Athletics Quotes

“If you want to find the real competition, just look in the mirror. After awhile you'll see your rivals scrambling for second place.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Greatness, whether athletic or otherwise, doesn’t come from those content on just being but from those who seek being the difference.”
― Kirk Mango

“Some sessions are stars and some sessions are stones, but in the end they are all rocks and we build upon them.”
― Chrissie Wellington, A Life Without Limits: A World Champion's Journey

“I think it is just terrible and disgusting how everyone has treated Lance Armstrong, especially after what he achieved, winning seven Tour de France races while on drugs. When I was on drugs, I couldn’t even find my bike.”
― Willie Nelson

“Harold (about max): he looks kinda like a football couch
Chester (sarcastically): Yay team rah rah. if he says anything athletic i'll scream
max: want to jog?
(chester screams).

”
― James Howe, Howliday Inn

“People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances.The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them.”
― Kirk Mango

“In business, sport, entertainment and beyond an idea is worth next to nothing. The energy, effort, passion, talent, tenacity, strategy, resilience and resourcefulness to see it through and make something of it is worth everything.”
― Rasheed Ogunlaru

“Sports teach us the value of facing yourself and others honestly. You can only grow if you let go of denial and embrace what is real and true.”
― Corey Irwin

“In some sports, you can just get by on a lot of natural talent. In swimming, it helps to be long and lean, but you can’t be good at it without putting in the work. There is a direct connection between what you put into it and what you get out of it.”
― Michael Phelps, Beneath the Surface: My Story

“The activity which seems unthinkable today can become your warm-up in the future!”
― Francis Shenstone, The Explorer's Mindset: Unlock Health Happiness and Success the Fun Way

“Note the way "up close and personal" profiles of professional athletes strain so hard to find evidence of a rounded human life–outside interests and activities, values beyond the sport. We ignore what's obvious, that most of this straining is farce. It's farce because the realities of top-level athletics today require an early and total commitment to one area of excellence. An ascetic focus. A subsumption of almost all other features of human life to one chosen talent and pursuit. A consent to live in a world that, like a child's world, is very small.”
― David Foster Wallace

“What's the hardest part of roller skating? Telling your dad you're gay.”
― American idiom

“Title IX opened a door fifty years ago that can never be closed again, but equality doesn’t end at the equal right to play. True equality in sports, like any other industry, requires rebuilding the systems so there’s an equal chance to thrive. I’m just one person telling a story to bring an embodied experience of the female athlete to life. I can’t create policy or NCAA best practices, or medical guidelines, but I have some ideas of where to start. We need policies like those created around concussions that specifically protect the health of the female body in sport. We need to create a formal certification to work with female athletes that mandates education on female physiology, puberty, breast development, menstrual health, and the female performance wave.”
― Lauren Fleshman, Good for a Girl: A Woman Running in a Man's World

“Don't worry about side-effects. Most sport supplements have no effect at all. But yet, I would like to highlight three that are scientifically sound and awesome placebos when neatly packaged.”
― Eric Snaell, Shredded 2018

“What we glean from watching or actively participating in sporting contests is the sense of commitment needed to succeed and the diverse paths that lead to failure.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“The term "risk-reward spectrum" is used disproportionately by those who are trying to only mitigate riks. If there's one thing I learned as a professional gambler, it's that far too few people maximize value and reward. ... You can't be risk-averse all the time, because the largest risk in athletics is opportunity risk in the form of Father Time and aging kicking your ass, unrelenting and unstoppable. You have to maximize output, and often that means taking outsized risks. Period.”
― Kyle Boddy

“I run. I am made for running. Because when you run, you could be anyone. You hone yourself into a body, nothing more or less than a body. You respond as a body, to the body. If you are racing to win, no goals but the body's goal; no thoughts but the boy's thoughts. You obliterate yourself in the name of speed. You negate yourself in order to make it past the finish line.”
― Mindy McGinnis, The Female of the Species

“It's a deeply entrenched process that nobody really wants to change because all the major players, except athletes, have a stake in the monetary gain. Everyone bends to the will of the brand, and only accepts the check they can receive from the brand, instead of holistically solving the problems and thinking about what is best for each individual.”
― Michael McGinnis, GPS Guide for Athletes and Those Who Surround Them: How to Empower Your Sports Goals, Navigate the Process, and Steer Toward Success

“The current dynamic is a power struggle where brands and teams, leagues, coaches, and agents basically have the mindset that they are the saviors to athletes, instead of presenting themselves as they truly are; a springboard for athletes to showcase their abilities.”
― Michael McGinnis, GPS Guide for Athletes and Those Who Surround Them: How to Empower Your Sports Goals, Navigate the Process, and Steer Toward Success

“When actively engaged consumers understand why and where they spend their dollars, they will influence the world on a larger scale.”
― Michael McGinnis, GPS Guide for Athletes and Those Who Surround Them: How to Empower Your Sports Goals, Navigate the Process, and Steer Toward Success

“If you understand your why, your purpose in life, what you want to obtain in this life, and what you want to accomplish in this life, that's the first piece. And after the why, it's the what. How will you bring that passion, that purpose to life?”
― Michael McGinnis, GPS Guide for Athletes and Those Who Surround Them: How to Empower Your Sports Goals, Navigate the Process, and Steer Toward Success

“We are all prone to stress, excitement, sadness, or anger; it's called being human. Give yourself a break, and give others a break.”
― Michael McGinnis, GPS Guide for Athletes and Those Who Surround Them: How to Empower Your Sports Goals, Navigate the Process, and Steer Toward Success

“The biggest benefit of being humble is that you're comfortable with yourself, and you aren't putting unnecessary pressure on yourself. By being humble, you're accepting yourself and realizing you're flawed, but you're also great.”
― Michael McGinnis, GPS Guide for Athletes and Those Who Surround Them: How to Empower Your Sports Goals, Navigate the Process, and Steer Toward Success

“The legacy I want to leave you with is that no matter who you are, what you have been doing, or where you would like to go, if you look at a situation from a problem-solving approach and put others first, you'll succeed at whatever you aspire to do.”
― Michael McGinnis, GPS Guide for Athletes and Those Who Surround Them: How to Empower Your Sports Goals, Navigate the Process, and Steer Toward Success

“as they marched out on their way to band practice to get fitted for new hats to hide foam rollers in, as the athletic director was very against the band members having smooth fascia and demanded they have sore muscles while the football team played.”
― J.S. Mason, The Satyrist...And Other Scintillating Treats

“When athletes go for the glory, they’re really going for God.”
― A.D. Aliwat, In Limbo

“Running is WD-40 for the mind”
― Corey Irwin, The Athlete's Cookbook: A Nutritional Program to Fuel the Body for Peak Performance and Rapid Recovery

“I've missed the opening rituals of a morning pep rally. Darn this school and its constant onslaught of organized student gatherings! I mean, I wouldn't immediately land on "peppy" as an adjective for myself, so how am I supposed to conjure it for a group of people who are only being celebrated because they happen to show a slight advantage in athleticism? So you can take an air-filled shape and put it through another shape--so what? Didn't we get applause for that sort of thing as toddlers? Is this really something we have to cheer for?”
― Crystal Cestari, The Best Kind of Magic

“Show business and politics, being run by practical, cigar-smoking businessmen, manufacture personalities on an assembly line. Baseball, fighting for its life, has been stifling them as fast as they appear.
What makes it so sad is that the athlete has a role in our society that reaches even beyond showmanship. The athlete is one of the last symbols of that superfluity of our society, the physical man. The average man finds that although the instincts of his primitive forebears may beat a tomtom in his blood, his own daily conflict has been reduced to the drive downtown, the paper work in the office, the return trip. The conflict is undefined, the enemy is indistinct, the battle remains permanently unsettled. He doesn't really know whether he has won or lost; there is only the vague feeling that he is somehow losing.”
― Bill Veeck, The Hustler's Handbook

“Aimee Mullins, the president of the Women's Sports Foundation, told me recently that 84% of women business leaders in this country say that they were athletes. I'm not surprised: athletics breeds a level of confidence and leadership that can be hard for girls to find elsewhere. Parents act like they want their daughters to be as strong as their sons, but they're much tougher on the boys. Sports, on the other hand, doesn't discriminate. There's no opportunity to cover up anything on the court: you either get it done, or you don't.”
― C. Vivian Stringer, Standing Tall: A Memoir of Tragedy and Triumph