Quotes About Athletes

I talk to student-athletes. I try to get them to remember that they're not just athletes, but student-athletes. You need to get an education, keep your hands clean and try to represent the university.

I think the colleges should be free to give athletes less than a full scholarship, no scholarship and more than a scholarship. And the athletes should be free to bargain.

Athletes try to get other athletes out and they should have no false starts.

You've got to have great athletes to win, I don't care who the coach is. You can't win without good athletes but you can lose with them. This is where coaching makes the difference.

It's extremely hard for athletes to accept what's happened to them sometimes. It's hard to be beaten by a small margin, and I've spoken with athletes who, for years afterward, have been tormented by the knowledge that, had they done something ever so slightly different, they could have been one-ten-thousandth of a second quicker.

When I was 17, I worked in a mentoring program in Harlem designed to improve the community. That's when I first gained an appreciation of the Harlem Renaissance, a time when African-Americans rose to prominence in American culture. For the first time, they were taken seriously as artists, musicians, writers, athletes, and as political thinkers.

I squirm when I see athletes praying before a game. Don't they realize that if God took sports seriously he never would have created George Steinbrenner.

All of us get knocked down, but it's resiliency that really matters. All of us do well when things are going well, but the thing that distinguishes athletes is the ability to do well in times of great stress, urgency and pressure.

Much in the way Olympic athletes optimize their game by paying an enormous - borderline maniacal - amount of attention to things like diet, exercise, sleep, and of course the essential R&R, we all would do well to pay more attention to those key aspects of our lives that comprise our overall health equation.

The Olympic Games belong to the athletes and not to the politicians.

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.

We amateur athletes are peculiarly devoted to our fitness, and our obsessions can sometimes be a burden to our loved ones and a mystery to everyone else.

Clean living is the cardinal principle in the lives of the world's greatest athletes, as the phenomenal performances of these outstanding characters will obviously show.

Olympics are probably the most important thing for Russians than any other athletes in the whole world. Since I was a little kid and since everybody was a little kid, their dream was playing in Olympic Games, especially if we have a chance to represent our country in Sochi, it's unbelievable and it's going to be a great thing.

I read somewhere that drummers are practically Olympic athletes. I feel pretty good, most of the time. After 38 years, I can't expect much better than that!

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.

I have long been one of those tedious people who rails against the coronation of 'student-athletes.' I have heard the argument that big-time athletics bring in loads of money to universities. I don't believe the money goes anywhere other than back into the sports teams, but that's another story.

The things that people do now in sports, you can't even believe. These are complete total athletes. To see what human beings can do in the highest level is amazing.

As the longest-running women's professional sports league in the country, the WNBA is a great product comprising 132 of the best female athletes in the world. And when you look beyond the players to owners, coaches, trainers, accountants, and chief operating officers - it's a wonderful example of what women can achieve in sports and in business.

The Olympic Games is holy. Athletes from around the world, including myself, of course, dream to participate.

The quality of American life is an insult to the possibilities of human growth... the pollution of American space, with gadgetry and cars and TV and box architecture, brutalizes the senses, making gray neurotics of most of us, and perverse spiritual athletes and strident self-transcenders of the best of us.

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.

What drove me to become the world's greatest bodybuilder is no different from what drives other athletes to become great tennis players or boxers or jockeys.

I never performed on drugs. That'd be stupid. It's the same thing with athletes. They can't perform when they have cocaine problems.

Often when people are claiming that they are not creative, they mean that they are not artists, writers, athletes, or any other media types demonstrating creativity. Or they know someone who always seems to have a lot of ideas and know that they can't match that. We all have a tendency to idolize those who create what we see in the media. I think it's better to use these people as models rather than idols, especially when these people have aspects of their lives that are similar to us. Then we can take their inspiration as we go on to be creative in our own way in our own lives.

Athletes as role models and heroes is a hoax, a sick hoax. The men and women who are fighting in Iraq, they are the true heroes.

Most comedians weren't great athletes; that was the way they got noticed in high school.

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

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 best athletes in any sport take stretching very seriously before and after matches. Stretching is instrumental in any athlete's physical success.

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.

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

Experiencing this pain in my muscles and aching and going on and on is my challenge. The last three or four reps is what makes the muscles grow. This area of pain divides a champion from someone who is not a champion. That's what most people lack, having the guts to go on and just say they'll go through the pain no matter what happens. I have no fear of fainting. I do squats until I fall over and pass out. So what? It's not going to kill me. I wake up five minutes later and I'm OK. A lot of other athletes are afraid of this. So they don't pass out. They don't go on.

We have seen some of the greatest athletes fall because they have tried to take shortcuts. I'm not going to call any names but we talk about guys that was like at the top of their game that people just idolized. They looked in awe and all of a sudden you see them just come tumbling down because they want to take shortcuts. I think it's more rewarding when you do it the old fashioned way.

The way in which sports focuses more on the peccadilloes, lives and putative personalities of athletes and less on the finer points of playing games, I've become less interested in it. I don't want to write sports profiles.

Oscar Pistorius is now infamous for reasons that I think everybody knows about, but when I hit on his story and put it in the book, what I found fascinating was a description, from one of the scientists who helped Pistorius, of what the Paralympics will become. Because they don't place any restriction on enhancements for athletes, in the very near future the Paralympics will bear a closer resemblance to NASCAR than to the traditional Olympics. There will be a human-machine melding that will result in crazy feats of athleticism.

It's good they're holding the Olympics in the East End of London. Means the athletes will have to use extra skill to work out which gunshot is the starting pistol.

Baseball people think they can find athletes with good bodies and teach them to play baseball. What's wrong with giving someone who already knows how to play baseball a chance? I think I fall into that category.

I think the sport needs the help to continue to motivate athletes.

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!

Why can't we have a voice? What's the difference between an athlete having millions or Donald Trump? Every time a politician talks, they talk about what's wrong with America. Well, he's an athlete who is also saying something is wrong with America. Why is it that when he talks, people say, 'How can he talk about oppression and make millions?' Well, Trump is talking about it. Hillary Clinton is talking about it. And they have more money than most athletes.

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.

Stop saying athletes do it for the love of the game. They do it for the love of their 32-room mansion with the live shark tank in the living room. If pro sports paid minimum wage, Shaquille O'Neal would be a bouncer at Scores, and Anna Kournikova would be a mail-order bride from Minsk.

It's like getting the Williams sisters to play (tennis) against a man, and they're far better athletes than she (Sorenstam) is.

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.

One of the common traits of outstanding performers-coaches, athletes, managers, sales representatives, executives, and others who face a daily up/down, win/lose accounting system-is that a rejection, that is, defeat, is quickly forgotten, replaced eagerly by pursuit of a new order, client, or opponent.

I don't believe my athletes care what I know, until they know that I care.