Quotes & Sayings About Professional Athletes

I'm a Mormon. I don't do a lot of the off-the-field activities that athletes are known to do. And I guess I've created a world that is unlike the typical world of a professional athlete. — Jeff Kent

I don't believe professional athletes should be role models. I believe parents should be role models ... It's not like it was when I was growing up. My mom and my grandmother told me how it was going to be. If I didn't like it, they said, "Don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out." Parents have to take better control. — Charles Barkley

Kaden leaned against the doorframe, running his fingers through his dark hair. He was barefoot and shirtless, wearing only a pair of gray sweatpants. His upper body was tanned and cut to perfection. A sparse patch of dark hair covered the center of his chest while a thin line ran down the middle of his stomach muscles. Oh, sweet baby Jesus, his stomach. She'd seen professional athletes on television with an eight-pack but hadn't thought normal people could actually achieve them. Her fingertips tingled with the urge to run her fingers over each of his pecs. — Stacey O'Neale

We've all heard stories of lottery winners, rock stars, heirs and heiresses, and professional athletes becoming millionaire morons who wake up rich but are broke by nightfall. — Robert Kiyosaki

Payton "Sin" Sinclair was an unapologetic people-watcher. As a sports consultant, working with some of the biggest and most recognizable athletes in sports and business, he had to be able to read the smallest nuances of others. That ability was just one of the unique attributes that set him apart from the competition and made him the go-to person when corporations wanted to align themselves with the top professional athletes in the country. — Francis Ray

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

When you're a professional athlete, you get paid millions of dollars for doing something that's not only fun, but also physical and badass. You have fans: pathetic people without their own lives or hopes or dreams that measure their happiness on your weekly performance (this still boggles my mind, but in the best way possible - however, my role as a fan now is quite detached). You get to travel around to different cities and fuck their most beautiful women. You are given license to do pretty much whatever you want all the time, and are forgiven easily and often instantly when caught doing anything illegal. Professional athletes can literally get away with murder. — A.D. Aliwat

The Nike swoop, the three Adidas stripes, the little Polo player on a horse, the Hollister seagull, the symbols of Philadelphia's professional sports teams, even our high school mascot that you athletes wear to battle other schools - some of you wear our Mustang to class even when there is no sporting event scheduled. These are your symbols, what you wear to prove that your identity matches the identity of others. Much like the Nazis had their swastika. — Matthew Quick

David Epstein, the author of the best book on athletics in recent memory - "The Sports Gene" - wrote to me to say that he thinks I'm being overly generous. He points out that, for years, there used to be an "all-star challenge" on television, in which the best professional athletes from a variety of sports competed in a kind of makeshift decathlon. — Malcolm Gladwell

Every day is Make a Difference Day.
1. Try a Little Tenderness.
2. A Change of Heart Changes Everything.
3. Choose Integrity as your True North and you will never get lost. (Professional athletes wise up.) — Steve William Laible

Sixteen games, to me, is a long enough schedule for anybody. We're already concerning ourselves with head injuries and bodily harm to all of the professional athletes. Add to extra games to it, (and) you are just increasing those risks. — Emmitt Smith

My heritage is something that I have always been aware of, however, some would say that there is a disproportionately low number of Asians as professional athletes. I take pride in trying my best to be a role model to show young Asian American boys and girls that they are only limited by the size of their dreams. — Nathan Adrian

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

American professional athletes are bilingual; they speak English and profanity. — Gordie Howe

The APR provides a real-time snapshot of what is happening with our individual student-athletes today. However, it does not address some of the realities that exist in sports played during the spring semester, where student-athletes accept professional opportunities before graduating or before exhausting their eligibility. — DeLoss Dodds

Little did I know that there's nothing more competitive in the world than a professional ballroom dancer. They are as competitive as Olympic athletes. — Bruce Forsyth

It wasn't an excuse. It was a fact. He'd had to make his way alone, and no one - not rock stars, not professional athletes, not software billionaires, and not even geniuses - ever makes it alone. — Malcolm Gladwell

Athletes are used to battling. The public would never learn their names if professional athletes had not shown courage at an early age. They learn they can overcome, but sometimes this becomes a false sense of security that leads them to the edge. — George Vecsey

It's not just professional athletes and soldiers who are at risk from traumatic brain injury. More than 1.7 million people a year sustain a traumatic brain injury, and about 50,000 of them die each year, according the Centers for Disease Control. There are both emotional and financial costs from these injuries. — Anne Wojcicki

Cameron was able to get an inside look at professional football from the standpoint of athletes and agents and general managers that few people have ever seen. — Leigh Steinberg

Professional football's a tough game. It's a lot of contact. It's a lot of wear and tear on your body. You've got elite athletes running into each other, play after play, at high speeds. And this is something that I love and I enjoy. — John Urschel

I get a lot of parents coming up to me, telling me they are grooming their kids to be professional athletes. I'm really against that. I think it's a great life, and yeah, you can lead them in that direction. I think a lot of parents live their lives through the kids. Because they didn't make it, they want their kids to make it. It puts a lot of undue pressure on the kids. — Wayne Gretzky

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

Society has no qualms about a masseuse who is paid for touching people, or about laborers, or professional athletes or dancers, all of whom make a living with their bodies. Why should we make an exception for sex? — Sydney Biddle Barrows

Across industries and countries, there's a strong inverse correlation between performance and job security. Actors and directors are fired at the end of each film, so they have to deliver every time. Junior professors are fired by default after a few years unless the university chooses to grant them tenure. Professional athletes know they'll be pulled if they play badly for just a couple games. At the other end of the scale (at least in the US) are auto workers, New York City schoolteachers, and civil servants, who are all nearly impossible to fire. The trend is so clear that you'd have to be willfully blind not to see it. — Paul Graham

Surely, sport is not fundamentally about the safety of athletes. If it were, we'd probably have to ban professional football, right after boxing. — Alice Dreger

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

I think in running, to be honest, that even though athletes are very dedicated and are willing to train and do whatever they need to do to prepare, more often than not they're not in a very professional environment where you've got a high performance director and a coach that are really monitoring your daily activities. — Alberto Salazar

The left's obsession with the high incomes of corporate executives never seems to extend to equally high - or higher - incomes of professional athletes, entertainers, or best-selling authors like Danielle Steel. — Thomas Sowell

Scientists are sometimes as competitive as professional athletes, maybe. — Brian Kobilka

In reality, we can prove that the incidents of drug, alcohol abuse and violence have dropped dramatically among professional athletes - but the problem is it would be impossible to convince than fans, because of what they read on the AP wire. — Leigh Steinberg

Several professional athletes have wrongly taught many young Americans by example that the only way to succeed in sports is to take steroids. — Jim Sensenbrenner

It is surprising how many professional athletes, along with their families and friends, are gaga over movie and music stars, and the reverse is true with entertainers and sports stars. — Cheech Marin

There are things about some professional athletes that I cannot stand-the pretense, the egos, the pomposity, the greed. — Ted Simmons

Only a handful of professional football athletes have had a signature shoe, unlike in basketball where there have been a number of guys. — Keyshawn Johnson

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

I personally believe that professional athletes should give back to their communities in any way possible. We are in a position to make a difference. — Carson Palmer

The United States has become a place where entertainers and professional athletes are mistaken for people of importance. — Robert A. Heinlein

The 10 or 12 artists I have known really well all my life are at least as competitive as professional athletes. They may express it in slightly different terms, but you look at the Jackson Pollocks et al., and they are as interested in wall space in the galleries as Joe Montana is in the percentage of completed passes. So the notion that symphonic conducting, or stage play, or pure art, is not a competitive business is real bullshit. — Tom Peters

Jeremy Lin is the only Asian American in the NBA today and one of the few in any professional U.S. sport. His arrival is surely leading other talented Asian American athletes this week to contemplate a pro career. — Eric Liu

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. — Bobby Orr

Willpower is that thing CEOs and professional athletes tell us they used to make it to the top. — Joyce Meyer

For years I've been seeing my young brothers wearing Scarface T-shirts, John Gotti T-shirts, Rick James T-shirts. We don't have any icons or idols to look up to, just rappers and professional athletes. — Lamar Odom

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

There's just so much negative media surrounding professional athletes or sports in general, whether it's kids that are pressured too much or professional athletes making mistakes that influence their family. — Kristopher Belman

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

I was an All-American in wrestling in high school, was National Champion in Chinese kickboxing in 1999 and have spent a lot of time around professional athletes, which includes my eight-plus years as CEO of a sports nutrition company. — Timothy Ferriss

Looking good is important. We're our own premium brand as professional athletes, so you want to be thoughtful about presentation and represent yourself and your city and sport as best you can. — C. J. Wilson

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

As women professional athletes, you have to have respect for every player and individual. Beyond that, it doesn't matter what your interests are. People can have their own lives. — Hope Solo

This pointing-hand gesture - with its index finger and thumb extended upward - is a well-known symbol of the Ancient Mysteries, and it appears all over the world in ancient art. This same gesture appears in three of Leonardo da Vinci's most famous encoded masterpieces - The Last Supper, Adoration of the Magi, and Saint John the Baptist. It's a symbol of man's mystical connection to God." As above, so below. The madman's bizarre choice of words was starting to feel more relevant now. "I've never seen it before," Sato said. Then watch ESPN, Langdon thought, always amused to see professional athletes point skyward in gratitude to God after a touchdown or home run. He wondered how many knew they were continuing a pre-Christian mystical tradition of acknowledging the mystical power above, which, for one brief moment, had transformed them into a god capable of miraculous feats. — Dan Brown

[T]here seems to have been an actual decline in rational thinking. The United States had become a place where entertainers and professional athletes were mistaken for people of importance. They were idolized and treated as leaders; their opinions were sought on everything and they took themselves just as seriously-after all, if an athlete is paid a million or more a year, he knows he is important ... so his opinions of foreign affairs and domestic policies must be important, too, even though he proves himself to be ignorant and subliterate every time he opens his mouth. — Robert A. Heinlein

It's important for closet gay athletes everywhere, not just at the professional level, but more importantly athletes at the younger level in high school and college, to understand they do have support around them and that they can come out and feel comfortable. And honestly, that is going to help save lives. — Scott Fujita

That one has to be playing in order to be playing a game seems equally implausible. When professional athletes are performing in assigned games for wages, although they are certainly playing games, we are not at all inclined to conclude from that fact that they are without qualification playing. For we think of professional athletes as working when they play their games and as playing when they go home from work to romp with their children. — Bernard Suits