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 OWENSRunning is real. It’s all joy and woe, hard as diamond. It makes you weary beyond comprehension, but it also makes you free.
JESSE OWENSI fought, I fought harder, but one cell at a time, panic crept into my body, taking me over.
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.
JESSE OWENSA lifetime of training for just ten seconds.
JESSE OWENSFind the good. It’s all around you. Find it, showcase it and you’ll start believing in it.
JESSE OWENSIt all goes so fast, and character makes the difference when it’s close.
JESSE OWENSI let my feet spend as little time on the ground as possible. From the air, fast down, and from the ground, fast up.
JESSE OWENSI 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 OWENSIf you don’t try to win you might as well hold the Olympics in somebody’s back yard.
JESSE OWENSFriendships born on the field of athletic strife are the real gold of competition. Awards become corroded, friends gather no dust.
JESSE OWENSFor a time, at least, I was the most famous person in the entire world.
JESSE OWENSI had four gold medals, but you can’t eat four gold medals.
JESSE OWENSI 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 OWENSIt 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 OWENSThe 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.
JESSE OWENSAlthough 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 OWENS