I had four gold medals, but you can’t eat four gold medals.
JESSE OWENSFind the good. It’s all around you. Find it, showcase it and you’ll start believing in it.
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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He was constantly on me about the job that I was to do and the responsibility that I had upon the campus. And how I must be able to carry myself because people were looking.
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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.
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For a time, at least, I was the most famous person in the entire world.
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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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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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A lifetime of training for just ten seconds.
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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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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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One chance is all you need.
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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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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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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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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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I always loved running. It was something you could do by yourself and under your own power.
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Life doesn’t give you all the practice races you need.
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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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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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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.
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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.
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The 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.
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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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It all goes so fast, and character makes the difference when it’s close.
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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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Find the good. It’s all around you. Find it, showcase it and you’ll start believing in it.
JESSE OWENS