Best 1605 quotes in «athlete quotes» category

Well, I couldn't play an instrument. I'd just stand up front and announce the numbers. They had me sing a little, but that was a horrible mistake. I can't carry a tune in a bucket. We played black theaters and nightclubs all over hell. One-nighters. Apollo Theater in Harlem and the Earle Theater in Philly - That was big time for blacks.

Well, I do feel that I carry the responsibility of representing my country wherever I am, and this responsibility came with the success that I had in last couple of years, not just myself but the whole group of tennis players that comes from Serbia. And athletes in general are, in this moment, the biggest ambassadors that our country has.

Well, no athlete respects a big, fat coach who's going to stand there and rest the watch on his stomach.

We lose a lot of young athletes because tennis is such a difficult sport. It's not like kicking a soccer ball.

We need to educate our elite coaches more and have a better approach to teaching the athletes about how to be healthy rather than berate them, humiliate them, use tactics that could scar them for life.

We professional athletes are very lucky. Unlike most mortals, we are given the privilege of dying twice - once when we retire and again when death takes us.

We're not meant to do it on our own. We're meant to do life with God and with each other. I've been fortunate to have friends that are willing to invest in me even on the days when I'm not able to invest back into them. I'm thankful for people that have that selfless attitude and have helped me become a successful person and a successful athlete.

We're professional athletes. People know who we are, and if there's some way we can help with a friend or someone in need, that's a responsibility we have. I really strongly believe that.

We're the greatest athletes in the world without a doubt.

We should try to teach the young people values that are useful to them whether they become professional athletes or not.

We tend to look at successful athletes and make them almost bigger than life. I have seen many young men who have achieved greatness. I have also seen those who have come up a little short of their potential. I do know that those who succeed have been able to recognize within themselves the potential to do something well and then work hard to prepare themselves for that eventual opportunity. Others wait for the opportunity to come and then start to work, thus coming up a little short.

We typically don't choose our athletes until about a month prior to the Games because anything can happen.

We used to have a lot of fun. We never had any problems. We always ate. The fact that we didn't have steak? Who had steak?

We thought I was going to be a great athlete, and we were wrong, and I thought I was going to be a great entertainer, and that wasn't it either. I'm going to be an American Citizen. First class.

We understand that athletes aren't necessarily role models, but we at least expect them to abide by the basic laws of the state.

Whatever luck I had, I made. I was never a natural athlete, but I paid my dues in sweat and concentration and took the time necessary to learn karate and become world champion.

We were the quintessence of athletic atrocity.

We will win with character, not with characters.

What drove me to become the world's greatest bodybuilder is no different from what drives other athletes to become great tennis players or boxers or jockeys.

What I can tell them is the way you become an Olympic champion is to start working now. I tell them why it's always worth it to put the time and effort into something you want to be good at.

What has benefited me the most is learning I can't control what happens outside of my pitching.

What makes a great endurance athlete is the ability to absorb potential embarrassment, and to suffer without complaint.

What I tell student athletes is first of all, you've made good choices this far in order to be able to be in college and to be an athlete. Keep making good choices.

....What I learned was that these athletes were not disabled, they were superabled. The Olympics is where heroes are made. The Paralympics is where heroes come.

What makes a great endurance athlete is the ability to absorb potenial embarrassment, and to suffer without complaint. I was discovering that if it was a matter of gritting my teeth, not caring how it looked, and outlasting everybody else, I won. It didn't seem to matter what sport it was-in a straight-ahead, long-distant race, I could beat anybody. If it was a suffer-fest, I was good at it.

What makes something special is not just what you have to gain, but what you feel there is to lose.

What other people may find in poetry or art museums, I find in the flight of a good drive.

What's not realized about good novelists is that they're as competitive as good athletes. They study each other - where the other person is good and where the person is less good. Writers are like that but don't admit it.

What's great about stand-up unlike athletes and other things when you get old you get old and rusty.

What separates sports from entrepreneurism, however, is that in business we constantly have to overcome undefined and unpredictable challenges. Athletes train for specific events and conditions, whereas entrepreneurs generally have little idea what they will encounter along the way.

What was most important to me at the Olympics was going out there and performing my best. When I messed up the first jump combination, which was my big move, it hit me that I messed up the program of my life.

What you lack in talent can be made up with desire, hustle, and giving 110 percent all the time.

What we're seeing is an era where governments and huge organizations such as the IOC don't have accountability. They don't have accountability to the athletes they are supposed to be protecting and they don't have accountability to the truth. What we've seen out of Russia is a continual denial, no matter what has been presented. They are still blaming Grigory Rodchenkov as an individual who did this all on his own.

When anyone tells me I can't do anything, I'm just not listening anymore.

When a lot of athletes get done playing, they end up in some really tough positions. They have a hard time transitioning because their identity is wrapped up in who they are as a player and what they do rather than who they can be in Christ. We desire to help people understand the invitation that God has given each one of us as Christ followers to be a part of this global redemptive story. If you can't give your life to something with meaning and purpose of that magnitude then there's nothing there.

When Babe Didrickson Zaharias, often called the 'athletic phenomenon of all time,' won the British woman's gold tournament, people said of her what they had said many times before: "Oh, she's an automatic champion, a natural athlete." When Babe started golfing in earnest thirteen years ago she hit as many as 1,000 balls in one afternoon, playing until her hands were so sore they had to be taped.

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.

When considering the stature of an athlete or for that matter any person, I set great store in certain qualities which I believe to be essential in addition to skill. They are that the person conducts his or her life with dignity, with integrity, courage, and perhaps most of all, with modesty. These virtues are totally compatible with pride, ambition, and competitiveness

Whenever women have made any social gains, whether it's being accepted as athletes or moving into the professions, it's going to be contradicted with an image of woman as small, diminished, reduced, brought back to a childish body. The result is that a lot of extraordinary power is going to be diverted into making oneself smaller than one is meant to be.

Whenever you compete, trying harder is truly the game of diminishing returns and a losing one at that

When I broke into professional hockey at 17 I was told that I was too small and too slow and I wouldn't make the NHL. Now it's kind of flip-flopped and the sense is I can't be a good coach because I was a great athlete.

When first starting to work with someone you try to get them in the same mindset that you were in when you were successful, and I realized the best thing you can ever do is realize that they are not you. They have a different persona and mindset, and you have to figure out what works best within your communication with that athlete.

When I came into boxing, I brought it to the next level with adverts and doing pantomime and people just got jealous of me doing that.

When I finished the Boston race in 1967, there were two things I wanted to do. I wanted to become a better athlete because my first marathon was 4:20. In those days, that was considered a jogging time and I knew people were going to tease me. But I was more fascinated with what women could do if they only had the chance.

When I first started out, I was considered a crackpot. The doctors used to say, "Don't go to that Jack LaLanne, you'll get hemorrhoids, you won't get an erection, you women will look like men, you athletes will get muscle-bound -- this is what I had to go through.

When I look back at the world championships, I know there's a lot of room for improvement, I'm always up for a challenge. The Olympics, they don't define me, I've had some good and some bad. But it's all about the Olympic experience.

When I go through the airport and see white women walking through the airport barefooted, like athlete's feet don't exist, there's something wrong.

When I'm in my groove there is no thinking. Everything just happens.

When I'm in the gym, I'm in the gym, and that is my focus. But when I'm not in the gym, I'm enjoying being a mom and taking care of those responsibilities .. They really do provide me with the balance that I need to be a more complete athlete.

When I started out as a little kid, I didn't say 'I just want to run football.' I wanted to be a great athlete.