Quotes About Athletes

#1. I never competed against athletes. I competed against perfection.

Carl Lewis

#2. I had a great interest in sports. I had three older brothers who were great athletes. I was not.

George J. Mitchell

#3. Becoming a coach has to be in your blood. There are hundreds and thousands of former athletes out there, but there are maybe only 10 people who want to dedicate their lives by taking on a job as a coach. Not only a master, a coach should also be a brother or sister to his apprentices.

Joe Taslim

#4. If we carry on filling up the calendar, we keep on pushing the athlete, we shorten the athletes longevity. The risk is to shorten a career that could have lasted 10 years because the athlete is burnt out.

Alberto Juantorena

#5. As a coach, one thing that used to frustrate me was one player would make a bad decision, and that's all you would read about in the papers all over the country. We have so many athletes do so many wonderful things for other people, and you never read about it.

Lou Holtz

#6. That's the hard part about sport: as men we haven't started to be in our prime, but as athletes we are old people. I needed support. I lost trust and did stupid things.

Boris Becker

#7. The things that people do now in sports, you can't even believe. These are complete total athletes. To see what human beings can do in the highest level is amazing.

Billie Joe Armstrong

#8. People complain that pro athletes make a lot of money; but what they don't understand is that we need a lot of money because we spend a lot of money.

Patrick Ewing

#9. Forgiveness takes intelligence, discipline, imagination, and persistence, as well as a special psychological strength, something athletes call mental toughness and warriors call courage.

Edward M. Hallowell

#10. A lot of athletes have this sort of invincibility: [The jellyfish] should worry about me. I don't worry about them. I'll just swim right through them.

Diana Nyad

#11. Dancers are both athletes and artists.

Margot Fonteyn

#12. I like Barack Obama as a person. He's articulate, he knows sports, his brother-in-law's a coach. He always has the athletes to the White House. But I don't know about some of his policies and some of these people in Congress.

Pete Rose

#13. You know what's sad about this? Not the gambling, but the best way to reach college athletes is the Cartoon Network.

Jay Leno

#14. Athletes tend to have less of a sense of humor than most people. They are heroes to so many. That might be part of it.

Jeff Ross

#15. 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.

Jack LaLanne

#16. The Olympics were produced absolutely the same way from 1960 through 1988. It was always the Western World against the Eastern Bloc. You didn't even have to spend one second developing the character of any of the Eastern Bloc athletes. It was just good guys and bad guys.

Dick Ebersol

#17. Meeting sports athletes that are the best in the world is a thrill to this day.

Phil Knight

#18. Being a reporter and chasing down an assignment isn't an easy thing to do, especially when you're dealing with athletes that are so focused and trying to get their little game plan together to perform under adverse conditions ... it's tough.

Junior Seau

#19. You could ask any position player and they'll tell you: pitchers aren't athletes.

Curt Schilling

#20. I'm the world's expert on sterotypes held by academics about athletes and held by athletes about academics. To me, both of them are caricatures.

A. Bartlett Giamatti

#21. I felt black. I was as far as I was concerned. And I wanted to be black for lots of reasons. They were better musicians, they were better athletes, they were not uptight about sex, and they knew how to enjoy life better than most people.

Jerry Leiber

#22. Actors geek out over athletes. Everyone knows that.

James Roday

#23. 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.

Naveen Jain

#24. Doing nothing would stress me out. So I am still pretty much active practicing judo with my friends, who are former judo athletes, to maintain our fitness as well as the friendships among us. In my spare time, I usually go jogging around the Gelora Bung Karno stadium or head to the gym.

Joe Taslim

#25. When I think about athletes, probably my favorite guest of all time among baseball players was Ted Williams.

Charlie Rose

#26. The best way to show respect to your fellow athletes is to give the best performance you can.

Cheng Fei

#27. Someone who wants to write should make an effort to write a little something every day. Writing in this sense is the same as athletes who practice a sport every day to keep their skills honed.

Anita Desai

#28. As athletes, we think we're heroes, but when you witness firsthand what I saw yesterday, you realize who the real heroes are.

Tom Brady

#29. It's not my place to tell you whom to vote for, to take any political stand, to tell you what religion to believe in. I'm an athlete. I can influence certain things, but when I see other athletes and celebrities telling you whom to vote for, I actually get a bit offended.

Pete Sampras

#30. I think exercise tests us in so many ways, our skills, our hearts, our ability to bounce back after setbacks. This is the inner beauty of sports and competition, and it can serve us all well as adult athletes.

Peggy Fleming

#31. Zen students see themselves as athletes. Their competitive sport is enlightenment; only with enlightenment do we compete.

Frederick Lenz

#32. Many of the greatest black athletes of all time played baseball for no money and no recognition. I'm just sorry many major league fans never got to see them play, because many of them were awesome.

Monte Irvin

#33. Writers are opposite of athletes, they get better with age

Aaron Sorkin

#34. I just want you guys to see it also. To see what type of words that are said toward me, and towards us as professional athletes. Everybody thinks it is a bed of roses and it's not.

LeBron James

#35. It was the baseball fantasy of a lifetime - to be able to sit on the bench with all those professional athletes. I got to take my son along because I wasn't sure I would be able to play with them.

Matthew Modine

#36. So far China has won the most gold medals, ladies and gentlemen. The Chinese athletes can't wait to get home and show the medals off to the kids who made them.

Conan O'Brien

#37. I think that's one thing about the entertainment industry: Athletes want to be actors, and musicians want to be actors, so it all kind of mixes nice together.

Clay Matthews III

#38. I've always been really inspired by watching top athletes putting in peak performances.

Manu Bennett

#39. Among the world elite there are a handful of athletes who are physically capable of winning it.

Maurice Greene

#40. But as much as I am personally proud for winning five championships, I'm equally proud just being part of a women's division that has gotten so much better with all these great athletes here.

Trish Stratus

#41. Sports is a metaphor for overcoming obstacles and achieving against great odds. Athletes, in times of difficulty, can be important role models.

Bill Bradley

#42. The problem is not with the athletes, but with us. No matter how blatant the drug use may be, we don't stop watching the Tour de France. Maybe we should just turn off the television and get on our own bikes.

Peter Singer

#43. I would advise all professional athletes to get involved and to try to help make a difference.We can make a huge impact. We can be that difference maker just because of our status and because of what we do. If we don't, who else will?

Davone Bess

#44. My kids are good athletes and runners. They run in a bunch of sports.

Scott Bakula

#45. When you watch Olympic athletes in competition, does your self-esteem plummet? Of course not. On the contrary, you feel wonder and admiration; you're inspired that such exceptional individuals exist. So why can't we feels the same way about beauty?

Ted Chiang

#46. These days the temptation to use steroids in sports has become too great for many young athletes.

Jim Sensenbrenner

#47. I want to take you to a place of pure magic ... It's the place athletes call the "zone". Buddhists call "satori" and ravers call "trance". I call it the Silver Desert. It's a place of pure light that holds the dark within it. It's a place of pure rhythm.

Gabrielle Roth

#48. Across the board you can run up against 10 athletes where we're the same physically. They've done the same kind of training; they are in the same kind of shape. But the one that wins is the person who really believes they can win.

Benita Johnson

#49. I would never encourage my children to be athletes - first because my children are not athletes and second because there are so many people pushing to get to the top in sports that 100 people are crushed for each one who breaks through. This is unfortunate.

Bill James

#50. But at the same time, my parents always encouraged my brother and me to be happy with what we were doing. My parents were athletes in high school; my mom and my dad were the stars of the basketball team, but they never pushed my brother and me to be anything we didn't want to be.

Jonathan Groff

#51. If schools celebrated student scientists the same way they celebrate student athletes, more students would be encouraged to pursue the subject. Instead, science is considered nerdy because schools help students to paint it that way.

Alexandra Robbins

#52. You can exercise vigorously and eat junk and get by. But you can't eat perfectly and not exercise. Look at many athletes today; they are human garbage cans. They eat anything, but they exercise so hard they burn it up. But why not exercise and put the right fuel in too?

Jack LaLanne

#53. I've witnessed thousands of superior athletes try to becomes hitters and fail at it.

Willie Stargell

#54. Our children, our grandchildren, our students, our young athletes. We need to be pouring leadership principles into them constantly, and teaching, and instructing them how to become good leaders in the future.

Pat Williams

#55. I was on the national Pentathlon team for a few years, but there was no funding for athletes in Canada. I was in a massive amount of personal debt at the age of 21, so I joined a little modelling and talent agency to get a some work, to do anything so that I didn't have to drop out of school.

Kris Holden-Ried

#56. I want to express my deepest apology to the athletes, the people of Salt Lake City in Utah and the millions of citizens worldwide who love and respect the games.

Juan Antonio Samaranch

#57. Athletes try to get other athletes out and they should have no false starts.

Asafa Powell

#58. The symbolic significance of individual athletes' achievements has sometimes proved more productive than the negotiations of diplomats or politicians.

Richard Attias

#59. Like the bodies of dancers or athletes, the minds of readers are genuinely happy and self-possessed only when cavorting around, doing their stretches and leaps and jumps to the tune of words.

Lynne Sharon Schwartz

#60. We have become more and more not a nation of athletes but a nation of spectators.

John F. Kennedy

#61. It was a limitation of human consciousness: We live only in the future and past, we cannot perceive now. Now occupies no space, a hypothetical gap between future and past. Only an exceptional few could feel now athletes and jazzmen and, yes, thieves ...

William Landay

#62. The reality is that my style of drumming is largely an athletic undertaking, and it does not pain me to realize that, like all athletes, there comes a time to ... take yourself out of the game.

Neil Peart

#63. This is America's Team and we are confident this outstanding group of athletes will make our country proud.

Peter Ueberroth

#64. Yes, you have been molding your ability to perform Jiu Jitsu for all these years, but you have been more importantly molding who you are as a person. Jiu Jitsu is the sculptor, and you are the clay. It is with this art that we strive and reach for our highest ideals not as athletes, but as people.

Chris Matakas

#65. If athletes could think of SM as sports, they'd understand the acceptance of pain, but they'd always want to know who was winning.

Joseph W. Bean

#66. I became immersed in the cult of improvisation. I was like one of those athletes trying to get into the Olympics. It was all about blind focus. I was so sure that I was doing exactly what I'd been put on this earth to do, and I would have done anything to make it onto that stage.

Tina Fey

#67. Our athletes are our heroes.

Cathy Rigby

#68. Tradition is something you can't bottle.You can't buy it at the corner store.But it is there to sustain you when you need it most.I've called upon it time and time again.And so have countless other Michigan athletes and coaches.There is nothing like it.I hope it never dies.

Fritz Crisler

#69. It provides a different type of element and mental strain athletes love. That's what makes the game of golf so special.

Tiger Woods

#70. 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.

John McNally

#71. College recruiting is a business and I would really tell parents and athletes, alike, to treat it as such.

Billy Kennedy

#72. Extraordinary people are the Green Berets and the Navy Seals and the Olympic athletes - these are the ones who can face these extraordinary physical challenges and be triumphant.

Jonathan Demme

#73. No one will burn out doing aerobic running. It is too much anaerobic running, which the American scholastic athletic system tends to put young athletes through, that burns them out.

Arthur Lydiard

#74. I try to get them to remember that they're not just athletes, but student-athletes.

Earl Campbell

#75. To speak of sports as a generic activity makes it impossible to discuss what athletes actually do or the physical attributes required to do it. What do all sports have in common apart from breathing? Not much. The term religion is hardly more useful.

Sam Harris

#76. Male athletes don't get dropped when they father kids.

Candace Parker

#77. It was so much fun being in the Olympic Village and meeting all the athletes.

Jordyn Wieber

#78. One of the biggest reasons I like coaching college ball is the kids. I feel I can impact players' lives. I like the fact that they're student-athletes. I like to see those kids graduate.

Rick Majerus

#79. When I was a kid and we played baseball we used to use that "eye black" stuff sometimes - that kind of grease you put under your eyes to reduce glare or something. We only used it, of course, to look cool; it's not like we were any better prepubescent athletes for reducing glare.

Ben Lerner

#80. Scientists are sometimes as competitive as professional athletes, maybe.

Brian Kobilka

#81. A heroic moral victory for the New York Mets,. It may be the only kind of victory we're achieving this season, but he set a good example for professional athletes and the rest of us.

David Brooks

#82. Young people and Indian people need to know that we existed in the 20th Century. We need to know who our heroes are and to know what we have done and accomplished in this century other than what Olympic athletes Jim Thorpe and Billy Mills have done.

Russell Means

#83. After I suffered a labral tear in my hip while playing soccer, I realized that many sports-related injuries can be prevented and I dedicated myself to helping young athletes learn more about injury prevention.

Cobi Jones

#84. I have great admiration for athletes. They are just like actors in a lot of ways. They have tremendous pressures and conflicts. They have to compete, and they can't stay home just because they have a head cold.

Ben Cross

#85. Firemen, police officers, professional athletes and military service personnel are all trained with this in mind, they are taught to direct their energy, to use stress constructively.

Gudjon Bergmann

#86. People really criticize professional athletes going into the Olympics. People don't like change. A bunch of people don't like the Olympics now because we've added skateboarding ... We're modernizing the sport.

Larry Ellison

#87. 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

#88. There are days when I still wake up angry, and no one handles it perfectly all the time, but honestly, I feel lucky to have diabetes because of the people I get to meet. The families, the kids, the parents, the other athletes. If I could pick a club to be in, this would definitely be it.

Charlie Kimball

#89. Unfortunately the world is what it is now. People don't get along for whatever reason. As professional athletes, in a way we're almost ambassadors for peace, because sports brings everyone together.

Venus Williams

#90. Last time I was starstruck was when I met Roger Federer. He is one of the few athletes that I really look up to - incredibly talented both on and off the track and a great role model for tennis.

Henrik Lundqvist

#91. When I was younger I only read sports books. I loved the biographies that told how athletes developed. When I got into coaching, I did start to read more instructional books, but I was always more interested in the people behind the ideas.

Tony Dungy

#92. Money has changed today's black athletes. Those who have the ability as African men to bring a change in a community that so desperately needs it are concentrating only on their own careers, some charities and how much money they can make.

Jim Brown

#93. Because when I go places and I talk to kids and I talk to parents and I talk to athletes all over, and they look at my story and they see a person, African-American or not, they see something that they can relate to.

Cam Newton

#94. I drink during every show. I can't remember the last show I did completely sober. It works for me. I use it as a tool. It's like steroids are for athletes. I'm looser and more self-confident. If I drank less, I wouldn't have been on stage this long.

Doug Stanhope

#95. All you can do is put your story out there enough times and hope that a couple will understand that no matter what type of athlete you are - there were no athletes better than I was, there was no one who had more going for him than I did, there was no athlete stronger mentally than I was.

Lawrence Taylor

#96. The press still considers me one of the most laid-back athletes since Babe Ruth. That's supposed to be a criticism, but I consider it a compliment because I think being carefree on the course is one of the secrets to scoring well consistently

Fred Couples

#97. To me the Olympic spirit embodies the magic of competition, hard work and coming to a point in your career when you're around the best athletes in the world, and having the whole world watching.

Julia Mancuso

#98. We want to make sure our athletes have a future once their athletics careers are over.

Alberto Juantorena

#99. The United States has become a place where entertainers and professional athletes are mistaken for people of importance.

Robert A. Heinlein

#100. I am so grateful to everybody that supports the Sheckler Foundation, and gives us the ability to continue to help kids and injured action sports athletes.

Ryan Sheckler