Time & Perspective Quote by Andre Agassi

Agassi’s sentence has the sound of a press-conference deflection, but the move is more intimate than PR: it’s a small act of self-cross-examination that lands on a stubborn exception. The first clause opens with public judgment ("I've been criticized"), then he immediately internalizes it ("I thought that of myself many times"). That doubling matters. He’s not fighting the critique; he’s conceding it, admitting that the harshest audience has often been him. For an athlete whose career was routinely framed as talent versus temperament, that’s a subtle reclaiming of credibility: yes, I’ve lacked perspective, and I know it.

Then comes the pivot: "but not there". Three words that do the heavy lifting. The vagueness is protective - it withholds the scene while insisting on its moral clarity. "There" reads like a specific arena of pain or consequence: an injury, a family moment, a public humiliation, a career crossroads. He’s saying perspective failed him in ordinary life, but in the decisive moment - when stakes got real - he showed up with the right proportions.

The subtext is a negotiation with the Agassi mythos: the mercurial star who matured into a statesman. He’s also rewriting what "perspective" means in elite sport. Critics often use it as a character test ("it’s just a game"). Agassi insists that sometimes the game is precisely where perspective sharpens: pressure clarifies values, and the person you are under lights counts.