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.
JESSE OWENSIt 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.
More Jesse Owens Quotes
-
-
The only victory that counts is the one over yourself.
JESSE OWENS -
Hitler didn’t snub me – it was our president who snubbed me. The president didn’t even send me a telegram.
JESSE OWENS -
The only bond worth anything between human beings is their humanness.
JESSE OWENS -
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.
JESSE OWENS -
If you don’t try to win you might as well hold the Olympics in somebody’s back yard.
JESSE OWENS -
I’d noticed him watching me for a year or so, especially when we’d play games where there was running or jumping.
JESSE OWENS -
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.
JESSE OWENS -
I fought, I fought harder, but one cell at a time, panic crept into my body, taking me over.
JESSE OWENS -
Awards become corroded, friends gather no dust.
JESSE OWENS -
A lifetime of training for just ten seconds.
JESSE OWENS -
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?
JESSE OWENS -
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.
JESSE OWENS -
The lives of most men are patchwork quilts. Or at best one matching outfit with a closet and laundry bag full of incongruous accumulations. A lifetime of training for just ten seconds.
JESSE OWENS -
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.
JESSE OWENS -
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.
JESSE OWENS






