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 OWENSAfter 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.
More Jesse Owens Quotes
-
-
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 -
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.
JESSE OWENS -
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.
JESSE OWENS -
It all goes so fast, and character makes the difference when it’s close.
JESSE OWENS -
It’s like having a pet dog for a long time. You get attached to it, and when it dies you miss it.
JESSE OWENS -
If you don’t try to win you might as well hold the Olympics in somebody’s back yard.
JESSE OWENS -
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.
JESSE OWENS -
To a sprinter, the hundred-yard dash is over in three seconds, not nine or ten.
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 -
Only by Gods grace have I made it to see today and only by Gods grace will I ever see tomorrow.
JESSE OWENS -
People come out to see you perform and you’ve got to give them the best you have within you.
JESSE OWENS -
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 OWENS -
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 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 -
For a time, at least, I was the most famous person in the entire world.
JESSE OWENS