Underdog Quotes

There were a lot of big games. But I think one of the biggest was one that will go down as one of the biggest upsets in playoff history. We were 15-point underdogs going into Miami and upset them. That was a big one. ~ Chuck Knox

You know, it's quite all right to give the underdog a hand, but only one hand. Keep the other hand on your pistol - or he'll try to eat the one you gave him! ~ H. Beam Piper

Victory is a thousand times sweeter when you're the underdog. ~ Jenny Han

Now his story has shifted. He's no longer the underdog. Instead he's suddenly the luckiest guy in the room, in the school, maybe even in the whole city. He's the luckiest guy anybody knows, and there's no need to root for someone like that to win. Because guys like that - lucky guys, fortunate guys - they don't need any support. And the audience knows it. ~ Jennifer E. Smith

I couldn't quit, because of all the kids, and the blacks, and the little people pulling for me. I represent both the underdog and the overdog in our society. ~ Reggie Jackson

Nobody makes me bleed my own blood. Nobody! ~ Ben Stiller

We grew up learning to cheer on the underdog because we see ourselves in them. ~ Shane Koyczan

I want to show that the underdog can win. I believe we're all the same: you, a slum girl, my mother. ~ Vikas Swarup

I always want to think of myself as an underdog. ~ Donald Trump

Anyway, Angua seemed to have taken this case personally. She always had a soft spot for the underdog.
So did Vimes. You had to. Not because they were pure or noble, because they weren't. You had to be on the side of underdogs because they weren't overdogs. ~ Terry Pratchett

I always identified with that feeling of being an underdog. So I always was looking to connect with and meet people from other cultures, to experience people living a different life that I am. ~ Michael Franti

I have my loyalty to the team of my youth. Everyone I knew was a Red Sox fan. The team that I grew up with was constantly the underdog but managed to prevail. ~ Bill De Blasio

It's not unexpected for me to be in a comedy film anymore; I'm no longer the underdog in that world. ~ Jonah Hill

I have been an underdog my whole life, both in life and in politics. We're going to do well. We're going to pick up a lot of delegates on Super Tuesday. ~ Marco Rubio

Her love for him has always been the underdog. She roots for it as if from a distance. She imagines what they must look like through the uncurtained window, the picture of tranquil domesticity they must now make. He smells like cilantro and beer, like curry and rain. And underneath that, he smells like himself, like nobody else, his body alarming because it is already so familiar. ~ Emily Fridlund

The one that's different often has the odds stacked against them but usually ends up with the biggest rewards so it's always worth it. ~ Torron-Lee Dewar

Hate it or love it, the underdogs come out on top. ~ Curtis Jackson

If the underdog were always right, one might quite easily try to defend him. The trouble is that very often he is but obscurely right, sometimes only partially right, and often quite wrong; but perhaps he is never so altogether wrong and pig-headed and utterly reprehensible as he is represented to be by those who add the possession of prejudices to the other almost insuperable difficulties of understanding him. ~ Jane Addams

I always thought that Seth [Rogen] was a fun, caustic, bombastic, sweet, underdog-type of person that I would root for the way you used to root for Bill Murray or John Candy in "Stripes." Seth had something that very few people you encounter have: he had a writer's mind and he had his own comic point of view. ~ Judd Apatow

What you've lost sight of is what you are, and what you are is what you hate. You're the 10-time WWE Champion! You're the man! You, like the Red Sox, like Boston, are no longer the underdog! You're a dynasty. You are what you hate. You have become the New York Yankees! ~ CM Punk

But fear not: I do underdog. ~ Maria Semple

My favorite driver is always either the bad guy or the underdog. ~ Bo Jackson

I grew up in Sydney in a very political household, where we were all for the underdog. ~ John Pilger

The ant finds kingdoms in a foot of ground. ~ Stephen Vincent Benet

When I see something unjust, I have to intervene - it's hard for me to watch the underdog suffer. ~ Kristen Bell

Do I think it was inherent nobility that brought us out here?" He shook his head. "Maybe. I don't call it nobility, though. I think it's our innate human need to champion the underdog. We are constant optimists. We're the emotional descendents of the caveman who stood defiant in the front of the wooly mammoth. We rebuild cities at the base of Vesuvius, get back on the bicycle when we fall off, whack that hornet's nest every spring. Humans cheer for the couldn't be, believe in the shouldn't be. We love causes; the harder, the more lost they are, the more we love them. Is that nobility?Maybe. Maybe it's a pernicious genetic defect that makes our species susceptible to shared delusion. Whatever it is, it keeps life interesting. ~ Cassandra Davis

Ninety-five percent of women's experiences are about being a victim. Or about being an underdog, or having to survive ... women didn't go to Vietnam and blow things up. They are not Rambo. ~ Jodie Foster

It was not that I disliked people; some of them were interesting and kind. But even the nice ones were no more compelling or important to me than other creatures. Then, as now, to me humans are but one species among billions of other equally vivid and thrilling lives. I was never drawn to other children simply because they were human. Humans seemed to me a rather bullying species, and I was on the side of the underdog. ~ Sy Montgomery

I've always loved the underdog characters. ~ Jim O'Heir

Black anti-semitism is a form of underdog resentment and envy, directed at another underdog who has made it in American society. The remarkable upward mobility of American Jews--rooted chiefly in a history and culture that places a premium on higher education and self-organization--easily lends itself to myths of Jewish unity and homogeneity that have gained currency among other groups, especially among relatively unorganized groups like black Americans. The high visibility of Jews in the upper reaches of the academy, journalism, the entertainment industry, and the professions--though less so percentage-wise in corporate America and national political office--is viewed less as a result of hard work and success fairly won and more as a matter of favoritism and nepotism among Jews. Ironically, calls for black solidarity and achievement are often modeled on myths of Jewish unity--as both groups respond to American xenophobia and racism. But in times such as these, some blacks view Jews as obstacles rather than allies in the struggle for racial justice. ~ Cornel West

When I say ' thug' I mean not a criminal, someone who beats you over the head, I mean the underdog. You could have two people- one person has everything he needs to succeed and one person has nothing. If the person who has nothing succeeds, he's a thug. Cuz he overcame all the obstacles. ~ Tupac Shakur

This isn't some kind of inspirational story. Some scrappy, ragtag underdog tale, some pugilistic match where we're the goodhearted gladiator who brings down the oppressive regime that put him in the arena. They get to have that narrative. We are the ones who enslaved whole worlds full of alien inhabitants. We are the ones who built something called a Death Star under the leadership of a decrepit old goblin who believed in the 'dark side' of some ancient, insane religion. ~ Chuck Wendig

[Michael] Gove will be the underdog fighting for the underdog in this leadership race. ~ Dominic Raab

Neuroscientists rarely have to grapple with the issue of presentism versus existentialism. But in practice, neuroscientists are implicitly presentists. They view the past, present, and future as fundamentally distinct, as the brain makes decisions in the present, based on the memories of the past, to enhance our well being in the future. But despite its intuitive appeal, presentism is the underdog theory in physics and philosophy. ~ Dean Buonomano

Keith Deller's not just an underdog, he's an underpuppy! ~ Sid Waddell

The fact of being an underdog changes people in ways that we often fail to appreciate. It opens doors and creates opportunities and enlightens and permits things that might otherwise have seemed unthinkable. ~ Malcolm Gladwell

Songwriting and poetry are so commonly birthed from underdogs because one can make even the ugliest situations admirable, or more beautiful than the beautiful situations - they are the most graceful media in which the lines of society are distorted. ~ Criss Jami

Aubrey obviously plays Karen's, Sarah Michelle Gellar's, younger sister. And, um, she's sort of always been the underdog in the family and somebody who is not as ambitious or driven as her sister, as Karen's character, so she's sort of always felt like she's had to follow in her sister's footsteps. ~ Amber Tamblyn

I tend to not discriminate when it comes to people I can learn from. Basically, if someone has built a meaningful business in software, technology or media, faced disruption and adversity, and overcame underdog status, I want to know how they did it. ~ Aaron Levie

Comeback stories are popular because there is truth in them. It is a morality tale. The good guy has to win. The underdog has to defeat the big bad wolf. David beat Goliath did he not? The bad guy has to lose. That is how it works. ~ Kambiz Mostofizadeh

I have an underdog spirit in me, and now it feels weird to kind of get my own way more often than not. ~ Mindy Kaling

We trust the bully much better than we trust the underdog. Maybe it's in our nature, but it is so that all around the world there is this certain type that can succeed in politics and it's people who are - alpha types. ~ Jon Gnarr

When the world kicks your ass, don't step in line.
book: stuff i think about ~ Sondra Faye

There was of course no point in trying to monitor Eisman. He saw himself as a crusader, a champion of the underdog, an enemy of sinister authority. He saw himself, roughly speaking, as Spider-Man. ~ Michael Lewis

It's exciting to go from snowboarding to skateboarding because I get to start as the underdog again. ~ Shaun White

Unfair discrimination exists whether we like it or not; I wouldn't have married a gum-chewing vegetarian. Ultimately, we'll help the people we discriminate against if we try to understand more about them; genetics will lead to a world where there is a sympathy for the underdog. ~ John Kendrew

Before you take up that fight against history, do remember that she has a track record of beating 'champions' like you. Therefore, it's best to stick with the flow, and go with what works for everyone.
But . . .
In the event you do decide to go against the convention, all you need is to get your heart straight, and your eyes fixed on the target. You might just be the underdog that will surprise history. ~ Ufuoma Apoki

I just want everybody to know my music and get to know my squad, Remy Boyz; just to show people New Jersey. New Jersey got talent, too. I mean, everybody sleeps on us, and they put us as the underdog. ~ Fetty Wap

It came down to so many factors: an underdog who refused to surrender, a presumed victor who refused to fight, disgruntled Democrats - on the left and right - who, by deserting their party, merely strengthened it, and fearful Republican farmers, who in the end, proved more farmer than Republican. ~ David Pietrusza

I'll never lose the sense of being an underdog. ~ Esai Morales

The Britisher is the top dog and the Indian the underdog in his own country. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

When the Negro was completely an underdog, he needed white spokesmen. Liberals played their parts in this period exceedingly well ... But now that the Negro has rejected his role as an underdog, he has become more assertive in his search for identity and group solidarity; he wants to speak for himself. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Everybody loves the underdog, and then they take an underdog and make him a hero and they hate him. But as long as they can knock you back down, it seems like if you're an underdog again, and things do surface, and they think this is real, 'these guys' intentions are genuine and sincere,' it seems like they will embrace you again. ~ Fred Durst

Hunger and cold, ill-health and pain are nothing. They pass. The thing that remains is ignorant criticism, well-meaning but futile advice, the contempt of a subordinate, the feelings of the underdog. ~ Alice Foote MacDougall

Reason is the champion of the emotional underdog, enabling what Hume called "calm passions" to win out over "violent passions." Reasoning frees us from the tyranny of our immediate impulses by allowing us to serve values that are not automatically activated by what's in front of us. And yet, at the same time, reason cannot produce good decisions without some kind of emotional input, however indirect. ~ Joshua Greene

Understanding the power of the underdog requires an effort. It requires standing up to conventional wisdom. ~ Malcolm Gladwell

I've always felt like the underdog, and I'm comfortable with that label. ~ Pink

The person I am every single day is the person that's growing and getting better. The more people look up to me, the more important it is to be concise with what message I want to leave. That's where I feel like I'm a role model. Maybe not to everyone, but for a lot of minorities, I am, and I kinda love that - the role model for the underdog. ~ Ruby Rose

You about to play an opponent who is either bigger, stronger, faster or more experienced than you. Is there any hope at all? Absolutely, because one factor is in your favor: You are the Underdog! ~ Micah Miller

Stand up for the underdog, the 'loser.' Sometimes having the strength to show loving support for unacknowledged others turns the tides of our own lives. ~ Alexandra Katehakis

You can't go on all the time being whatever's necessary. Youve got to have some conviction, and I'm convinced I don't want to be anyone's underdog. ~ Tsitsi Dangarembga

I was never supposed to play in college, let alone the NBA, so I always feel like I have something to prove. No one ever expected me to be here, so that feeling of being an underdog is ingrained in me. It's a natural part of my consciousness. ~ Steve Nash

I'd said to my sweetheart a couple of days before that the SAG and Spirit Award nomination was amazing and I had no attachment to the Academy Award. I knew I was an underdog so I just decided to sleep through the announcement. ~ John Hawkes

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that in 1975, 31 percent of college teachers were female; by 2009, the number had grown to 49.2 percent.7 There are more women teaching in college than ever, and it is quite possible that their presence, coupled with our discovery of the postmodern narrative, has had a feminizing effect on the collective unconscious of faculty thought. Strong winds of compassion blow across campus quads. Women are more empathetic than men, more giving, simply more bothered by anyone's underdog status. Many of the female adjuncts I have spoken to seem blessed and cursed by feelings of maternity toward the students. Women think about their actions, and the consequences of their actions, in a deeper way than do men. ~ Professor X.

Bottom dogs have to be persuaded of the desirability of inequality. ~ William Donaldson

Victory is ten times sweeter for the underdog. ~ Jenny Han

A streak of Puritanism runs deep within American society. Permissive and pioneering as we may be on the one hand, we are strict and conservative on the other. As much as we may be a country of mavericks and entrepreneurs, we are also a country of finger waggers and name-callers. As much as we may be a country of compassion for the underdog, we are also a country that believes in self-reliance. ~ Edward M. Hallowell

I love an underdog. No, I don't necessarily mean the cartoon. I mean like David, as in Goliath, or the Bears, as in The Bad News Bears. ~ Nancy Lublin

Hope had been in the NICU for a week before she was named. The name her parents had picked out was Allison - Allegra and Allison, for nauseating twin symmetry - but after all that transpired, they changed their minds and decided to call her Hope, no explanation needed. She was a survivor, an underdog who had prevailed; ~ Elin Hilderbrand

I've grown up playing pop music for the experimental crowd and I always feel like I'm pushing something weird on people. I had this underdog feeling. It's crazy that all of a sudden I'm the overhyped band you read about on the blogs. ~ Girl Talk

But, it's much easier to do that than produce the movies from scratch. It excites the same thing in me, whether we build it from the ground up, or whether we come on when the movie is done or almost done. The idea of supporting the underdog and getting a smaller movie out there in a big way is equally exciting. ~ Jason Blum

Yet as I read the birth stories about Jesus I cannot help but conclude that though the world may be tilted toward the rich and powerful, God is tilted toward the underdog. ~ Philip Yancey

I could not, somehow, make contact with any familiar emotion. As I lingered in front of a lighted window, apparently beguiled by a pair of burgundy leather shoes, I could only identify a feeling of exclusion. I felt as if the laws of the universe no longer applied to me, since I was outside the normal frames of reference. A biological nonentity, to be phased out. And somewhere, intruding helplessly and to no avail into my consciousness, the anger of the underdog, plotting bloody revolution, plotting revenge. ~ Anita Brookner

I love everything about Philadelphia, and its food is like the city itself: real-deal, hearty, and without pretension. We've always had an underdog vibe as a city, but that just makes us try harder, and I love our scrappiness and scruffiness. ~ Lisa Scottoline

Evsei Slonim would have seen himself as a member of the intelligentsia, a classless class whose features Nabokov described as""the spirit of self-sacrifice, intense participation in political causes or political thought, intense sympathy for the underdog of any nationality, fanatical integrity, tragic inability to sink to compromise, true spirit of international responsibility. ~ Stacy Schiff

I guess we all feel like underdogs. I remember being a freshman at Brown University and not knowing what a WASP was. We were reading an Edward Albee play, and - it was just a moment of accepting, certainly that I wasn't very worldly, but also that a lot of the plays that I'd been reading, let's say other kinds of family plays, were speaking a foreign language. ~ Stephen Karam

As a human being, I will always feel that where there is oppression, I am with the underdog. ~ Hany Abu-Assad

If you're from South London you feel like you're always trying to win people over, so perhaps that underdog passion comes through. ~ Jessie Ware

It seems to be the heart of much of my work. I grew up seeing a lot of racism in the South, but I've seen it all over the world. Don't care for it at all. I was poor, so I'm used to the underdog position. ~ Joe R. Lansdale

I'm kind of a grinder. I'm a Cinderella, an underdog story who fights. ~ Zach Johnson

Moon grew up, lost weight and became a famous singer, which proves that there is no justice in the universe, or that indeed, there is justice. Your interpretation of the denouement mostly depends on your race, creed, hair color, social and economic class and political proclivities -- whether or not you are a revisionist feminist and have a habit of cheering for the underdog. What is the moral of the story? Well, it's a tale of revenge, obviously written from the Chinese American girl's perspective. My intentions are to veer you away from teasing and humiliating little chubby Chinese girls like myself. And that one wanton act of humiliation you perpetrated on the fore or aft of that boat on my arrival may be one humiliating act too many.

For although we are friendly neighbors, you don't really know me. You don't know the depth of my humiliation. And you don't know what I can do. You don't know what is beneath my doing. ~ Marilyn Chin

There's no need to fear, Underdog is here! ~ Wally Cox

Dear Sawyer and Quin, If you ever read this and I'm gone I want you to know something that has been weighing on me. I watch you two play and it can be so sad sometimes. You two have been best friends since Sawyer's birth. Always inseparable. It's been adorable , but comes with its challenges. I'm worried when I watch you boys. Quinton, you are always driven by your ego. You're strong and talented, but much too determined to beat down everyone in your efforts to be the best. You push yourself to win a competition, then shove it in someone's face. I've rarely seen you compliment others, but you always give yourself a pat on the back. You don't play anything for the love of it, you play to win and normally do. I've seen you tear down your brother so many times just to feel good about yourself. You don't have to do that, dear. You don't have to spend your life trying to prove that you're amazing. One day you'll fail and be alone because you've climbed to the top of a pyramid with only enough room for yourself. Don't let it get to that point and if you do, learn humility from your brother. He could do without so much of it. Sawyer, just because you're most often the underdog and the peaceful introspective kid, don't think I'm letting you off the hook. Your humility has become your worst enemy. It's so intense that I wonder if it will be your vice one day, instead of your greatest virtue. It's one thing to believe you are below all men, even when you're not, but it's another thing ~ Marilyn Grey

Life is never more fun than when you're the underdog competing against the giants. ~ Ross Perot

History, as it was purveyed to us, was not so much a narrative, not even the detached observation of the rise and fall of fortunes and cultures. It was the litany of loss, attended by the inevitable sympathy for the vanquished side. The past was always the underdog, and we sensed it was only right to be on its side against the bully future. We were left with the impression that our own grip was loosening on some essential pediment as one empire after another was swallowed up, and the centuries collapsed into our own. ~ Patricia Hampl

The underdog often starts the fight, and occasionally the upper dog deserves to win. ~ E.W. Howe

The way I see it, you can live your life as is, continuing to feel like an underdog, or you can step up. Be someone who matters, and make a change. ~ Kayla Krantz

A song is not a tool for changing a human heart in the way that a wrench is a tool for changing a bolt, but it was the tool I had, and I was the tool the OSP had.
The cansos in "Songs from Underneath" were not really as subtle as a wrench. Their primary trope was the ancient trick of making the viewpoint character a victim of oppression, because people identify passionately with a strong viewpoint character, and there is intense pleasure in identifying with the narrator of a sad story or song. In "Black Beauty" that trick had made people begin to think that beating horses was bad; it was the trope that make privileged white children burn with outrage at "Native Son" and prudes weep over prostitutes in "Elle frequentait la rue Pigalle" and "My Name is Not Bitch." They also received, at no extra cost, the delicious smug superiority of sympathizing with an underdog, unlike their less-enlightened neighbors.
Their primary ~ John Barnes

People only rooted for the underdog in movies, not in middle school. ~ David Wright

Boxing is made for film - there is corruption, violence, tragedy and the chance that the underdog can catch the champion with one lucky punch. ~ Asif Kapadia

Yes, I cheer for the underdog, because I've been the underdog most of my life, and I know what it feels like to be the only person wishing for my success. ~ Sabrina Newby

Always bet on the underdog. They've got ambition and nothing to lose. ~ Clint Borgen

Speed of lightning! Roar of thunder! Fighting all who rob or plunder! Underdog! ~ Jim Butcher

My whole career, I've had an issue with always kind of being an underdog and making a big mistake when it counts and falling and having to climb back up. One moment everything will be peachy and everyone will be saying the nicest things about me and loving me, and the next minute I'm the worst, I'm evil, all these things. It's like a fallen angel. ~ Johnny Weir

I may be in deep slop if the findings of a new study published in the latest issue of Neurology, journal of the American Academy of Neurology, prove to be true. The study conducted by University of Eastern Finland tested 1,449 people averaging 71 years of age and found that the subjects labeled "highly cynical" had a 2.54 times greater risk of developing dementia than those with the lowest cynicism rating.

I'd better tell my youngest son, Andy, about the study, too. I think he became a cynic before he turned 30, the predictable result of the massive self-administered force-feedings of the Story of Man in his pursuit of a Ph.D. in American history.

In Andy's defense, reading too much, too soon, of our track record on earth would make a cynic of anyone. Fortunately, his perusals have turned him into a champion of the underdog as well, another inevitability of historical research, particularly studies of our brutal conquest of the American West. ~ Lionel Fisher

I always wanted to be the underdog. For me, as a portrait photographer, it's the kiss of death to become well known. I did my best work when no one knew who I was. People weren't threatened by me because they didn't think I was a big deal. ~ Platon

I've always been aggressive and an underdog, and my dad was worried that I would always be that: constantly seeking inspiration from negativity. ~ Doseone

I'm very open to fresh talent, and I love the underdog, people who have been counted out, because they come in with a different type of hunger. I'm all for the underdog, so I'd like to talk to anybody who shows up with that sort of thirst. ~ Tyler Perry

Leadership almost always involves thinking and acting like the underdog. That's because leaders work to change things, and the people who are winning rarely do. ~ Seth Godin

No matter our size or shape, everyone deserves a safe place in this world." ~ from BIG SMALL DOG, a children's story about overcoming bullying and adversity, and discovering unity and friendship. ~ Suzanne V. Marshall