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 OWENSFriendships born on the field of athletic strife are the real gold of competition. Awards become corroded, friends gather no dust.
More Jesse Owens Quotes
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I had four gold medals, but you can’t eat four gold medals.
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 -
Only by Gods grace have I made it to see today and only by Gods grace will I ever see tomorrow.
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 -
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.
JESSE OWENS -
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 -
People come out to see you perform and you’ve got to give them the best you have within you.
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 -
A lifetime of training for just ten seconds.
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 -
If you don’t try to win you might as well hold the Olympics in somebody’s back yard.
JESSE OWENS -
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 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 -
Life doesn’t give you all the practice races you need.
JESSE OWENS -
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 OWENS






