Famous quotations about sports

Champions aren't made in the gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them -- a desire, a dream, a vision.
Muhammad Ali
American Boxer and three times World Heavyweight Champion.

Doctors and scientists said that breaking the four-minute mile was impossible, that one would die in the attempt. Thus, when I got up from the track after collapsing at the finish line, I figured I was dead.
Roger Bannister
After becoming first person to break four-minute mile, 1952.

My thoughts before a big race are usually pretty simple. I tell myself: Get out of the blocks, run your race, stay relaxed. If you run your race, you'll win....Channel your energy. Focus.
Carl Lewis
American athlete and winner 9 Olympic gold medals.

Whoever said, 'It's not whether you win or lose that counts,' probably lost.
Martina Navratilova
American tennis player.

Football is like life -- it requires perseverance, self-denial, hard work, sacrifice, dedication and respect for authority.
Vince Lombardi
American football coach.

I always turn to the sports pages first, which records people's accomplishments. The front page has nothing but man's failures.
Earl Warren
Chief Justice of the United States.

Fail to prepare, prepare to fail.
Roy Keane
Irish soccer player and English football club manager.

It's just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up.
Muhammad Ali
American boxer.

Every kid around the world who plays soccer wants to be Pele. I have a great responsibility to show them not just how to be like a soccer player, but how to be like a man.
Pele
Brazilian soccer player, considered possibly world's greatest.

Golf is a good walk spoiled.
Mark Twain
Golf is a game whose aim is to hit a very small ball into an even smaller hole, with weapons singularly ill-designed for the purpose.
Winston Churchill

If you watch a game, it's fun. If you play it, it's recreation. If you work at it, it's golf.
Bob Hope

The English are not very spiritual people, so they invented cricket to give them some idea of eternity.
George Bernard Shaw

I never play cricket. It requires one to assume such indecent postures.
Oscar Wilde
Irish writer.

I am a winner. I just didn't win today.
Greg Norman
Australian golf champion.

People don't win because they're physically stronger. It's because they're stronger between the ears.
Alex Shaffer
American alpine skier.

I never ran 1000 miles. I could never have done that. I ran one mile 1000 times.
Stu Mittleman
American ultra-distance runner.

Football is a mistake. It combines two of the worst things about American life. It is violence punctuated by committee meetings.
George Will
American journalist and author.

Leaders aren't born, they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work. And that's the price we'll have to pay to achieve that goal, or any goal.
Vincent Lombardi
American NFL football coach.

I'm tired of hearing about money, money, money, money, money. I just want to play the game, drink Pepsi, wear Reebok.
Shaquille O'Neal
American basketball player.

The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don't play together, the club won't be worth a dime.
Babe Ruth
American baseball great.

Men forget everything; women remember everything. That's why men need instant replays in sports. They've already forgotten what happened.
Rita Rudner

It's not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog!
Archie Griffin
American football player and two time Heisman Trophy winner.

Perhaps the single most important element in mastering the techniques and tactics of racing is experience. But once you have the fundamentals, acquiring the experience is a matter of time.
Greg LeMond
American champion cyclist and three times winner of Tour de France.

If the Bible has taught us nothing else, and it hasn't, it's that girls should stick to girls' sports, such as hot oil wrestling, foxy boxing, and such and such.
Homer Simpson

You need to play with supreme confidence, or else you'll lose again, and then losing becomes a habit.
Joe Paterno
American football coach.

Cricket is basically baseball on valium.
Robin Williams

The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will.
Vince Lombardi
American football coach.

You have to have the mentality of executing your game when you don't feel like there's a lot of hope. I think the best feeling is when somebody pushes you to the limit and you dig down a little bit extra. By the same token, you also need a little luck. Sometimes they come together.
Andre Agassi
American tennis champion.

If you can believe it, the mind can achieve it.
Ronnie Lott
American professional NFL player.

Golf and sex are the only things you can enjoy without being good at them!
Jimmy Demaret
American golfer.

Ask not what your teammates can do for you. Ask what you can do for your teammates.
Magic Johnson
American NBA basketball star.

Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words, it is war minus the shooting... there are quite enough real causes of trouble already, and we need not add to them by encouraging young men to kick each other on the shins amid the roars of infuriated spectators.
George Orwell
The Sporting Spirit.

Leadership is a matter of having people look at you and gain confidence, seeing how you react. If you're in control, they're in control.
Tom Landry
American football player and coach.

Football doesn't build character, it reveals character!
Marv Levy
American NFL football coach.

If you train hard, you'll not only be hard, you'll be hard to beat.
Herschel Walker
American NFL football player.

To succeed...You need to find something to hold on to, something to motivate you, something to inspire you.
Tony Dorsett
American NFL football player.

I guess there is nothing that will get your mind off everything like golf. I have never been depressed enough to take up the game, but they say you get so sore at yourself you forget to hate your enemies.
Will Rogers
American actor.

The difference between the old ballplayer and the new ballplayer is the jersey. The old ballplayer cared about the name on the front. The new ballplayer cares about the name on the back.
Steve Garvey
America baseball player.

One day of practice is like one day of clean living. It doesn't do you any good.
Abe Lemons
American basketball coach.

Most games are lost, not won!
Casey Stengel
American baseball player and manager.

A lifetime of training for just ten seconds!
Jesse Owens
American Olympic sprinting gold medalist.

An athlete cannot run with money in his pockets. He must run with hope in his heart and dreams in his head.
Emil Zatopek
Czechoslovakian runner and winner four Olympic gold medals.

If winning isn't everything, why do they keep score?
Vince Lombardi
American NFL Coach.

My mind is my biggest asset. I expect to win every tournament I play.
Tiger Woods
American golf champion.
It is almost impossible to remember how tragic a place the world is when one is playing golf.
Robert Lynd
Irish Writer.

So you wish to conquer in the Olympic games, my friend? And I too, by the Gods, and a fine thing it would be. But first mark the conditions and the consequences, and then set to work. You will have to put yourself under discipline; to eat by rule, to avoid cakes and sweetmeats; to take exercise at the appointed hour whether you like it or no, in cold and heat; to abstain from cold drinks and from wine at your will; in a word, to give yourself over to the trainer as to a physician. Then in the conflict itself you are likely enough to dislocate your wrist or twist your ankle, to swallow a great deal of dust, or to be severely thrashed, and, after all these things, to be defeated.
Epictetus
Greek Stoic philosopher.

Baseball has the great advantage over cricket of being sooner ended.
George Bernard Shaw
Irish playwright.