It’s like having a pet dog for a long time. You get attached to it, and when it dies you miss it.
JESSE OWENSI wanted no part of politics. And I wasn’t in Berlin to compete against any one athlete. The purpose of the Olympics, anyway, was to do your best. As I’d learned long ago from Charles Riley, the only victory that counts is the one over yourself.
More Jesse Owens Quotes
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We all have dreams. But in order to make dreams come into reality, it takes an awful lot of determination, dedication, self-discipline, and effort.
JESSE OWENS -
I realized now that militancy in the best sense of the word was the only answer where the black man was concerned, that any black man who wasn’t a militant in 1970 was either blind or a coward.
JESSE OWENS -
The road to the Olympics, leads to no city, no country. It goes far beyond New York or Moscow, ancient Greece or Nazi Germany. The road to the Olympics leads — in the end — to the best within us.
JESSE OWENS -
Life doesn’t give you all the practice races you need.
JESSE OWENS -
The only victory that counts is the one over yourself.
JESSE OWENS -
I let my feet spend as little time on the ground as possible. From the air, fast down, and from the ground, fast up.
JESSE OWENS -
The only bond worth anything between human beings is their humanness.
JESSE OWENS -
It was bad enough to have toppled from the Olympic heights to make my living competing with animals. But the competition wasn’t even fair. No man could beat a race horse, not even for 100 yards.
JESSE OWENS -
After I came home from the 1936 Olympics with my four medals, it became increasingly apparent that everyone was going to slap me on the back, want to shake my hand or have me up to their suite. But no one was going to offer me a job.
JESSE OWENS -
I always loved running. It was something you could do by yourself and under your own power.
JESSE OWENS -
He was constantly on me about the job that I was to do and the responsibility that I had upon the campus. And how I must be able to carry myself because people were looking.
JESSE OWENS -
It dawned on me with blinding brightness. I realized: I had jumped into another rare kind of stratosphere – one that only a handful of people in every generation are lucky enough to know.
JESSE OWENS -
I decided I wasn’t going to come down. I was going to fly. I was going to stay up in the air forever.
JESSE OWENS -
The lives of most men are patchwork quilts. Or at best one matching outfit with a closet and laundry bag full of incongruous accumulations. A lifetime of training for just ten seconds.
JESSE OWENS -
One chance is all you need.
JESSE OWENS