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 OWENSThe 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.
More Jesse Owens Quotes
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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 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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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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People come out to see you perform and you’ve got to give them the best you have within you.
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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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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 always loved running. It was something you could do by yourself and under your own power.
JESSE OWENS -
For a time, at least, I was the most famous person in the entire world.
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.
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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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I fought, I fought harder, but one cell at a time, panic crept into my body, taking me over.
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 -
Find the good. It’s all around you. Find it, showcase it and you’ll start believing in it.
JESSE OWENS -
The only bond worth anything between human beings is their humanness.
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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 -
Awards become corroded, friends gather no dust.
JESSE OWENS -
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.
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 -
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 -
The only victory that counts is the one over yourself.
JESSE OWENS -
If you don’t try to win you might as well hold the Olympics in somebody’s back yard.
JESSE OWENS -
To a sprinter, the hundred-yard dash is over in three seconds, not nine or ten.
JESSE OWENS -
Life doesn’t give you all the practice races you need.
JESSE OWENS -
I had four gold medals, but you can’t eat four gold medals.
JESSE OWENS -
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?
JESSE OWENS