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 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.
More Jesse Owens Quotes
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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.
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 -
A lifetime of training for just ten seconds.
JESSE OWENS -
I had four gold medals, but you can’t eat four gold medals.
JESSE OWENS -
To a sprinter, the hundred-yard dash is over in three seconds, not nine or ten.
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 -
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 -
I let my feet spend as little time on the ground as possible. From the air, fast down, and from the ground, fast up.
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 -
One chance is all you need.
JESSE OWENS -
I fought, I fought harder, but one cell at a time, panic crept into my body, taking me over.
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 -
Life doesn’t give you all the practice races you need.
JESSE OWENS -
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.
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