Sports Athletes Quotes & Sayings

I think women have brought a lot of life back to the sport-first, because a lot of people doubted women could actually do it well. Two, part of it is that old fascination some people have in watching athletes risk injury to win. — Stacy Dragila

It is of course true that many modern combat sports are extremely demanding in terms of physical force, skill, and endurance. Indeed many athletes are much fitter and better trained than the vast majority of soldiers. However, all those various kinds of sport are based on artificial rules as to what is and is not permitted. Furthermore, and with the exception of fencing, a highly ritualized form of combat to which we shall return, even the most violent ones do not permit the players to use weapons. In their absence, most of those skills are too specialized to be of much military relevance. — Martin Van Creveld

We also notice that Paul was focused. He had a clear goal, and he would not veer to the right or to the left from it. We can't help but wonder how many emails Paul would have skipped over, or how current he would have been with the news of the day, or even how vigorously he would be rooting for his favorite sports teams or athletes. Our ability to have information quickly is both a blessing and a curse. Our ability to function in a fast-paced society sometimes encourages us to focus on nothing of lasting value, just running from one temporal thing to the next. Just — James MacDonald

Athletes are born winners, there not born loosers, and the sooner you understand this, the faster you can take on a winning attitude and become sucessful in life. — Charles R. Sledge Jr.

In team sports the athletes were bonded by each other, there was an immense peer pressure to keep going. One dared not miss a practice for fear of letting his teammates down. Every time an athlete thought of getting back into bed in the morning he knew he would have to face the anger of his closest friends. But the sculler had to find motivation entirely within himself. No one else cared. — David Halberstam

I've been coaching the sport for a number of years. And I went through many athletes. Some athletes stay with your program for a long, long period of time. Some athletes, they have a different approach as far as coaching style or your philosophies. I totally respect their own opinions - they have the right to choose their own coach. — Liang Chow

My concentration level blocks out everything. Concentration is why some athletes are better than others. You develop that concentration in training and concentrate in a meet. — Edwin Moses

The mind is absolutely instrumental in achieving results, even for athletes. Sports psychology is a very small part, but it's extremely important when you're winning and losing races by hundredths and even thousandths of a second. — Michael Johnson

The concussion crisis has changed the face of sports as we know it and it has brought to surface the incredible importance of our brain health. The time is now for us to make our brain the number one priority so that education and awareness can take effect, and begin to change the way we approach the health of our athletes from youth to professionals. — Ben Utecht

I had female role models to look up to starting in middle school, athletes like Julie Foudy and Mia Hamm who made me realize that there was room in the world of sports for women. They ignited my dream of becoming an Olympic athlete. — Jennie Finch

In skating or any amateur sport, as athletes we share something in common: the cost of training is quite a burden on our parents or on the athletes themselves trying to find a way to pay for their costs. — Patrick Chan

To me, doing the Olympics in 1992 in Barcelona for NBC, just seeing the Dream Team take the floor, was a thrill for me. I don't think there was another team in any sport with that high level of athletes playing together. — Marv Albert

You'd like more people to recognise what you do is special. But I take the attitude that the best thing I can do for my sport is to be the best at it. The best way people will come to recognise that track and field is a great sport is to see athletes excelling at it. — Maurice Greene

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

It's hard for these athletes to stay healthy. They are constantly being bombarded with unhealthy advertising. Peer pressure can override the body's demand for health. Being healthy goes beyond 'not being sick' (where all lab reports indicate health), to feeling optimistic, energetic, strong and happy with their bodies. Teaching them to take charge of their bodies is a job of coaching. Help them gain discipline in conditioning, nutrition and attitude/emotional control. — John Kessel

Right before they named the (2014) team, I stepped back and I allowed myself to realize what I had accomplished. I got overwhelmed and the tears came pretty quickly. It's an honor to represent my country again and to represent my sport to the world and to hold it down for all those 30-year old athletes out there. — Kelly Clark

I think we have tremendous media covering the sport of boxing, even if boxing is a little bit lost in popularity with MMA sports. And I think that with the show 'Lights Out' it's going to get more attention to the sport, and it's going to put more attention to the problems that athletes in general have. — Wladimir Klitschko

Definitely, injuries are tough, and they happen to every athlete in every sport. The best athletes put it behind them and keep pushing forward. I haven't really had a choice; I've had so many injuries. And the love of BMX, I haven't wanted to stop no matter what. — Tory Nyhaug

The best athletes in any sport take stretching very seriously before and after matches. Stretching is instrumental in any athlete's physical success. — Jozy Altidore

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

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

We didn't call it a sport necessarily, and skaters definitely weren't thought of as athletes, we were thought of as misfits. — Mike Vallely

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

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

It's interesting. I've known quite a few good athletes that can't begin to play a beat on the drum set. Most team sport is about the smooth fluidity of hand-eye coordination and physical grace, where drumming is much more about splitting all those things up. — Neil Peart

It is to create the best Games the world has ever seen by unlocking the UK's unrivalled passion for sport, by delivering the best Games for athletes to compete in, by showcasing London's unmatched cultural wealth and diversity and by creating a real and lasting legacy. — Sebastian Coe

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

Sporting success doesn't happen by accident. It takes hard work and determination on the part of the individual athletes. And it also takes investment in facilities and training support. — Nicola Sturgeon

Cycling is a sport of amazing athletes. Its been a privilege and a honor for me to be in this sport and to have a chance to race at the highest level. — Robin Farina

The weird thing about rap is that you don't get compared in the same way that athletes do, even though it's probably the most competitive sport in music. In basketball, they look at a player and say: 'This guy was the best in his prime at this sport.' But in rap it's not until you're dead or retired that people think about it like that. — Chance The Rapper

One reason outfielders don't have stronger arms might be they don't practice as much as we did. Most teams today don't take outfield practice. Another reason is baseball has to compete with other sports now - basketball, football, soccer - for the better athletes that might have more skills and stronger arms. — Al Kaline

You must allow your players to become the athletes they can be. Don't make them into anything just to become the kind of winners fans, friends and others think they must be. — John Kessel

Not many countries establish a prize for peace. The Seoul Peace Prize has its roots in the 1988 Summer Olympics when this country opened its doors to people and athletes from more than 160 countries. Korea did so in part because it believes in the power of sports for peace and development. — Ban Ki-moon

If there is one thing I learned by reading Epstein's "The Sports Gene" it is that world-class athletes are, by definition, abnormal: that is, the kind of person capable of competing at that level is necessarily very different from the rest of us physiologically. They are outliers. — Malcolm Gladwell

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

Think of all the girls who could become top athletes but quit sports because they're afraid of having too many defined muscles and being made fun of or called unattractive. — Serena Williams

I had a great interest in sports. I had three older brothers who were great athletes. I was not. — George J. Mitchell

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

High school sports: where lessons of life are still being learned, and where athletes still compete for the love of the game and their teammates. — Michael Powers

When I was working on the Olympic cookbook it was amazing to discover how different athletes need different types of diets. Everybody thinks that an athlete has to eat lots of carbohydrates, however some athletes don't need that. Some sports such as sprinting are explosive so you need a diet that will give you the energy for that moment. — William Katt

Athletics is a great sport with many different events and athletes come in all shapes and sizes. I'm one of the smallest athletes on the track. They call me the 'pocket rocket'. — Jenny Meadows

Never underestimate your players; they can do it with enough game-like practice. Coaches must put more emphasis in practice and in life on making student-athletes aware of what they could or can do, rather than what they couldn't or presently can't do. The focus must be on solutions, not problems; what is wanted, not what is feared. — John Kessel

Meeting sports athletes that are the best in the world is a thrill to this day. — Phil Knight

The value of the sport and the value of sports in general, with the life lessons, the ups and downs. The depth of the life experience, what athletes are actually offering to us when they come out and play, if you look at a season and go moment by moment. — Willi Smith

With athletes, it's never fully understood the level to which we push ourselves. Especially in an endurance sport. — Clara Hughes

These days the temptation to use steroids in sports has become too great for many young athletes. — Jim Sensenbrenner

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

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 long for the days when athletes were revered. I want to see the romance return to sports, to see people enjoy the game purely for the game and the players. — Mike Piazza

It takes patience to become the best runner you can be. Top athletes realize that running is a long-term sport. It is set up for people who value delayed gratification and who like hard-earned success. — Anthony Famiglietti

Someone who doesn't make the (Olympic) team might weep and collapse. In my day no one fell on the track and cried like a baby. We lost gracefully. And when someone won, he didn't act like he'd just become king of the world, either. Athletes in my day were simply humble in our victory.
I believe we were more mature then ... Maybe it's because the media puts so much pressure on athletes; maybe it's also the money. In my day we competed for the love of the sport ... In my day we patted the guy who beat us on the back, wished him well, and that was it. — Louis Zamperini

People without fine voices would never sing.
Children would never draw pictures because they weren't real artists.
Learning an instrument would be illegal unless you were a protege and knew instinctively.
You could only ever learn the one language to which you were raised.
Poor gardeners would not be permitted to try growing seeds.
Only the true athletes would be allowed to jog or play sports.
Dancing could be done only by professionals. — Rachel Heffington

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

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

My job is to teach them to believe they could perform better than they realize. Great coaches teach athletes to go beyond the barriers. — John Roderick

On television, I have watched countless athletes from different countries, sports and Olympics stand proudly at the top of the podium and shed tears. They symbolized the Olympics for me because Olympic medals represent all of the hard work and sacrifices made by the athletes as well as the people who helped them reach the top of their sports. — Hannah Kearney

The sports space is so full of opinion that you aren't hearing from the athletes just speaking for themselves. We are such a Twitter-oriented society with radio talk shows, TV talk shows and social media - what you are missing is the authentic, unfiltered aspect of who these people are. — Hannah Storm

Climbing is one of the few sports in which the arena (the cliffs, the mountains and their specific routes) acquire a notoriety that outpopulates, outshines and outlives the actual athletes. — Jonathan Waterman

While sports are indisputably a positive source of strength and self-development for girls, they can accomplish this only if the environment in which female athletes throw their javelins, kick their soccer balls, and swim their fast and furious laps is an environment that respects girls and takes them seriously as athletes. — Leslie Heywood

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

Toward the end of Carmel's life, the perception of super talls shifted dramatically, thanks largely to televised NBA games, By 1975, pretty much everyone had seen super tall people on TV, in the context of being celebrated in front of sold-out basketball arenas. This new frame of reference could not have been more positive. By 1995 Shaquille O'Neal was known as The Man of Steel, not the Traveling Human Giant. The idea of super tall people as freaks was replaced by the idea of super tall people as amazing athletes. — Arianne Cohen

By continually increasing the difficulty of the sport, we are discouraging younger athletes from starting and continuing in the sport. But most importantly, we are losing the beauty of our sport. We do not want gymnastics to lose what makes it so great - its artistic beauty. — Svetlana Boginskaya

All in all it's a pretty great day for major league sports. At long last they've decided that gay people are fit to be included in their elite club-one that's already allowed in adulterers, wife-swappers, gamblers, cheaters, rapists, racists and slaughterers of man. Those who've abused spouses, drugs, alcohol, family members and animals. Congratulations, gay athletes. Are you sure you want to hang out with these people? — Jon Stewart

I have spoken with many former athletes, and they tell me the best time they had was in sports. I listen to them and use their experience in my career. — Sergei Bubka

The problem with many athletes is they take themselves seriously and their sport lightly. — Michael Waltrip

Female athletes are stereotyped by the general population
and usually as homosexuals. — Billie Jean King

Success isn't winning every time. A lot of different factors go into every race, and you can't control all of them. Success means doing as excellent a job as you can on that particular day. The people I admire most aren't necessarily the most wonderful athletes. I admire the ones who keep coming back and doing it, time after time. — Aimee Mullins

The sad thing is that I know no athletes' names. I am not a sports girl at all. — Clara Mamet

On today's athletes: I wish I could turn back the clock a little bit so I'd have a chance to cut it up with those guys. — Eric Heiden

Dance is certainly a sport, and they are phenomenal athletes, and they're also artists. — Neve Campbell

I'm in the perfect position. It's a sports position and a political position where I can help better the lives of athletes around the world. — Angela Ruggiero

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

I look at athletes in all sports and try to picture what kind of football player they'd be, what position they'd play and so on. — Lou Holtz

A lot of athletes use sports psychologists. — Andy Murray

I have long been one of those tedious people who rails against the coronation of 'student-athletes.' I have heard the argument that big-time athletics bring in loads of money to universities. I don't believe the money goes anywhere other than back into the sports teams, but that's another story. — Susan Orlean

This is very simple in the world of chicks: some are hoochies, some are not, and some should never try to be. It's no different from the idea of sports. Now, I can go on my little rowing machine for four times a week, twenty-two minutes a time, and I can feel as if I flirt with the sporting world. Similar to the idea that a woman can put on something cuter for her man, for those moments, and flirt with garments that a hoochie woman might be pushing. But never for one moment should you get confused. My little rowing machine and I cannot consider ourselves athletes. Wearing the same garment does not a hoochie woman make. So if you are a true hoochie woman, may garments below the navel always be in your future. If you are not, then please don't throw away your cotton zippy jacket. — Tori Amos

I try to help my athletes visualize their full potential, and then get out of the way as they achieve it. — Pat Roberts

My favorite thing about being linked to Oakley is getting to hang with the cool people, the cool athletes - like the X-Games guys. Those guys play sports where they can really hurt themselves, and, well, I just play golf. I'm like the wimpy guy over here. — Bubba Watson

To be candid with you, free agency hurts all sports. It's great for athletes making an enormous amount of money. But to say it helps the sports, I don't believe that. — Jerry West

The world of sports knows no religious, racial or political differences. Athletes, from whatever land they come, speak the same language. The lessons of competition are lessons for life. — Robert Kennedy

As inherently franchise-altering as drafts are, as monumental as they can be in the sport's history, you still can't get past the fact that this is several hours of people wearing suits and reading names off a sheet of paper. The athletes' clothes are entertaining - though not as much as they once were - and there's a warmth you get from watching young men and their families have their dreams come true. But it's still just a televised committee meeting. — Will Leitch

Sports are basically our way of feeling sorry for ourselves. Most men can't become athletes. We're watching guys who actually made it. We see them dunking and making touchdowns. Then we think about ourselves when we were younger. — Kevin Hart

I'm sick of the media making female sports athletes into supermodels, when they're clearly sixes at best. — Daniel Tosh

Athletes are American princes and the locker room is their castle. Some of them behave in princely fashion, become legitimate heroes to us all. And some are jerks. — Anna Quindlen

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

Stop saying athletes do it for the love of the game. They do it for the love of their 32-room mansion with the live shark tank in the living room. If pro sports paid minimum wage, Shaquille O'Neal would be a bouncer at Scores, and Anna Kournikova would be a mail-order bride from Minsk. — Bill Maher

The families of many athletes - incensed at the sports leagues and hoping to make games safer overall - are increasingly making the brains of players who die prematurely and suspiciously available for study. Some athletes are even making the bequest themselves. — Jeffrey Kluger

All the athletes are individuals. This isn't a team sport. We all have our own styles, our own clothing preferences and our own way of doing things. That's the way I do things and I'm proud of it. — Nick Goepper

I'm sure many people who discover they are destined to be athletes before they know what kind, go through a period of revelation ... when they realise instinctively that this is their game ... I think I realised that those first couple of summers in Barellan when the War Memorial Tennis Club became my playground. — Evonne Goolagong Cawley

I didn't know it yet, but he would become one of our high school's super-athletes. There were hints of athletic (and, presumably, sexual) prowess there. For one, boys as ridiculously Abercrombie- esque good-looking as he was are always sports stars throughout high school. It is a rule, a self- fulfilling prophecy. It seems as if, sometime during elementary school, coaches make note of the little boys with the most classic bone structure and the best height projections and kidnap them, training them under cover of night. Not all of them will make it in college ball (that's what people call it, right?) because by the time they're all seniors, many of them will have been riding more on the sportsman-like nature of their faces than their actual abilities. But until that day, coaches will keep putting them on the field in the most prominent and visually appealing positions because they just kind of look like that's where they should be. At least I'm pretty sure that is what's going on. — Katie Heaney

At the end of the day, everything is God's plan, and he cares about what we do. He cares about our hearts, how we play the game, and how we treat people. He's definitely involved with how we handle sports and not just the outcome of it. I'm proud when athletes mention God in any way. — Tim Tebow

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

Men sometimes seem more ready to accept women as brain surgeons than as athletes. — Janice Kaplan

My overwhelming concern will always be the well-being of the athletes. In Olympic sport, it is rare for competitors not to devote half their young life to this. Their families will have given up all sorts of things to allow them to do that. — Sebastian Coe

First of all, in any sport where you can measure distance, height speed and all of that, you see how athletes have changed their sport and made it better. I believe, with every generation, the sport has improved. Certainly, in the men's game, that has been the case. I think that I played Pete [Sampras] at his best, I played Roger [Federer] at his best.. I believe wholeheartedly that Roger and [Rafael] Nadal have pushed the game much further than myself or Pete ever did. Their options on the tennis court are considerably more than ours. — Andre Agassi

If you offer athletes stipends, then you're into pay-for-play, and that's the ballgame. People should realize that, and they should realize that amateurism never has been a sustainable model for a sports-entertainment industry. It wasn't in tennis. It wasn't in the Olympics. And it's not in big-time college sports. — Charlie Pierce

When you see athletes like me win gold medals, you only see the finished product, you dont see the real effort that the likes of Ron have put into making that product. Without the Ron Roddans of this world, you would have no sport. — Linford Christie

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

I've dated athletes before but it's too tough because we have the same job, we deal with the same problems and both do a very selfish sport. — Tyson Gay

To describe yourself as an entrepreneur or a disrupter is as meaningless as describing yourself as an athlete or a thinker. Really? What sports do you play? What do you think about? — Eric Weiner