Quotes on Sports

When I was a boy I was called a nerd all the time — because I didn’t like sports, I loved to read, I liked math and science, I thought school was really cool — and it hurt a lot. Because it’s never ok when a person makes fun of you for something you didn’t choose. You know, we don’t choose to be nerds. We can’t help it that we like these things — and we shouldn’t apologize for liking these things.

I can teach many sports, but obviously, tennis is the one. When you do other sports, you see things from different perspectives: different footwork drills, body positions, angles and geometry. All that stuff is helpful, and so when I do other sports, I can see things, because once you know one sport, then the other sport becomes more clear.

I see great things in baseball. It's our game - the American game. It will take our people out-of-doors, fill them with oxygen, give them a larger physical stoicism. Tend to relieve us from being a nervous, dyspeptic set. Repair these losses, and be a blessing to us.

When a great team loses through complacency, it will constantly search for new and more intricate explanations to explain away defeat.

Sports are a great place to show that equality can happen.

An effective leader develops the ability to correctly identify the pertinent detail or details - incidentals in a market, industry or sport that might create an incremental advantage.

The first thing is to love your sport. Never do it to please someone else. It has to be yours.

No matter how good you get you can always get better, and that's the exciting part.

For myself, losing is not coming second. It's getting out of the water knowing you could have done better. For myself, I have won every race I've been in

Swimming is not a sport. Swimming is a way to keep from drowning. That's just common sense!

First of all, what happens is, when you're good at something, you spend a lot of time with it. People identify you with that sport, so it becomes part of your identity.

I couldn't disappoint people. I did not want to fail and exhaust myself, because I was the kind of runner who trained so little that I couldn't race again within another 10 days.

There are so many different elements to surfing. Small waves, big waves, long boards, short boards. This makes it a sport you can share with people. It's not just a solitary thing - it's become a family thing, too. It's about exercising and passing something on from father to son, and from mother to daughter.

Here's a good rule of thumb; too clever is dumb.

Coaches have to watch for what they don't want to see and listen to what they don't want to hear.

The willingness to experiment with change may be the most essential ingredient to success at anything.

To me, teamwork is the beauty of our sport, where you have five acting as one. You become selfless.

If you don't do what's best for your body, you're the one who comes up on the short end.

The miracle isn't that I finished. The miracle is that I had the courage to start.

I don't generally follow sports. At an early age, I discovered that nature had apportioned me only a small reserve of enthusiasm. Best to ration.

The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving.