“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.”

I fought, I fought harder, but one cell at a time, panic crept into my body, taking me over.

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 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.

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 gave my beauty and my youth to men. I am going to give my wisdom and experience to animals.

Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.

The eagle never lost so much time as when he submitted to learn of the crow

If I could do anything about the way people behave towards each other, I would, but since I can’t, I’ll stick to animals.

The lamb misused breeds public strife And yet forgives the butcher’s knife.

There’s a lot of us out here that are birds, man. We all need to just fly.

The misery of keeping a dog is his dying so soon. But, to be sure, if he lived for fifty years and then died, what would become of me?

The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.