Quotes About Jesse Owens

#1. Jesse Owens?" Mr. Steiner was the type of man who was very wooden. His voice was angular and true. His body was tall and heavy, like oak. His hair was like splinters. "What about him?

Markus Zusak

#2. He was highly annoyed by the series of triumphs by the marvelous colored American runner, Jesse Owens. People whose antecedents came from the jungle were primitive, Hitler said with a shrug; their physiques were stronger than those of civilized whites and hence should be excluded from future games.

Albert Speer

#3. The battles that count aren't the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself - the invisible, inevitable battles inside all of us - that's where it's at. - Jesse Owens

Adam Goucher

#4. I met Jesse Owens once. He was a remarkable individual, and I have tremendous respect for what he did in the Olympics under the circumstances.

Lee Trevino

#5. I wouldn't have raced a horse. But you'll then throw back at me that Jesse Owens raced against a horse, and he's one of my heroes, so I'm not going to say it was a silly stunt. I know too much about horses. They're highly unreliable, and they've got brains the size of golf balls.

Sebastian Coe

#6. I've had some experience in track and field in school, but I did have to train to be able to play Jesse Owens - to be a runner, to be an Olympian.

Stephan James

#7. When I first got the call from my manager asking if I'd ever heard of Jesse Owens, I recognized the name, looked him up, and was blown away by his story.

Stephan James

#8. That was my goal in portraying Jesse Owens: bringing that level of humanity so people could understand who he was as a person.

Stephan James

#9. I knew [Jesse Owens'] name, but I really didn't remember what it is he had done, so I felt like I had to get refreshed. So I read the script and I realized like, wow, this is an incredible human being. I told my manager, however I had to do it, let me see the director; I got to play him.

Stephan James

#10. I decided I wasn't going to come down. I was going to fly. I was going to stay up in the air forever.

Jesse Owens

#11. People come out to see you perform and you've got to give them the best you have within you.

Jesse Owens

#12. It all goes so fast, and character makes the difference when it's close.

Jesse Owens

#13. Running is real. It's all joy and woe, hard as diamond. It makes you weary beyond comprehension, but it also makes you free.

Jesse Owens

#14. Find the good. It's all around you. Find it, showcase it and you'll start believing in it.

Jesse Owens

#15. One chance is all you need.

Jesse Owens

#16. Although I wasn't invited to shake hands with Hitler, I wasn't invited to the White House to shake hands with the President either.

Jesse Owens

#17. Life doesn't give you all the practice races you need.

Jesse Owens

#18. Hitler didn't snub me - it was FDR who snubbed me. The president didn't even send me a telegram.

Jesse Owens

#19. The secret is, first, get a thoroughbred horse because they are the most nervous animals on earth. Then get the biggest gun you can find and make sure the starter fires that big gun right by the nervous thoroughbred's ear.

Jesse Owens

#20. 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?

Jesse Owens

#21. Friendships born on the field of athletic strife are the real gold of competition. Awards become corroded, friends gather no dust.

Jesse Owens

#22. For a time, at least, I was the most famous person in the entire world.

Jesse Owens

#23. He was constantly on me about the job that I was to do and the responsibility that I had upon the campus. And how I must be able to carry myself because people were looking.

Jesse Owens

#24. If you don't try to win you might as well hold the Olympics in somebody's back yard.

Jesse Owens

#25. I let my feet spend as little time on the ground as possible. From the air, fast down, and from the ground, fast up.

Jesse Owens

#26. We all have dreams. But in order to make dreams come into reality, it takes an awful lot of determination, dedication, self-discipline, and effort.

Jesse Owens

#27. Every morning, just like in Alabama, I got up with the sun, ate my breakfast even before my mother and sisters and brothers, and went to school, winter, spring, and fall alike to run and jump and bend my body this way and that for Mr. Charles Riley.

Jesse Owens

#28. It was bad enough to have toppled from the Olympic heights to make my living competing with animals. But the competition wasn't even fair. No man could beat a race horse, not even for 100 yards.

Jesse Owens

#29. I realized now that militancy in the best sense of the word was the only answer where the black man was concerned, that any black man who wasn't a militant in 1970 was either blind or a coward.

Jesse Owens

#30. A lifetime of training for just ten seconds.

Jesse Owens

#31. I always loved running ... it was something you could do by yourself, and under your own power. You could go in any direction, fast or slow as you wanted, fighting the wind if you felt like it, seeking out new sights just on the strength of your feet and the courage of your lungs.

Jesse Owens

#32. It's like having a pet dog for a long time. You get attached to it, and when it dies you miss it.

Jesse Owens

#33. I fought, I fought harder ... but one cell at a time, panic crept into my body, taking me over.

Jesse Owens

#34. People say that it was degrading for an Olympic champion to run against a horse, but what was I supposed to do? I had four gold medals, but you can't eat four gold medals. There was no
television, no big advertising, no endorsements then. Not for a black man, anyway.

Jesse Owens

#35. The road to the Olympics, leads to no city, no country. It goes far beyond New York or Moscow, ancient Greece or Nazi Germany. The road to the Olympics leads - in the end - to the best within us.

Jesse Owens

#36. The only victory that counts is the one over yourself.

Jesse Owens

#37. Only by God?s grace have I made it to see today and only by God?s grace will I ever see tomorrow.

Jesse Owens

#38. The only bond worth anything between human beings is their humanness.

Jesse Owens

#39. Joe Louis and I were the first modern national sports figures who were black ... But neither of us could do national advertising because the South wouldn't buy it. That was the social stigma we lived under.

Jesse Owens

#40. I had four gold medals, but you can't eat four gold medals.

Jesse Owens

#41. The black fist is a meaningless symbol. When you open it, you have nothing but fingers - weak, empty fingers. The only time the black fist has significance is when there's money inside. There's where the power lies.

Jesse Owens

#42. In America anyone can still become someone.

Jesse Owens

#43. It dawned on me with blinding brightness. I realized: I had jumped into another rare kind of stratosphere - one that only a handful of people in every generation are lucky enough to know.

Jesse Owens

#44. When I came back, after all those stories about Hitler and his snub, I came back to my native country, and I could not ride in the front of the bus. I had to go to the back door. I couldn't live where I wanted. Now what's the difference?

Jesse Owens

#45. After I came home from the 1936 Olympics with my four medals, it became increasingly apparent that everyone was going to slap me on the back, want to shake my hand or have me up to their suite. But no one was going to offer me a job.

Jesse Owens

#46. When I passed the Chancellor he arose, waved his hand at me, and I waved back at him. I think the writers showed bad taste in criticizing the man of the hour in Germany.

Jesse Owens

#47. I'd noticed him watching me for a year or so, especially when we'd play games where there was running or jumping.

Jesse Owens