Quotes by Athletes

There is a kind of victory in good work no matter how humble.

I look at victory as milestones on a very long highway.

Hockey captures the essence of the Canadian experience in the New World. In a land so inescapably and inhospitably cold hockey is the dance of life and an affirmation that despite the deathly chill of winter we are alive.

Bruce Kidd

Running for money doesn't make you run fast. It makes you run first.

Ben Jipcho

You decide what it is you want to accomplish and then you lay out your plans to get there and then you just do it. It's pretty straightforward.

Nancy Ditz

Sometimes it takes years to really grasp what has happened to your life.

Wilma Rudolph

My mother taught me very early to believe I could achieve any accomplishment I wanted to. The first was to walk without braces.

Wilma Rudolph

Competition can damage self-esteem create anxiety and lead to cheating and hurt feelings. But so can romantic love.

Mariah Burton Nelson

A gentle Quaker hearing a strange noise in his house one night got up and discovered a burglar busily at work. He went and got his gun came back and stood quietly in the doorway. 'Friend ' he said 'I would do thee no harm for the world but thou standest where I am about to shoot.'

James Hines

I always keep myself in a position of being a student.

Jackie Joyner-Kersee

All my life I've been competing-and competing to win. I came to realize that in this way this cancer was the toughest competition I had faced yet. I made up my mind that I was going to lick it all the way. I not only wasn't going to let it kill me I wasn't even going to let it put me on the shelf.

Babe Didrikson Zaharias

James Hines

I always keep myself in a position of being a student.

Jackie Joyner-Kersee

Babe Didrikson Zaharias

No matter what accomplishments you make somebody helped you.

Althea Gibson

I don't think being an athlete is unfeminine. I think of it as a kind of grace.

Jackie Joyner-Kersee

The medals don't mean anything and the glory doesn't last. It's all about your happiness. The rewards are going to come but my happiness is just loving the sport and having fun performing.

Jackie Joyner-Kersee

It's not enough to just swing at the ball. You've got to loosen your girdle and really let it fly.

Babe Didrikson Zaharias

I've always had such high expectations for myself. I'm aware of them but I can't relax them.

Mary Decker Slaney

People don't pay much attention to you when you are second best. I wanted to see what it felt like to be number one.

Florence Griffith Joyner

For me it's the challenge-the challenge to try to beat myself or do better than I did in the past. I try to keep in mind not what I have accomplished but what I have to try to accomplish in the future.

Jackie Joyner-Kersee

You decide what it is you want to accomplish and then you lay out your plans to get there and then you just do it. It's pretty straightforward.

Nancy Ditz

If I made it it's half because I was game enough to take a lot of punishment along the way and half because there were a lot of people who cared enough to help me.

Althea Gibson

Winning has always meant much to me but winning ftiends has meant the most.

Babe Didrikson Zaharias

I pray hard work hard and leave the rest to God.

Florence Griffith Joyner

I was nervous and confident at the same time nervous about going out there in front of all of those people with so much at stake and confident that I was going to go out there and win.

Althea Gibson

Competition is about passion for perfection and passion for other people who join in this impossible quest.

Mariah Burton Nelson

If you want to lead, study Moses; if you want to manage study Pharaoh.

Jason Taylor

I have met so-called leaders who showed fear in a moment when strength was required, and they give leadership a bad name.

Jason Taylor

Today, I run for pure, absolute joy.

Lopez Lomong

Life is for participating, not for spectating.

Kathrine Switzer

It has been a wonderful experience to compete in the Olympic Games and to bring home a gold medal. But since I have been a young lad, I have had my eyes on a different prize. You see, each one of us is in a greater race than any I have run in Paris, and this race ends when God gives out the medals.

Eric Liddell

As every runner knows, running is about more than just putting one foot in front of the other; it is about our lifestyle and who we are.

Joan Benoit Samuelson

When it's pouring rain and you're bowling along through the wet, there's satisfaction in knowing you're out there and the others aren't.

Peter Snell

When I go to the Boston Marathon now, I have wet shoulders—women fall into my arms crying. They're weeping for joy because running has changed their lives. They feel they can do anything.

Kathrine Switzer

I could feel my anger dissipating as the miles went by--you can't run and stay mad!

Kathrine Switzer

Poetry, music, forests, oceans, solitude--they were what developed enormous spiritual strength. I came to realize that spirit, as much or more than physical conditioning, had to be stored up before a race.

Herb Elliott

The freedom of Cross Country is so primitive. It's woman vs. nature.

Lynn Jennings

Life is a fight from the minute you take your first breath to the moment you exhale your last. You have to fight the people who say it can never be done. You have to fight the institutions that put up the glass ceilings that must be shattered. You have to fight your body when it tells you it is tired. You have to fight your mind when doubt begins to creep in. You have to fight systems that are put in place to disrupt you and obstacles that are put in place to discourage you. You have to fight because you can't count on anyone else fighting for you. And you have to fight for people who can't fight for themselves. To get anything of real value, you have to fight for it.

Ronda Rousey

Winning isn't about finishing in first place. It isn't about beating the others. It is about overcoming yourself. Overcoming your body, your limitations, and your fears. Winning means surpassing yourself and turning your dreams into reality.

Kilian Jornet

Winning is great but if you are really going to do something in life, the secret is learning how to lose.

Wilma Rudolph

I lost my second judo tournament. I finished second, losing to a girl named Anastasia. Afterward, her coach congratulated me."You did a great job. Don't feel bad, Anastasia is a junior national champion."I felt consoled for about a second, until I noticed the look of disgust on Mom's face. I nodded at the coach and walked away.Once we were out of earshot she lit into me. "I hope you know better than to believe what he said. You could have won that match. You had every chance to beat that girl. The fact that she is a junior national champion doesn't mean anything. That's why they have tournaments, so you can see who is better. They don't award medals based on what you won before. If you did your absolute best, if you were capable of doing nothing more, then that's enough. Then you can be content with the outcome. But if you could have done better, if you could have done more, then you should be disappointed. You should be upset you didn't win. You should go home and think about what you could have done differently and then next time do it differently. Don't you ever let anyone tell you that not doing your absolute best is good enough. You are a skinny blonde girl who lives by the beach, and unless you absolutely force them to, no one is ever going to expect anything from you in this sport. You prove them wrong.

Ronda Rousey

If you don't try to win you might as well hold the Olympics in somebody's back yard. The thrill of competing carries with it the thrill of a gold medal. One wants to win to prove himself the best.

Jesse Owens

Champions are built on a thousand invisible mornings.

Kirk Cousins

When anyone tells me I can’t do anything, I’m just not listening any more.

Florence Griffith Joyner

Someone who doesn't make the (Olympic) team might weep and collapse. In my day no one fell on the track and cried like a baby. We lost gracefully. And when someone won, he didn't act like he'd just become king of the world, either. Athletes in my day were simply humble in our victory.I believe we were more mature then...Maybe it's because the media puts so much pressure on athletes; maybe it's also the money. In my day we competed for the love of the sport...In my day we patted the guy who beat us on the back, wished him well, and that was it.

Louis Zamperini

Thankfully, Coach had taught me a way of embracing the pain. He called that overwhelming rust of hurt 'The Moment of No Return', a point of pure agony when the body told an athlete to quit, to rest, because the pain was so damn tough. It was a tipping point. He reckoned that if an athlete dropped in The Moment, then all the pain that went before it was pointless, the muscles wouldn't increase their current strength. But if he could work through the pinch and run another two reps, maybe 3, them the body would physically improve in that time, and that was when an athlete grew stronger.

Usain Bolt

Life is a sports make it count.

Derrick Adkins

all about that action boss

marshawn lynch

Some sessions are stars and some sessions are stones, but in the end they are all rocks and we build upon them.

Chrissie Wellington

It’s the Olympics. If you can’t get up to swim early in the morning, don’t go.

Michael Phelps

No man who really is a man ever cared for the easy task. There is no enjoyment in the game that is easily won. It is that in which you have to strain every muscle and sinew to achieve victory that provides real joy.

Eric Liddell

He's probably the only player who doesn't play for 10 months and, if he scores a hat trick in his first game back, no one would be surprised.

Ryan Whitney

A lifetime of training for just ten seconds.

Jesse Owens

God made me fast. And when I run, I feel His pleasure.

Eric Liddell

In the dust of defeat as well as the laurels of victory there is a glory to be found if one has done his best.

Eric Liddell

How can you ask someone to live in the world and not have something to say about injustice?

John Carlos

Set your goals high, and don’t stop till you get there.

Bo Jackson

You can’t put a limit on anything. The more you dream, the farther you get.

Michael Phelps

I work hard, and I do good, and I’m going to enjoy myself. I’m not going to let you restrict me.

Usain Bolt

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