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.
JESSE OWENSOne chance is all you need.
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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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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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.
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To a sprinter, the hundred-yard dash is over in three seconds, not nine or ten.
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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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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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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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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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For a time, at least, I was the most famous person in the entire world.
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It’s like having a pet dog for a long time. You get attached to it, and when it dies you miss it.
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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.
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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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Life doesn’t give you all the practice races you need.
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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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The 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.
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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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I fought, I fought harder, but one cell at a time, panic crept into my body, taking me over.
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Awards become corroded, friends gather no dust.
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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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The only bond worth anything between human beings is their humanness.
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People come out to see you perform and you’ve got to give them the best you have within you.
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The only victory that counts is the one over yourself.
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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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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