Michael Johnson Quotes

Don't shoot for something unattainable - completely outside of your nature or opportunity.

You can't control what the other athlete is going to do; you can't control anything except for your competition and how you execute the race or how you execute the task.

I had already been into my professional career for six years and had not won an individual gold medal at the Olympics. There was a tremendous amount of pressure going into 1996 to get it done.

Be who you are in every situation.

You owe it to yourself to find your own unorthodox way of succeeding, or sometimes, just surviving.

All my life I believed I became an athlete through my own determination, but it's impossible to think that being descended from slaves hasn't left an imprint through the generations.

There's a complete difference between training for a specific event and goal and just training.

The only one who can beat me is me.

I always wanted to be a sprinter.

Examine the opportunities, the challenges you've given yourself.

It is clearly not the journey for everyone. People succeed in as many ways as there are people. Some can be completely fulfilled with destinations that are much closer to home and more comfortable. But if you long to keep going, then I hope you are able to follow my lead to the places I have gone. To within a whisper of your own personal perfection. To places that are sweeter because you worked so hard to arrive there. To places at the very edge of your dreams.

I've had to learn that not everybody does things my way. But I do expect the absolute best of everyone around me, and I'm disappointed when people don't expect that of themselves.

They think because I'm small, they can do what they want to do to me. But I'm not weak. If I lower my shoulder and they lower they're shoulder, they're going to go down.

A good mentor offers directions and driving tips from the back seat. You still have to drive the car.

As strong as my legs are, it is my mind that has made me a champion.

As an athlete, I was never really comfortable with being a celebrity.

Along with trustworthiness, consistency is the thing to look for when you surround yourself with people who can help you on your quest.

One of the main techniques I used was focusing on the goal and visualising myself competing in the race before the race started.

A bird, music and food -desert island items

You learn as much from those who have failed as from those who have succeeded.

The mind is absolutely instrumental in achieving results, even for athletes. Sports psychology is a very small part, but it's extremely important when you're winning and losing races by hundredths and even thousandths of a second.

It is important that you strive for humility, but not humiliation, for a cool, level-headed confidence, not a stiff, delusional arrogance.

On the £20,000 Mercedes prizes for each winner at the World Athletics Championships in Stuttgart- Anyone good enough to win already has one.

The only way to deal with loss - as a horribly unwelcome guest that you know will show up eventually. And so you deny it and reject it and ignore it and laugh in its face. You toss it out into the street and push it away and fight it off, and only it has landed square in your lap, only then do you deal with it.

I don't always do a lot of predicting, but, when I get a really strong feeling about something, I will tell people.

When you're gone I can go running though the house screaming and no one will ever hear me.

I work hard to improve myself as a person - as a father, as a husband, as a manager. I'm always on that mission.