Quotes on Athlete

Excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better.

Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.

Notice how many of the Olympic athletes effusively thanked their mothers for their success? “She drove me to my practice at four in the morning,” etc. Writing is not figure skating or skiing. Your mother will not make you a writer. My advice to any young person who wants to write is: leave home.

I've been given this amazing platform as an Olympic athlete, and there are so many people out there who don't feel like their voice is being heard. I feel it's my responsibility to speak out on issues that are important.

If winning isn't everything, why do they keep score?

Down South, there was the old 'ladies-don't-do-such-things' way of thinking. You couldn't be a lady and a good athlete at the same time.

Universities exist to transmit knowledge and understanding of ideas and values to students not to provide entertainment for spectators or employment for athletes.

To have any doubt in your body is the biggest weakness an athlete can have. There are times when I physically can't get myself to go for a skill because I'm thinking, 'My knee hurts really bad.'

An athlete may run ten thousand miles in order to prepare for one hundred yards. Quantity gives experience.

The mind is the limit. As long as the mind can envision the fact that you can do something, you can do it, as long as you really believe 100 percent.

It is very discouraging to be in a team with white athletes. On the track you are Tommie Smith, the fastest man in the world, but once you are in the dressing rooms you are nothing more than a dirty Negro.

The athlete who is building muscles though weight training should be very sure to work adequately on speed and flexibility at the same time. In combat, without the prior attributes, a strong man will be like the bull with its colossal strength futilely pursuing the matador or like a low-geared truck chasing a rabbit.

As you walk down the fairway of life you must smell the roses, for you only get to play one round.

It wasn't an excuse. It was a fact. He'd had to make his way alone, and no one - not rock stars, not professional athletes, not software billionaires, and not even geniuses - ever makes it alone.

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.

I play because I have fun, if I don't have fun on the court, there is something wrong. I am just a 19 year old boy that likes to do what he likes, nothing else.

All of us get knocked down, but it's resiliency that really matters. All of us do well when things are going well, but the thing that distinguishes athletes is the ability to do well in times of great stress, urgency and pressure.

How you respond to the challenge in the second half will determine what you become after the game, whether you are a winner or a loser.

It's lack of faith that makes people afraid of meeting challenges, and I believed in myself.

The spirit, the will to win, and the will to excel are the things that endure. These qualities are so much more important than the events that occur.

I found the emotion that as an athlete you block out, and it really helped me to understand myself as a person. I'm a really emotional person and it helped make me a better person.