Quotes About Athletes

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...

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

Children and even adults, when they like certain athletes, they can tell you about their batting average, about where they came from.

The two most important things to athletes, playing time and money.

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.

I'm pretty proud of having completed a marathon myself, so I can only imagine the pride that real athletes feel when they are picked for the Olympic or the Paralympic Games.

Universities exist to transmit knowledge and understanding of ideas and values to students not to provide entertainment for spectators or employment for athletes.

That's one of the reasons I moved to Florida. Of course, the main reason is the weather and the training. But there's more jealousy in Switzerland because it's so little and they don't have so many athletes.

I drink during every show. I can't remember the last show I did completely sober. It works for me. I use it as a tool. It's like steroids are for athletes. I'm looser and more self-confident. If I drank less, I wouldn't have been on stage this long.

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.

Your best athletes might give basketball a try just when they think, geez, this might be something that pays off for me in the end.

The greatest athletes in the world play in the NHL there is no question about that.

People complain that pro athletes make a lot of money; but what they don't understand is that we need a lot of money because we spend a lot of money.

I'm just kind of really interested in athletes as artists of a pretty serious variety and people who devote themselves to what they do in a really incredible way.

Several of my critics have said, 'Bowerman just tacks up a piece of paper in the locker room and turns his runners loose.' They're partially right. I do give the athletes a relatively free rein and for good reason. One of my principles is? 'Don't overcoach.'

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.

Who is to blame for this most recent of sports disgraces in America? The culture that flings young athletes like Tyson up out of obscurity, makes millionaires of them and watches them self-destruct?

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.

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

The ancient Greeks kept women athletes out of their games. They wouldn't even let them on the sidelines. I'm not sure but that they were right.

The sport has changed so much since 2004, it's incredible. If you look even at me, the way I'm fencing now compared to 2004, it's a completely different sport. They've changed so many things just with what [the referees] are calling, they've changed the timing of the [scoring] lights. You always have to be evolving as a fencer. The Olympics is interesting because it's such a small field compared to what we're used to. This world championships, I think we had a hundred and something [athletes]. The Olympics is going to be less than 32.

All people, regardless of whether they're athletes or not, should treat people the way they want to be treated.

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

Great coaches are great humanitarians. They really care for the athlete as people first and athletes second. This is paramount in gaining respect.

If there were camera phones back in the day, the biggest athletes in the world would have had a lot of explaining to do.

Gay people are born into, and belong to, every society in the world. They are all ages, all races, all faiths. They are doctors and teachers, farmers and bankers, soldiers and athletes. And whether we know it or whether we acknowledge it, they are our family, our friends, and our neighbors. Being gay is not a Western invention. It is a human reality.

The United States has become a place where entertainers and professional athletes are mistaken for people of importance.

Athletes and musicians make astronomical amounts of money. People get paid $100 million to throw a baseball! Shouldn't we all take less and pass some of that money onto others? Think about firefighters, teachers and policemen. We should celebrate people that are intellectually smart and trying to make this world a better place.

Look at self-satisfied pop singers or greasy, semi-literate athletes. People worship them. Why?” "Because they’re talented.

For me, it's all about who you are. Some athletes may feel a responsibility. Some may not. One thing I've talked with my family and team about is doing more. Trying to make an impact.

Of course, the muscular build of athletes is always a challenge for a designer, but my clothing's softness and comfort, which are central aspects of my stylistic vision, allow it to adapt to various physical builds effortlessly.

Dancers are both athletes and artists.

Athletes at all ages are bigger and stronger than ever before. And they are being encouraged - sometimes even incentivized, as we recently learned was the case on at least one National Football League team - to play to injure.

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.

Athletes who take to the classroom naturally or are encouraged to focus on grades should be able to do well in the classroom. I believe the reason you go to college is to get your degree. It's not a minor league or an audition for the pros

I hate to say anything that may hurt UCLA, but I can't be quiet when I see what the NCAA is doing to Jerry Tarkanian only because he has a reputation for giving a second chance to many black athletes other coaches have branded as troublemakers. The NCAA is working night and day trying to get Jerry, but no one from the NCAA ever questioned me during my four years at UCLA!

No one will burn out doing aerobic running. It is too much anaerobic running, which the American scholastic athletic system tends to put young athletes through, that burns them out.

The Olympics unite the world and inspire us to be a better version of ourselves. The competitions motivate the spectators, and the athletes' message is: You should have more confidence in your ability to achieve things, you should dream more.

I often hear that it's unfair that athletes should make what they make versus teachers, because who's more important. But that's not how the market works. Markets don't sign things. You know what you're worth is what somebody will pay you. It's not some arbitrary - the purpose of a company is not to create jobs and health care. That's not why they exist. And it's not to create fairness or any of that. That's not why people form businesses and try to sell a service or a product.

As a kid I always idolized the winning athletes. It is one thing to idolize heroes. It is quite another to visualize yourself in their place. When I saw great people, I said to myself: I can be there.

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.

They want everything to be better for their children. I think athletes are starting to see that and that's why they're starting to speak out.

Everyone is really afraid of getting out there and not being good. That's the challenge: To be afraid and know people are staring at you and know you might not do all that well, but you do it anyway. What singles out the successful athlete from the ones who never make it past a plateau, it that successful athletes risk failure, even though they are terrified.

The beauty of all these years of singing the anthem is that I got a chance to meet athletes that I love, and there was a mutual respect.

Now, I talk to athletes who answer questions with a 'yeah'. I realize I used to do that. Or they answer very quickly and you stand there trying to come up with another question to ask. I've seen both sides and it's been very educational.

When someone is in a state of flow, that person's brain is not thinking about anything - it's just processing things through chunks at a total instinct level. Athletes in a state of flow describe knowing what will happen just before it does - knowing how a defender will react to a certain move an instant before doing it. Of course, if you know what will happen, you can succeed at doing it, so an athlete in flow has a stand-out game.

As a little kid, not only is my dad Jo-Jo White, but M. L. Carr is involved in the family, Red Auerbach is my godfather, and my stepmother was an Olympic-caliber sprinter. Athletes were all around. I happened to be a natural athlete. If I wasn't, it might have been hell. But I never got any pressure from my mom and dad to be an athlete.