Quotes on Swimming

I don't like to be second in anything. I was trying, I just wasn't going anywhere.

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

I have the opportunity to be part of swimming history. To take the sport to a new level would be an honor for me. There's no better time to try this than now.

Swimming is normal for me. I'm relaxed. I'm comfortable, and I know my surroundings. It's my home.

I treat every race the same. We all wanted to swim fast today and give something back to the crowd.

I remember one day sitting at the pool and suddenly the tears were streaming down my cheeks. Why was I so unhappy? I had success. I had security. But it wasn't enough. I was exploding inside.

The truth is always an abyss. One must — as in a swimming pool — dare to dive from the quivering springboard of trivial everyday experience and sink into the depths, in order to later rise again — laughing and fighting for breath — to the now doubly illuminated surface of things.

Poverty is uncomfortable; but nine times out of ten the best thing that can happen to a young man is to be tossed overboard and compelled to sink or swim.

A fish is more valuable swimming in the sea maintaining the integrity of oceanic eco-systems than it is on anyone's plate.

The proverb says, "Born lucky, always lucky," and I am very superstitious. As a small boy I was notoriously lucky. It was usual for one or two of our lads (per annum) to get drowned in the Mississippi or in Bear Creek, but I was pulled out in a 2/3 drowned condition 9 times before I learned to swim, and was considered to be a cat in disguise.

I mean, how many young women get a set of rubies just for doing something wholesome like swimming laps? Or win a diamond ring at Ping-Pong with their husband... ? Well, I did, and for all of these memories and the people in my life I feel blessed.

Ambition is the path to success. Persistence is the vehicle you arrive in.

And there came a point in my treatment where I couldn't see that end in sight. And that was the most challenging, I think, to know how to kind of anchor yourself when you're swimming in a sea of uncertainty.

Swimming is a life-saving skill, so just the fact that the sport that I love can give so much back to other people - and inspire them to join something that they never thought they could do or go after their dreams - is something that is really special to me.

If your ship doesn't come in, swim out to it.

Remember, a dead fish can float downstream, but it takes a live one to swim upstream.

Only mediocre people are at the best all the time.

Telling me that I’m obsessed with talking about racism in America is like telling me I’m obsessed with swimming when I’m drowning.

I believe that the totemic image for the future is the octopus. This is because the squids and octopi have perfected a form of communication that is both psychedelic and telepathic; a model for the human communications of the future. In the not-too-distant future men and women may shed the monkey body to become virtual octopi swimming in a silicon sea.

I find above all that the expression, atonal music, is most unfortunate — it is on a par with calling flying the art of not falling, or swimming the art of not drowning.

If you want to learn to swim jump into the water. On dry land no frame of mind is ever going to help you.