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.

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

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

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.

I always loved running.... It was something you could do by yourself and under your own power.

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.

One day or another every athlete feels like taking it easy. He stops trying to exceed his limits, and thinks he can keep winning because of his lucky star, or the bad luck of his opponents. You must overcome this negative instinct, which affects all of us, and which is the only difference between the person who wins a race, and those who lose. This is the battle you have to fight every day of your life.