Quotes About Athletes

O.J. Simpson was primarily interested in O.J. His rise to fame in the late '60s coincided with the period where black athletes were more outspoken and political than in any era. You're talking about the generation of black athletes that came about after Jackie Robinson. Athletes after that were just happy to find a place in sports. But when you got to the mid-'60s, you had athletes like Jim Brown and Muhammad Ali, who were very outspoken on the issues of race and civil rights.

In many ways, I think the WNBA is changing the way America views women and is having a positive impact on the way America views professional athletes. We're showing the world what women can be as athletes and what athletes can be as citizens.

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.

If the Palestinian Olympic Committee or Palestinian Federation provide good facilities to the athletes then maybe I can become better than these Bahraini or Qatari athletes.

The attention I get has been great. It has opened so many doors for me. It's nice that people are accepting beautiful women as athletes. It's encouraging to girls that muscles don't mean you can't be beautiful.

I think marriage and athletes is a bad combination.

Across the board you can run up against 10 athletes where we're the same physically. They've done the same kind of training; they are in the same kind of shape. But the one that wins is the person who really believes they can win.

It provides a different type of element and mental strain athletes love. That's what makes the game of golf so special.

Getting to know athletes from all over the planet is a big part of the Olympic experience.

When I write, I fall into the zone many writers, painters, musicians, athletes, and craftsmen of all sorts seem to share: In doing something I enjoy and am expert at, deliberate thought falls aside and it is all just THERE. I think of the next word no more than the composer thinks of the next note.

Athletes who are able to stay completely focused in pursuit of their dreams are the ones that are most likely to become champions.

Back in high school, about two years ago, I was in this silly punk band called Ballet for Athletes. We were all trying to take it seriously, and then I realized that "punk" and "serious" aren't really two words you can put in the same sentence - at least, in my opinion.

Athletes often start life at the opposite end of the wealth and prestige spectrum, but as soon as they exhibit an unusual talent for swinging a bat or sinking a free-throw they may find that the rules have been suspended for them. They are waved through school and into the pros, and incidents of bad behavior are overlooked or covered up.

At 13, I was a big, totally uncoordinated, hopeless football player. I responded to somebody elses rules, and I stayed just good enough to get a scholarship to Columbia, which was looking for scholar-athletes.

There are a lot of great athletes who stop working out, and they get out of shape like everybody else in their 30s and 40s.

There is still an assumption among many people that to be black is to be lower class. In the last fifteen to twenty years, perhaps even further back than that, there's also been an explosion of a very wealthy black class in the United States, but those people are often treated as special cases: they're athletes, entertainers. Jay-Z. Basketball players. The country metabolizes the fact these rich black people exist, but it seems only to reinforce the idea that every other black person is limping along in poverty.

The coverage [of crimes] is different. It's less angry when white [athletes] are involved, less accusatory, less judgemental. I see that in the pieces that are written and reported. At times it bothers me to the point that I just stop reading...just stop.

Competing at the Olympics is the pinnacle of your career. Everything is amplified, and you feel so proud to represent your country. You're there with athletes from all over the world. Everyone is coming together, putting differences aside.

Athletes these days are too robotic. People like to see performances filled with emotion. In my career I tried to be amusing, to differentiate myself from the other champions.

If you're tweeting - and this is what I tell the young athletes who come to me about these situations, because I've been through them and I've seen both sides of it - if you're tweeting just because everyone else is tweeting and you're not uncomfortable, if it doesn't feel like a sacrifice - like when I wore that T-shirt it was a sacrifice.

You could ask any position player and they'll tell you: pitchers aren't athletes.

What we're seeing is an era where governments and huge organizations such as the IOC don't have accountability. They don't have accountability to the athletes they are supposed to be protecting and they don't have accountability to the truth. What we've seen out of Russia is a continual denial, no matter what has been presented. They are still blaming Grigory Rodchenkov as an individual who did this all on his own.

The powers that be don’t want athletes or boxers to become as smart as they are.

All athletes speak about the mental element of athletics, and it usually boils down to the same thing: if you can remove your ego from the game, you can function with much more clarity and you are more likely to succeed. Wouldn't it be interesting if we all began speaking about the mental element of our lives in this way?

Marketers know that if people you respect - perhaps laughably including entertainers and athletes - say they like a product, you're more likely to buy.

You can't worry about what people say, but... People always harp on athletes being selfish individualists.

It is exactly the unattainability, which differentiates a dream from a goal: Goals are reachable, when you fight for them. Dreams are not. Athletes shouldn't dream, but set goals for themselves and fight for them.

The reports of racial episodes are disturbing. But the players' protest is exhilarating because it is the most high-profile example to date in a continuing revolution in which the athletes who drive the multibillion-dollar college sports machine have begun to use their visibility to demand change.

Notice how many of the Olympic athletes effusively thanked their mothers for their success? “She drove me to my practice at four in the morning,” etc. Writing is not figure skating or skiing. Your mother will not make you a writer. My advice to any young person who wants to write is: leave home.

We have got to go out there and deliver, go on the streets and find athletes, improve facilities around the country and find coaches. We have got to go out there and search for a star.

And be silent for the most part, or else make only the most necessary remarks, and express these in few words. But rarely, and when occasion requires you to talk, talk, indeed, but about no ordinary topics. Do not talk about gladiators, or horseraces, or athletes, or things to eat or drink - topics that arise on all occasions; but above all, do not talk about people, either blaming, or praising, or comparing them.

We are like highly trained athletes, who never run a race.

Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up.

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.

We know that for the last 300 or 400 years, the size of human bodies is growing. Now what happened is that we suddenly, in history, have the backward process. We have these great Greek athletes, we have ultra-powerful Roman soldiers. You look at the size of the Roman soldier who has to carry all this ammunition. You're talking about 300,000 Arnold Schwartzeneggers.

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.

Many dedicated endurance athletes don’t need to be told what to do – they need to be told what not to do.

From the public's perspective, they like to see guys that go out there and stand. Now, if you happen to be one of those two athletes that are standing out there and trading with each other, afterwards you would disagree with those people. The spectators are not on the receiving end of all those strikes. I have young guys who say, "I like to stand and trade." I say, "Really? Then you are not a very intelligent fighter."

My high school, like most high schools, had a pretty rigid stratification system. Kids were clustered into groups - the studious ones, the athletes, the popular ones - and we never crossed paths with each other. You stayed in your air-tight group, and you were suspicious of people in other groups.

Ballet dancing is arduous, strenuous activity. Students are engaged in physical training that rivals the training Olympic athletes undergo. At the same time, they strive for physical perfection not for the prowess alone but as a way of achieving the means necessary to express the pure nature of their art.

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.

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.

The boys think they can all be athletes, and the girls think they can all be singers. That's the way to fame and success. ...as a group blacks must give up their illusions.

The power of imagination is incredible. Often we see athletes achieving unbelievable results and wonder how they did it. One of the tools they use is visualization or mental imagery… they made the choice to create their destinies and visualized their achievements before they ultimately succeeded.

The only reason we make good role models is because you guys look up to athletes and we can influence you in positive ways. But the real role models should be your parents and teachers!

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.

I always believed I was an ugly duckling in a family of swans, you know? I was such a black sheep, and it was the same way in high school... I was just kind of that awkward theater kid with a bunch of athletes... it was very Glee.

We all know the guy who sits at the end of the local bar telling the story of how he threw the winning touchdown pass in High School. I don't want to be that guy. Racing gives us all the chance to be athletes again.