Athlete Quotes

Zen students see themselves as athletes. Their competitive sport is enlightenment; only with enlightenment do we compete. ~ Frederick Lenz

When should a college athlete turn pro? Not until he has earned all he can in college as an amateur. ~ Will Rogers

I feel like at the Olympics I gave the best performance of my life and I wasn't rewarded for that as an athlete. Yes, my fans and my mom were happy about it, but I didn't win that gold medal. ~ Johnny Weir

As an athlete, you figure you work your whole life to have what you have, and to be able to show the world what you have and how proud you are of it, that's always fun. ~ Ricky Williams

As an athlete, success is not just about winning; it is about working hard and giving it all you have. I have always taken one match at a time and worked hard; when I succeeded, I worked further on the aspects of the game which worked for me; when I failed, I listed out my weaknesses and worked on them. ~ Rohan Bopanna

An athlete needs to read situations before they happen. ~ Dwyane Wade

Every athlete has doubts. Elite runners in particular are insecure people. You need someone to affirm that what you are doing is right. ~ Lynn Jennings

I have a big-picture outlook, I am willing to fall, and I understand it's ok to fall, but I am going to get back up, I may take a step back, but in the end, I am going to take a giant leap forward. ~ Tiger Woods

Growing up in Harlem, I had the chance to practice with a Negro League team. At fifteen, I was over six feet tall and a fair athlete, but my skills didn't come close to some of the players I saw. ~ Walter Dean Myers

Female athletes are stereotyped by the general population
and usually as homosexuals. ~ Billie Jean King

Before I go out on the field every day, I tell myself, 'You are having fun, and you want to set a good example to those who are watching. ~ Cory Snyder

If a girl wants to sell her body, so be it. None of my business. Don't athletes sell their bodies, too? People can do behind closed doors whatever they want, as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else. ~ Oliver Markus Malloy

Desire is the most important factor in the success of any athlete. ~ Bill Shoemaker

Breath is critical to everything, to our relaxation, to our flexibility, to our mobility, to our strength and to our power. Knowing how to use our breath and tapping into this breath strength is critical for success as strength athletes. ~ Brett Jones

People assuming that because I'm a great athlete, I can dance. But no. My rhythm is off a little bit. ~ Jackie Joyner-Kersee

I think that in order to get better as an athlete and to see whatever kind of results you're after, you have to make goals. Whether you write them down or tell someone about them, it's important to set goals for yourself in order to achieve any kind of success. ~ Abby Wambach

With athletes, it's never fully understood the level to which we push ourselves. Especially in an endurance sport. ~ Clara Hughes

If the athlete is fair with the press, he deserves fairness back. ~ Arnold Palmer

Knievel seemed braver and more brazen - and more unhinged - than any other athlete-cum-thrill-seeker of his era. ~ Douglas Brinkley

A knowledge of our ability to consciously radiate health, strength, and harmony will bring us into a realization that there is nothing to fear because we are in touch with Infinite Strength. This knowledge can be gained only by making a practical application of this information. We learn by doing-through practice the athlete becomes powerful. ~ Charles F. Haanel

Athletes and actors do really crazy things, and we do them under weird circumstances because we love what we do and because we take things in an extreme manner. ~ Anika Noni Rose

Before even Court Grip, I just wanted to be a part of a brand that I felt that listened to the athlete and really catered to the athlete, and gave us what we were looking for. ~ Dwyane Wade

Looking good is important. We're our own premium brand as professional athletes, so you want to be thoughtful about presentation and represent yourself and your city and sport as best you can. ~ C. J. Wilson

My three keys to success: One, work hard. Two, be your own person. And three, have a passion for what you're doing. ~ Juli Inkster

An athlete who tells you the training is always easy and always fun simply hasn't been there. Goals can be elusive which makes the difficult journey all the more rewarding. ~ Alberto Salazar

We didn't call it a sport necessarily, and skaters definitely weren't thought of as athletes, we were thought of as misfits. ~ Mike Vallely

The thing that concerns me the most is when I hear that people are making a lot of money a lot of ways except for the athletes, whether it's on the bowl games, the TV contracts, the conferences, the schools, the coaches, however you want to say it. ~ Nick Saban

You start seeing all of the athlete profiles on NBC, and whenever the Summer Olympics come up, I feel like I share the same experience with the Summer Olympians. ~ Lindsey Vonn

There is something in the Olympics, indefinable, springing from the soul, that must be preserved. ~ Chris Brasher

I think cricket is there in Usain Bolt's blood. Since I got to watch from close quarters, it was amazing to see him run up to bowl. The perfect delivery stride is understandable because he is a world champion athlete. But the manner - he loaded at the crease and then bowled the ball - left me zapped. He looked like a natural cricketer. ~ Harbhajan Singh

If you're a professional athlete, and after the game, you're eating at the same place that somebody in the audience is eating at? You're making a mistake. ~ John Salley

The problem with many athletes is they take themselves seriously and their sport lightly. ~ Michael Waltrip

Effort is between you and you. ~ Ray Lewis

I enjoy sports, and love being involved in any outdoor sport from volleyball to softball. I'm not being immodest when I say I'm a natural athlete. ~ Ginger Rogers

The way to stay popular as a quarterback in the NFL is never to play. ~ Cliff Stoudt

It's really impossible for athletes to grow up. On the one hand, you're still a child, still playing a game. But on the other hand, you're a superhuman hero that everyone dreams of being. No wonder we have such a hard time understanding who we are. ~ Billie Jean King

A man going quietly about his business all day long expends far more muscular energy than an athlete who lifts a huge weight once a day. This has been proved physiologically, and so the social sum total of everybody's little everyday efforts, especially when added together, doubtless releases far more energy into the world than do rare heroic feats. This total even makes the single heroic feat look positively minuscule, like a grain of sand on a mountaintop with a megalomaniacal sense of its own importance. ~ Robert Musil

A lot of people probably think I'm not athletic or don't even try to work out or whatever, but I do. Just because you're big doesn't mean you can't be an athlete. And just because you work out doesn't mean you're going to have a 12-pack. I work out to make sure I can do my job to the best of my ability. Other than that, I'm not going up there trying to be a fitness model. ~ Prince Fielder

I feel that my advances in the business world will shatter a lot of white myths about black athletes-and give some pride and hope to a lot of young blacks. ~ O.J. Simpson

If you want to know the value of one year, just ask a student who failed a course.
If you want to know the value of one month, ask a mother who gave birth to a premature baby.
If you want to know the value of one hour, ask the lovers waiting to meet.
If you want to know the value of one minute, ask the person who just missed the bus.
If you want to know the value of one second, ask the person who just escaped death in a car accident.
And if you want to know the value of one-hundredth of a second, ask the athlete who won a silver medal in the Olympics. ~ Marc Levy

I really didn't have one particular athlete I liked growing up. ~ Masahiro Tanaka

When I was in high school I was a super serious athlete. I wasn't fun at all. ~ Seann William Scott

I've been the type of person [and] the type of athlete, I don't like to be given anything. I like to earn. ~ Shaquille O'Neal

I have a real passion for children. I always wanted to teach and only became an athlete because my parents told my brother Parenthesis and me that we should use any God-given talent we had. ~ Gail Devers

For example, I like using strong Greek and Roman Renaissance characters as part of my series. ~ Frank Bruno

My heritage is something that I have always been aware of, however, some would say that there is a disproportionately low number of Asians as professional athletes. I take pride in trying my best to be a role model to show young Asian American boys and girls that they are only limited by the size of their dreams. ~ Nathan Adrian

A sexual athlete is not likely to find sufficient energy for work of another athletic kind, and the acting of great parts most definitely was and always will be athletic, depending on inner if not on visible energy. Members of other professions that depend on the expenditure of physical energy must, I believe, find similar difficulties when attempting to double up on their energies. One has often heard that the most magnificent specimens of boxers, wrestlers and champions in almost every branch of athletic sport prove to be disappointing upon the removal of that revered jockstrap. ~ Laurence Olivier

Also, I'd like to play an athlete again, while I'm still physically fit, or a musician, like Nat King Cole, because I play the trumpet and sing. I'd like to incorporate that into a character. ~ Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje

Im not an Athlete, Im a ballplayer ~ John Kruk

I think that is a universal adolescent feeling, trying to find your place. The adolescent who is perfectly adjusted to his environment, I've yet to meet. ~ Roger Bannister

I usually use quick sketches that I accumulated from the figure drawing classes I once instructed. ~ Frank Bruno

In my 20s, it was easy. In your 40s, it's a lot more challenging. You have to look at it like you're an actor, but you're also a professional athlete. You have to train. ~ Daniel Wu

Every athlete acquires routines as a way to help control nerves. ~ Hope Solo

Honey, I appreciate that so much, I really do, but it's not just transferring that I'm worrying about. I'm worried about his mind-set. When he gets to UVA, he needs to be focused. He's going there to be a student athlete. He can't be driving down to North Carolina every weekend. It just isn't practical. You're both so young. Peter's already making big life decisions based on you, and who even knows what's going to happen with you two in the future. You're teenagers. Life doesn't always work out the way you think it's going to work out. . . . I don't know if Peter ever told you this, but Peter's dad and I got married very young. And I'd - I'd just hate to see you two make the same mistakes we did." She hesitates. "Lara Jean, I know my son, and he's not going to let you go unless you let him go first." I ~ Jenny Han

I've been a pretty selfish mom and a very unselfish athlete for about three years now and it's time to put my family first. It's probably time to move on. ~ Melanie Roach

She is her odd self. The kiln has been fired. She is a person persnickity about keeping her house clean, but not above spitting on her desk to rub out a coffee stain. She will never be an athlete, or a mathematician, or a skinny person, or someone whose heart isn't snagged by the sight of fireflies on a summer night and the lilting cadence of a few good lines of poetry. ~ Elizabeth Berg

When Arthur Ashe plays tennis, his purpose each day is to play the game in a way he has never played it before. It may be a backhand he uses, one that he may never have used before in that circumstance. His play is a fresh integration of his world at the instant of action. A really great scientist has the whole past at his disposal. At any instant he is rebuilding the world, molecule by molecule, in his subconscious. That is what you want in an athlete or a scientist. ~ Edwin Land

I'm just going to go out there and do my best. ~ Katie Hoff

An athlete cannot run with money in his pockets. He must run with hope in his heart and dreams in his head. ~ Emil Zatopek

I guess I'm just not the film femme fatale type. I giggle too much. I have freckles and a turned-up nose, and I walk like an athlete. ~ Joan Caulfield

The one thing all famous authors, world class athletes, business tycoons, singers, actors, and celebrated achievers in any field have in common is that they all began their journeys when they were none of these things.
Yet still, they began their journeys. ~ Mike Dooley

A star can win any game; a team can win every game. ~ Jack Ramsay

Unlike the traditional athlete, I've got to do more than just engage in my sport to put food on the table. When I'm done running, it's straight to the office. ~ Dean Karnazes

The coverage [of crimes] is different. It's less angry when white [athletes] are involved, less accusatory, less judgemental. I see that in the pieces that are written and reported. At times it bothers me to the point that I just stop reading ... just stop. ~ Michael Wilbon

If you are afraid of failure, you don't deserve success. ~ Nastia Liukin

Losing is the bane and bugbear of every professional athlete's existence, but in baseball the monster seems to hang closer than in other sports, its chilly claws and foul breath palpable around the neck hairs of the infielder bending for his crosshand scoop or the reliever slipping his first two fingers off-center on the ball seams before delivering his two-and-two cut fastball. ~ Roger Angell

There's just so much negative media surrounding professional athletes or sports in general, whether it's kids that are pressured too much or professional athletes making mistakes that influence their family. ~ Kristopher Belman

As an athlete, you'll never feel bad about losing, but what you will feel bad about is underperforming. That's a real thing and it happens a lot when we don't live up to our potential. And that keeps you up at night and can give you years and years of regret. It could be a relationship, it could be a homework assignment, or it could be an athletic competition. If you don't go out and perform to the best of your ability, it will really bother you. ~ Chael Sonnen

One athlete does not make a team.
One singer does not make a band.
One actor does not make an ensemble.
One participant does not make a contest.
One employee does not make a company.

One stroke does not make a portrait.
One word does not make an essay.
One paragraph does not make a thesis.
One note does not make a symphony.
One instrument does not make an orchestra.

One finger does not make a hand.
One toe does not make a foot.
One lip does not make a voice.
One member does not make a body.
One cell does not make a being.

One memory does not make an experience.
One habit does not make a character.
One act does not make a destiny.
One day does not make a year.
One moment does not make a lifetime.

One man does not make a family.
One home does not make a neighborhood.
One clan does not make nation.
One tribe does not make a continent.
One people does not make a world. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

I think you always strive to get better as an athlete. That's the difference between good and great, in my opinion. ~ Arian Foster

I'd never been much of an athlete, due to a physical condition I'd had since birth (unathleticism). Perhaps if there were a sport centered around lying on your couch in a neurotic stupor all day, I'd take an interest. ~ Colson Whitehead

Barry Sanders, by far. Not only one of my favorite Lions, but one of my favorite NFL athletes. It's all about highlights for me, I'm a receiver! Sanders is like the NFL version of an And1 mix tape. ~ Nate Burleson

I usually have a title in mind before I start. ~ Frank Bruno

The mind is the athlete; the body is simply the means it uses to run faster or longer, jump higher, shoot straighter, kick better, swim harder, hit further, or box better. Hoppie's dictum to me, "First with the head and then with the heart," was more than simply mixing brains with guts. It meant thinking well beyond the powers of normal concentration and then daring your courage to follow your thoughts. ~ Bryce Courtenay

I've played with IVs before, during and after games. I've played with a broken hand, a sprained ankle, a torn shoulder, a fractured tooth, a severed lip, and a knee the size of a softball. I don't miss 15 games because of a toe injury that everybody knows wasn't that serious in the first place. ~ Kobe Bryant

Athletes have a certain stubbornness that carries us through and makes us do things that people say we can't do. ~ Kim Clijsters

When you are an athlete, it's difficult to take time off and say you want to come back without everyone judging you and attacking you. ~ Johnny Weir

Who is to blame for this most recent of sports disgraces in America? The culture that flings young athletes like Tyson up out of obscurity, makes millionaires of them and watches them self-destruct? ~ Joyce Carol Oates

There stood a young man who had the figure of a Greek athlete and the face of an English one...Just where he began to be beautiful the clothes started. ~ E. M. Forster

In sports, you simply aren't considered a real champion until you have defended your title successfully. Winning it once can be a fluke; winning it twice proves you are the best. ~ Althea Gibson

The wine god sighed. 'Oh Hades if I know. But remember, boy, that a kind act can sometimes be as powerful as a sword. As a mortal, I was never a great fighter or athlete or poet. I only made wine. The people in my village laughed at me. They said I would never amount to anything. Look at me now. Sometimes small things can become very large indeed.' He left me alone to think about that. And as I watched Clarisse and Chris singing a stupid campfire song together, holding hands in the darkness, where they thought nobody could see them, I had to smile. ~ Rick Riordan

If you want to be an athlete, there's no way around it: You have to go to the gym. You can't Google your way to it. ~ Michael Horton

I have a Ph.D. in philosophy and sports science. At 14, I went through this really tough Soviet training system. A lot of my roommates got psychologically broken or physically injured. Either you came through, or you were out. I made my Ph.D. work in the field of young athletes aged 14-19 because at this age any human is changing. ~ Wladimir Klitschko

With F1, it's really a combination of many things. You have to have good endurance, good strength in certain muscles, you need to be fast, have good reactions and good decisions. It's not as simple as one thing. You need to be a complete athlete. ~ Valtteri Bottas

In Lake Placid we have Bible studies and it's awesome to be able to share your struggles as an athlete and as a Christian with others Christian athletes. That's one of the coolest things about sports ministry. We can share these common experiences with other Christians. Having Lolo as a teammate, for example, has been great. ~ Elana Meyers

Despite my inability to qualify to qualify in South Africa, I did really appreciate the support I got from the IOC particularly the Olympic Solidarity, members of the ICF, my own National Olympic Committee, friends and athletes from the Slalom Community. When I got the wild card, it was the cherry on the cake that I could not have imagined. It was much more than I expected for myself. ~ Benjamin Boukpeti

Superior athletes want to be accountable for their own results. - ~ Marv Dunphy

The 2.4 million bright, brave, incredibly fit and remarkably talented young Americans who have served in our armed forces since we were attacked on 9-11-01 are all volunteers. As General Petraeus put it during a conversation we had in Afghanistan, 'They all came or stayed, knowing they were going to war.' For more than a decade, these patriots and their loved ones have made extraordinary sacrifices for this country. They embody the classical definition of heroes: those who put themselves at risk for the benefit of others. ~ Oliver North

Rosie knows how to play ball. She's an athlete, for sure. ~ Geena Davis

But at school, I wasn't athletic, and if you're not athlete in high school, it's kind of hard to find your place, so play practice seemed perfect, especially if you were as uncoordinated as I was. ~ Piper Perabo

We old athletes carry the disfigurements and markings of contests remembered only by us and no one else. Nothing is more lost than a forgotten game. ~ Pat Conroy

It's unfortunate when an athlete's talent comes with so little forethought or leadership [ ... ] The Falcons need to start over. If next year's team ends up being young and hungry but fairly average, the last thing you want as a general manager or coach is to have a blowhard cornerback whining about his contract leading the charge, no matter how good he is. ~ Jeff Schultz

The problem with being married to an athlete who is, like, 19 feet tall and can just eat, like, 17 burgers at 11 o'clock at night is, you're like, 'I'll have just three of those burgers,' and you think you're being good because he had 19 and you had three! ~ Kaley Cuoco

I was an aesthete rather than an athlete, and my only wish was to be an ecstatic wanderer. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

I have to play baseball to make me happy. I have to be an athlete. But when it's all said and done, I'll be a normal father. A normal-type house man. ~ Rickey Henderson

It took me time to realize that the men who won Olympic gold medals in the decathlon are just men, just like me. ~ Dan O'Brien

The letter from Dan Gilbert, the booing of the Cleveland fans, the jerseys being burned
seeing all that was hard for them. My emotions were more mixed. It was easy to say, 'OK, I don't want to deal with these people ever again.' But then you think about the other side. What if I were a kid who looked up to an athlete, and that athlete made me want to do better in my own life, and then he left? How would I react? I've met with Dan, face-to-face, man-to-man. We've talked it out. Everybody makes mistakes. I've made mistakes as well. Who am I to hold a grudge? ~ LeBron James

People don't think an athlete nowadays can have a team-first mentality and I do. ~ Abby Wambach

I just felt like reflecting on my junior year, when I didn't know what I was doing, I left a lot of stuff out there. Actually, I gained close to 700 yards more and I took myself out of a lot of games. ~ Marcus Allen

There is something that can happen to every athlete and every human being; the instinct to slack off, to give in to pain, to give less than your best; the instinct to hope you can win through luck or through your opponent not doing his best, instead of going to the limit and past your limit where victory is always found. Defeating those negative instincts that are out to defeat us, is the difference between winning and losing - and we all face that battle every day. ~ Jesse Owens