“The secret is, first, get a thoroughbred horse because they are the most nervous animals on earth. Then get the biggest gun you can find and make sure the starter fires that big gun right by the nervous thoroughbred’s ear.”

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 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.

One chance is all you need.

If you don’t try to win you might as well hold the Olympics in somebody’s back yard.

It’s like having a pet dog for a long time. You get attached to it, and when it dies you miss it.

Hitler didn’t snub me – it was our president who snubbed me. The president didn’t even send me a telegram.

It all goes so fast, and character makes the difference when it’s close.

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.

We used to have a lot of fun. We never had any problems. We always ate. The fact that we didn’t have steak? Who had steak?

For a time, at least, I was the most famous person in the entire world.

I have no doubt that it is part of the destiny of the human race in it’s gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals.

History is a people’s memory, and without a memory, man is demoted to the lower animals.

A man of my spiritual intensity does not eat corpses.

We don’t let animals suffer, so why humans?

Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it.

Humans are social animals. We seek belonging. We feel safer in a tribe than alone. But not all tribes are healthy.

Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.

Man is the cruelest animal.