Lance Armstrong Quotes

Nobody is going to feel sorry for me if I've lost a dollar or $100m.

It gave me a chance to re-evaluate my life and my career. Cancer certainly gives things a new perspective. I would not have won the Tour de France if I had not had cancer. It gave me new strength and focus.

We are much better than we know.

But the fact is that I wouldn't have won even a single Tour de France without the lesson of illness. What it teaches is this: pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever.

I think I bit off more than I could chew. I thought the marathon would be easier. For the level of condition that I have now... that was without a doubt the hardest physical thing I have ever done.

I got the three things I wanted. I did my job, I worked hard in the process, and I cherish the memories, and they're mine.

When you know your not going to die, you have to ask yourself... What's the highest and best use for myself.

I exercise everyday. I swim, I bike, I run and I go to the gym.

Suffering, I was beginning to think, was essential to a good life, and as inextricable from such a life as bliss. It’s a great enhancer. It might last a minute, but eventually it subsides, and when it does, something else takes its place, and maybe that thing is a great space. For happiness. Each time I encountered suffering, I believed that I grew, and further defined my capacities – not just my physical ones, but my interior ones as well, for contentment, friendship, or any other human experience.

Pain is only temporary. Quitting is forever!

How many times do I have to say it? … Well, it can't be any clearer than 'I've never taken drugs.'

You know what they say, the high trees get the wind.

I didn't live a lot of lies, but I lived one big one.

I believe that the mind powers the body, and once the mind says we want to do it, then the body will follow.

I'm not a patient person.

Anything is possible. You can be told that you have a 90-percent chance or a 50-percent chance or a 1-percent chance, but you have to believe, and you have to fight.

A bike ride. Yes, that's it! A simple bike ride. It's what I love to do and most days I can't believe they pay me to do it. A day is not the same without it.

My greatest point is my persistence... However down I am, I fight until the last ball.

It's frustrating in the sense that I still think I could be competing at some sport at a fairly high level, which nobody cares about. Nobody wants to hear me say that.

Cycling is so hard, the suffering is so intense, that it’s absolutely cleansing. The pain is so deep and strong that a curtain descends over your brain….Once; someone asked me what pleasure I took in riding for so long. ‘PLEASURE???? I said.’ ‘I don’t understand the question.’ I didn’t do it for the pleasure; I did it for the pain.

I don't think history is stupid.History ultimately rectifies a lot of these things. If you had to ask me what I think happens in 50 years, I don't think it sits empty in 50 years. Maybe somebody else's name is there. But you can't leave it empty.

Me and running don’t always see eye to eye. Some days it hurts more than others. But it doesn’t mean I don’t do it. I deal with it and I keep running because not everything that is good for you, always feels good for you.

If you're trying to hide something, you wouldn't keep getting away with it for 10 years. Nobody is that clever.

The Europeans look down on raising your hands. They don't like the end-zone dance. I think that's unfortunate. That feeling - the finish line, the last couple of meters - is what motivates me.

I believed in belief, for its own shining sake. To believe in the face of utter hopelessness, every article of evidence to the contrary, to ignore apparent catastrophe - what other choice was there? We do it every day, I realized. We are so much stronger than we imagine, and belief is one of the most valiant and long-lived human characteristics. To believe, when all along we humans know that nothing can cure the briefness of this life, that there is no remedy for our basic mortality, that is a form of bravery. To continue believing in yourself, believing in the doctors, believing in thetreatent, believing in whatever I chose to believe in, that was the most important thing.

We all want to be forgiven. There's a lot of really, really bad people who want to be forgiven but will never be forgiven, and I might be in that camp.

How do you fight an invisible opponent like suspicion?

I have never doped … I have competed as an endurance athlete for 25 years with no spike in performance, passed more than 500 drug tests and never failed one.

If you go to Wikipedia and you look at the Tour de France, there's this huge block in World War One with no winners, and there's another block in World War Two. And then it seems like there's another world war.

The ban doesn't have anything to do with Livestrong or my ability to work in [the cancer] community. Perhaps it speeds it up. I don't know the examples in Great Britain of athletes who have fallen. I know the examples in the United States - the Tiger Woods, the Michael Vicks, even the Bill Clintons - people who are still out there able to work.

I have been dealing with claims that I cheated and had an unfair advantage in winning my seven Tours since 1999.

That was my decision, so I have to be responsible for that. It was one of the biggest mistakes of my life and I don't have a good reason for why I wanted to come back, I don't have a good reason for doing it all.

I will spend the rest of my life trying to earn back trust and apologize to people.

I take nothing for granted. I now have only good days, or great days.

I spent a long time trying to build up an organisation [the Lance Armstrong Foundation that changed its name to Livestrong after his confession] to help a lot of people.

You can teach someone how to control their strength, but you can't teach them to be strong.

You know, once I was thinking of quitting when I was diagnosed with brain, lung and testicular cancer all at the same time. But with the love and support of my friends and family, I got back on the bike and won the Tour de France five times in a row. But I'm sure you have a good reason to quit.

The idea that anybody was forced, or pressured, or encouraged, is not true.

Giving up was never an option

If I can't face my accusers, that's a joke. We did that in medieval times.

Athletes don't have much use for poking around in their childhoods, because, introspection doesn't get you anywhere in a race.

The question was, which would the chemo kill first: the cancer or me?

I tried to control the narrative.

The body is telling the mind to stop. The mind is telling the body to shut up.

Nothing goes to waste, you put it all to use, the old wounds and long-ago slights become the stuff of competitive energy.

There comes a point in every man's life when he has to say: 'Enough is enough.'

Two things scare me. The first is getting hurt. But that's not nearly as scary as the second, which is losing.

The day it all changed. The day I stated never to take anything for granted. The day I learned to take charge of my life. It was the day I was diagnosed with cancer.