Ricky Williams Quotes

I have no room in my life for any form of negativity or nonacceptance.

It's funny, people say 'Welcome back' when I haven't gone anywhere.

People are hungry because they're eating empty foods. Mine are full, and so am I.

As an athlete, you figure you work your whole life to have what you have, and to be able to show the world what you have and how proud you are of it, that's always fun.

Growing up with two sisters, you either play by yourself or play Barbie with them. I played by myself.

The more I pay attention to what's going on inside, the more I realize that how I feel, and how I react to what I feel, really creates my reality. And the more in touch I can be, the better chance I have to control what's happening in my life.

I really do love football.

I've let a lot of things go, and obviously football is one of them. I think the hardest thing to let go is your self-image. That's what I'm working on now.

I do feel like a loner but I think it's because I look at things differently than other people.

If I was doing something for the money, I'd be quite miserable.

As human beings we have a tendency when we like something to tie it up and make sure it's there for a long time. I've been working on being able to let things go. I don't think I ever want to buy property again.

I don't think I'll ever be able to stay in one place for more than a year or two. It's not in my nature.

One thing I've learned about life is that if you really let go, it's just a joy ride.

After I won the Heisman Trophy, it just was OK, I’m supposed to go to the NFL and so that’s what I did. I didn’t really have any expectations and I didn’t really understand how things worked.

It's good to do things slow in the bush. It makes you appreciate everything a lot more.

I want to really start focusing on what I want to accomplish and what it is I want to achieve, but not micromanaging this or that and focusing on the little things.

Everywhere I go, people hear Ricky Williams and the next thing they think is marijuana or wasted talent.

Everywhere I go, I hear 'Welcome back.' But everywhere I have been, I have always been with myself. I'm with myself now more than ever. It's funny people say 'Welcome back' when I haven't gone anywhere.

Well, I am now convinced there is no kind of fear or anxiety anyone has to live with.

To talk about balance, it's easier to talk about what's out of balance. And I think anytime that you have any disease, and disease meaning lack of ease, lack of flow... dis-ease. So any time there's disease, you're out of balance, whether it's jealousy, anger, greed, anxiety, fear.

I realized a while back that I have an innate ability to be compassionate, and I saw that the strength of compassion is something that healers have and healers use.'

My helmet is off; I'm not afraid anymore.

If you identify yourself as a great football player, anytime anyone challenges that, you're going to have some kind of problem.

Well, I don't think I've necessarily ever been a passionate football player or a passionate person.

If I can walk, I'll play.

Depending on their fondest memory of you, most people hold on so tightly to their fondest memory they don’t usually let you be anything greater than that. And that’s one of the things I think I allowed myself to be a victim of earlier in my career. What I learned as I got older is I decide. I decide what it’s like for me, not other people. You can be whatever you’d like to be. You just have to choose it.

There is no need to smear my name or to defame my character for the sake of news.

One of my biggest problems is that I'm always so influenced by what other people are thinking about me.

I can look back at it now as definitely like an initiation into adulthood. Almost overnight in the NFL, I was put on a pedestal and I was supposed to be this icon or this image of what a professional athlete was supposed to be. I felt like I just got stuck trying to be someone else and I forgot who I actually was.

My whole thing in life is I just want freedom. I thought that money would give me that freedom. I was wrong. It bound me more than it freed me, because now I had more things to worry about, more people asking for money, I thought I had to buy a house and nice cars and different things that people with money are supposed to do.

Now that I have conquered social anxiety disorder, I find pleasure in fans approaching me.

I got high, and forgot I wasn't supposed to get high.

I led the NFL in attempts the past two years and they really didn’t go out and get a quarterback to help me so I knew it’s going to be all on me again. I could see my mortality as a football player, that I’m not going to be able to do this much longer. It just became obvious to me that playing football for me is not going to be fun, not something I’m going to enjoy and it’s time for me to do something different.

Playing in the National Football League, you're told, you know, where to be, when to be there, what to wear, how to be there. Being able to step away from that, I have an opportunity to look deeper into myself and look for what's real.

Tomorrow doesn't really exist.

If you replace the word God in the Bible with the word Truth, it reads exactly right.

I started practicing yoga. I started learning some hands-on healing stuff. And I found really good chiropractors, really good massage therapists, and what I found is I've been able to actually peel off layers of trauma on my body and actually move better now than I did.

I had this notion that everyone was staring at me and judging everything about me, from my appearance to the way I talk and everything.

A team takes on the personality of the head coach.

I love myself. Because I'm all that I have and if I don't love myself, no one else will. Whenever I feel myself starting to dislike something I tell myself, "This is who I am," so what's the point in disliking it?

When I retired, I felt that I lived more in that year than I had the previous 27 years of my life.

I think it's very easy for people to stereotype athletes, good and bad.

I want to thank all my fans, teammates, coaches and supporters for the strength they've given me to overcome so much.

The people that I see on the street, they treat me more as a human being and not just an icon or a football player.

I don't care what people think about me because I know I am more than all the pain and strife they hold inside.

Coaches want so many things from a back. It's hard to find someone like Edgerrin James or Marshall Faulk, someone you can trust to block, catch and be physical. But I can do all those things.

Football is my job, not my life, but it's a job I'm going to give my all for as long as I'm in it.