Hitler didn’t snub me – it was our president who snubbed me. The president didn’t even send me a telegram.
JESSE OWENSThe 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.
More Jesse Owens Quotes
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I always loved running. It was something you could do by yourself and under your own power.
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Awards become corroded, friends gather no dust.
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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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I fought, I fought harder, but one cell at a time, panic crept into my body, taking me over.
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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.
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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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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.
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 -
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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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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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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I had four gold medals, but you can’t eat four gold medals.
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To a sprinter, the hundred-yard dash is over in three seconds, not nine or ten.
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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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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