“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.”

I had four gold medals, but you can’t eat four gold medals.

Find the good. It’s all around you. Find it, showcase it and you’ll start believing in it.

The only bond worth anything between human beings is their humanness.

People come out to see you perform and you’ve got to give them the best you have within you.

I’d noticed him watching me for a year or so, especially when we’d play games where there was running or jumping.

To a sprinter, the hundred-yard dash is over in three seconds, not nine or ten.

If you don’t try to win you might as well hold the Olympics in somebody’s back yard. The thrill of competing carries with it the thrill of a gold medal. One wants to win to prove himself the best.

I always loved running. It was something you could do by yourself and under your own power.

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.

When I passed the Chancellor he arose, waved his hand at me, and I waved back at him. I think the writers showed bad taste in criticizing the man of the hour in Germany.

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.

Running is real. It’s all joy and woe, hard as diamond. It makes you weary beyond comprehension, but it also makes you free.

Friendships born on the field of athletic strife are the real gold of competition. Awards become corroded, friends gather no dust.

The black fist is a meaningless symbol. When you open it, you have nothing but fingers – weak, empty fingers. The only time the black fist has significance is when there’s money inside. There’s where the power lies.

I 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.

Life doesn’t give you all the practice races you need.

Worry and fear did their best to sway her, but she was too preoccupied with truth.

All the best stories in the world are but one story in reality – the story of escape. It is the only thing which interests us all and at all times, how to escape.

The mirrors in your mind can reflect the best of yourself, not the worst of someone else.

Nature is the best instructor.

That’s the best part of the game, to see the smiles on their faces and the breakthroughs they have as individuals.

Best to live lightly, unthinkingly.

I am bound by my own definition of criticism : a disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world.

My best friend is me, and I take good care of me.