If you don’t try to win you might as well hold the Olympics in somebody’s back yard.
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
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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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Find the good. It’s all around you. Find it, showcase it and you’ll start believing in it.
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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.
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Awards become corroded, friends gather no dust.
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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.
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.
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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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The only bond worth anything between human beings is their humanness.
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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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Friendships born on the field of athletic strife are the real gold of competition. Awards become corroded, friends gather no dust.
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When I came back, after all those stories about Hitler and his snub, I came back to my native country, and I could not ride in the front of the bus. I had to go to the back door. I couldn’t live where I wanted. Now what’s the difference?
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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.
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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.
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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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I decided I wasn’t going to come down. I was going to fly. I was going to stay up in the air forever.
JESSE OWENS






