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 OWENSThe battles that count aren’t the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself – the invisible, inevitable battles inside all of us – that’s where it’s at.
More Jesse Owens Quotes
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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.
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I let my feet spend as little time on the ground as possible. From the air, fast down, and from the ground, fast up.
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I’d noticed him watching me for a year or so, especially when we’d play games where there was running or jumping.
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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.
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Running is real. It’s all joy and woe, hard as diamond. It makes you weary beyond comprehension, but it also makes you free.
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Although I wasn’t invited to shake hands with Hitler, I wasn’t invited to the White House to shake hands with the President either.
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Find the good. It’s all around you. Find it, showcase it and you’ll start believing in it.
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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.
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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.
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I decided I wasn’t going to come down. I was going to fly. I was going to stay up in the air forever.
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The only bond worth anything between human beings is their humanness.
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I had four gold medals, but you can’t eat four gold medals.
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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.
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If you don’t try to win you might as well hold the Olympics in somebody’s back yard.
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Only by Gods grace have I made it to see today and only by Gods grace will I ever see tomorrow.
JESSE OWENS