Quotes on Athlete

The worst insult you can give a professional athlete is to call them soft. And the stereotype out there is that gay is soft.

Sports can do so much. It's given me confidence, self-esteem, discipline, and motivation.

Nothing can substitute for just plain hard work. I had to put in the time to get back. And it was a grind. It meant training and sweating every day. But I was completely committed to working out to prove to myself that I still could do it.

When I was playing I never wished I was doing anything else. I think being a professional athlete is the finest thing a man can do.

Even if you don't become a professional athlete, the experience of working with a team, knowing how to set goals, and working every day to figure out how to accomplish those goals definitely gives you confidence to apply those same characteristics to other life challenges.

I wanted no part of politics. And I wasn't in Berlin to compete against any one athlete. The purpose of the Olympics, anyway, was to do your best. As I'd learned long ago from Charles Riley, the only victory that counts is the one over yourself.

Gold medals aren't really made of gold. They're made of sweat, determination, and a hard-to-find alloy called guts.

Somewhere behind the athlete you've become and the hours of practice and the coaches who have pushed you is a little girl who fell in love with the game and never looked back... play for her.

The unique thing about bodybuilding is that when I compete it is just me on a stage alone. There is no field, no bat, no ball, no skis, no skates. All other athletes have to use equipment, like a football. But I don't use anything in competition except myself. It's just me up there. Me alone. No coach. No nothing.

Courage, sacrifice, determination, commitment, toughness, heart, talent, guts. That's what little girls are made of; the heck with sugar and spice.

Never give up! Failure and rejection are only the first step to succeeding.

Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.

I realized now that militancy in the best sense of the word was the only answer where the black man was concerned, that any black man who wasn't a militant in 1970 was either blind or a coward.

I've always approached my career and my life, you know, one day at a time, as if this was the last day that I'm going, because you never know as an athlete and as a dancer. You never know what can happen today, tomorrow.

In war there is no substitute for victory.

It is more difficult to stay on top than to get there.

It's not the will to win that matters-everyone has that. It's the will to prepare to win that matters.

I remember the last season I played. I went home after a ballgame one day, lay down on my bed, and tears came to my eyes. How can you explain that? It's like crying for your mother after she's gone. You cry because you love her. I cried, I guess, because I loved baseball, and I knew I had to leave it.

I am building a fire, and everyday I train, I add more fuel. At just the right moment, I light the match.

I'm not used to crying. It's a little difficult. All my life I've had to fight. It's just another fight I'm going to have to learn how to win, that's all. I'm just going to have to keep smiling.

I remember my first day of chemo as if it were yesterday, hanging up my favorite summer dress like an athlete retiring a jersey. Within a few weeks, my waist had shrunk to a double zero - the size it was when I was in the sixth grade. My cheek bones jutting out. Rings under my eyes. Skin the color of chalk.