 17, 2012,

Source: Tennis Week "The Tennis Week Interview: Sania Mirza"

" http://www.floridabaptistwitness.com/6298.article", The Florida Baptist Witness newspaper

On tennis' rising popularity in Portugal, during the same interview.
Source: Intervista esclusiva a Joao Sousa: “Sono d’accordo con Simon, i top player guadagnano troppo” [Exclusive interview to Joao Sousa - 'I agree with Simon, the top players earn too much' http://www.ubitennis.com/blog/2015/11/02/intervista-esclusiva-a-joao-sousa-sono-daccordo-con-simon-i-top-player-guadagnano-troppo/,, Ubitennis.com, Italian, 4 November 2015]

2000, Reaction to calls from Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer for the Military to stay out of politics (30 September 2005)

Source: "Life on the court" https://www.medibank.com.au/bemagazine/life-on-the-court/ (January 5, 2014)

Source: Terminal World (2010), Chapter 22 (p. 417)