“I realized from a very early age that God gave me a gift, and that gift was to run, and I wanted to use it to the best of my ability.”

I can understand how evolution says, “don’t believe in God”, but I’ve never had this problem.

My parents always encouraged me and I had a good home life. We were always taught to respect things and other people. It’s so different today, because children are just not taught the right way.

I don’t concentrate on things I can’t do. I do what I can do.

You’ve got to stick at a thing, a particular thing, until you succeed.

I always felt free when I ran. I suppose that’s what was good about it.

No way did I ever think I was going to win the 100m.

I feel that’s the only way to succeed – by concentrating on something in particular. Once you know what you’ve got to do you will succeed, you will succeed.

My salvation was a free gift. I didn’t have to work for it and it’s better than any gold medal that I’ve ever won.

Everything I did that required effort, I opened my mouth. Even to catch a ball, I opened my mouth.

When we cut off access to certain parts of our cities to people on bikes or in wheelchairs, we’re not only doing economic damage, we’re also doing culture damage.

God determines how fast you’re going to run; I can help only with the mechanics.

Neither limits nor adversity are what ruin men. Under pressure, they handle themselves pretty well. It’s the lack of limits they can’t handle. That’s when they run amok. So, if you really want to see what a man is made of let him think he can get away with something.

I’m fascinated by the mysterious element that runs through our lives. Everyone is looking out of the world through their emotion and history. Nobody has an absolute reality.

Let us be well assured of the Matter of Fact, before we trouble our selves with enquiring into the Cause. It is true, that this Method is too slow for the greatest part of Mankind, who run naturally to the Cause, and pass over the Truth of the Matter of Fact.

I spent my childhood scrambling round badgers and foxes and playing fantastic country kid games like knocking on people’s doors and running away. God that was a good game.

Beneath the surface of our daily life, in the personal history of many of us, there runs a continuous controversy between an Ego that affirms and an Ego that denies.

Now to escape involves not just running away, but arriving somewhere.