Top 125 Athletics Quotes

I’ve always been on the outside looking in. I was never popular in school, despite my success in athletics. I would win track and field competitions, but I wouldn’t go to parties. I’d be alone.

Because I just like sports, I like athletics and I like competition.

I’ve always loved working out. When I was little, my dad used to make me and my sister do 10 press-ups every day before we brushed our teeth in the morning. It was like a boot camp! Then I did a lot of athletics at school and was a dancer.

I grew up in Mammoth Lakes, and they shot an episode up there, and I was hanging around when I was on the ski team. I was very, very involved in athletics, so I didn’t watch a lot of TV, but I definitely watched a lot of ‘90210.’

If you look at history of athletics in the country almost all champions have hailed from the villages.

That’s what I’d like to do on the President’s Council. Make sports and athletics available to every youth in America, not just one day a week like it was for me, but every day.

Growing up on a farm, I saw that if I didn’t go to the military or go to school, and I knew my mom and my family wasn’t going to be able to send me to school out of their pocket, so it basically came down to athletics. I knew I didn’t want to work on a farm. I knew I didn’t want to do manual labor the rest of my life.

If there’s anything my kids have taught me, it’s that my general belief in the good qualities of college athletics is alive and well.

An Olympic medal in athletics is still a dream for India. Milkha Singh is the torchbearer for young athletes to achieve that goal.

If you look at the coverage of female sports and athletics across any of the broadcasters that participate in league rights and/or sports programming, women are underrepresented, and it’s a chance and an opportunity for Lifetime to support that movement and the importance of athletics and competition for girls and women.

Athletics set the right sentiment for a clean and believable sport.

Most of my hobbies involve athletics and outdoor activities. I’m willing to learn about anything and converse and pick people’s brains, and I ask people to do the same. I’m into learning anything new and trying new stuff.

Encourage kids to enjoy running and play in athletics. Don’t force them to run too much competition.

College athletics are so entrenched and enjoyed by so many people that they will never be discontinued or substantially changed. I know that. I just pity the people caught in that tender trap. And most of all, I pity those kids.

If the IAAF feel that is the right way to go for TV rights and everything, the rule will stay. As much as I want to be on the podium, tonight is a sad night for athletics.

In athletics, the idea of possibility is presumed. It’s not ‘if;’ it’s ‘how.’

My decision to leave really doesn’t indicate any displeasure with the NCAA. I love college athletics. I’m a big believer in that.

The three major administrative problems on a campus are sex for the students, athletics for the alumni, and parking for the faculty.

I swam very competitively till I was 15, then I swam for fun until I was 18. But athletics remain a very big part of my life. I try to keep that as much in balance with work as I can.

I joined the local athletics club when I was 12, that’s what I did. I did it of my own volition.

If you get a great wife who understands the demands of someone in athletics, I think that’s important.

You have to be positive, and I’m not just talking about athletics, this also applies to life.

The Time’s Up movement extends to every college campus and, of course, athletics.

The great thing about athletics is that it’s like poker sometimes: you know what’s in your hand, and it may be a load of rubbish, but you’ve got to keep up the front.

I started Little Athletics when I was five years old, but my Olympics dream started when I was 10 years old.

The Olympics represent a global standard – for men, for women, for athletics.

When I got to high school and college, I was more involved in athletics then I was in acting. At that time, I was trying to figure out what my identity was and roles became more gendered, it was a little bit more challenging for me to stay with the acting.

Two decades in athletics is a long time in sports.

I am of the firm view that there is no impediment to me competing in athletics competitions.

When I chose athletics, I knew I wanted to be Olympic champion, and now I have done it in London.

We want to make sure our athletes have a future once their athletics careers are over.

I have knocked at almost every door, from government offices to private companies, pleading for money and facilities to start my athletics school. It has been a tough mission. But I am thrilled that it is now a reality.

Myself, Marion Jones and Michael Johnson all got married on the same day because it was the only point on the athletics’ schedule we could fit in. October 3, 1998.

I don’t have rights. Let’s put it this way: in athletics, I don’t have rights.

Sports authority should hire coaches only on contract basis in athletics and also in other games. The coaches should be told to produce medals in upcoming Olympic Games. Only then will they work day and night and push sportsmen and women to work harder.

I think everybody ought to be allowed to be engaged in athletics at whatever level the audience will accept.

My dad emphasized athletics. My mom did as well, but my mom was really hard on the academic end of things and always stressed, ‘Hey, you’ve got to have the grades, you’ve got to be prepared for life outside of sports.’

It’s very hard to win anything in athletics.

Swimming and athletics are the big gigs at the Olympic games. Cycling and rowing are pretty big for Britain, but globally, the two big things are athletics and swimming.

I think we should bring up our children with much less pressure to compete and get ahead: no comparing one child with another, at home or in school; no grades. Let athletics be primarily for fun, and let them be organized by children and youths themselves.

Athletics are not my wheelhouse because sports were mean to this uncoordinated kid growing up, a 6-foot-2 14-year-old who never could do a layup.

I don’t think I even understand the full meaning of athletics.

Although I am training 12-year-olds at my School of Athletics, they will hit the track only after three or four years.

It really shaped me as a person going to DeMatha. Anyone that plays athletics or does music or does whatever, it teaches them to work to the best of their abilities.

I had discipline in other areas but certainly not in athletics.

Not every school in India has athletics as a compulsory sport. They should make it compulsory.

What is learned on the athletic field is not forgotten, nor are the lessons of character that are forged there ever lost. Consider the contributions in the field of public life, business, law, medicine, and the military of those who actively participated in athletics.

I think Cormier is a great opponent. He’s a guy who has competed at the highest level of athletics and I’m going to have to train really hard for him.

In athletics there’s always been a willingness to cheat if it looks like you’re not cheating. I think that’s just a quirk of human nature.

So why am I an A’s fan? Because, from 1901 to 1954, they were the Philadelphia Athletics. Philadelphia is my home town. The A’s were the team I loved as a kid, and no gap of space or time can fray that bond.

Group events like cricket, football and kabaddi have private leagues, which are all being played for money. There are no such events in athletics. Everything is run by the government bodies, there’s less money involved in our game, and we are not even paid as well as people in other sports.

The Olympic Games are highly commercialised. They purport to follow the traditions of an ancient athletics competition, but today it is the commercial aspect that is most apparent. I have seen how, through sport, cities and corporations compete against each other for financial gain.

Football, that’s just athletics. But in the business world – doing everything – people are competing. So you need good work ethics, and I think it helped me to develop good work ethics, being in a small town.

The kids who take up athletics actually come from modest to poor backgrounds. They make it on their own steam; some of them don’t even have the basic means like shoes and enough food to eat.

Athletics: it’s a wonderful thing, it’s a spell-binding thing, nothing in life has quite as much pageantry, as much emotion within a finite time frame, it’s incredibly exciting.

I learned easily and had time to follow my inclination for sports (light athletics and skiing) and chemistry, which I taught myself by reading all textbooks I could get.

Everyone has to try to give back as much as possible because I think in all sports it helps kids to have role models or people to look up to. Someone like Jess Ennis, I know a lot of young girls have started to get into athletics stuff because of her, because of her success.