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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.

Jesse Owens

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 OWENS

Athlete Learning Myself Politics Purpose Victory
It all goes so fast, and character makes the difference when it’s close.
JESSE OWENS

Character Difference Fast
I had four gold medals, but you can’t eat four gold medals.
JESSE OWENS

Eat Gold Myself Reward
I fought, I fought harder, but one cell at a time, panic crept into my body, taking me over.
JESSE OWENS

Body Fight Hard Time Myself Time
Friendships born on the field of athletic strife are the real gold of competition. Awards become corroded, friends gather no dust.
JESSE OWENS

Athletics Born Friendship Gold Reality
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

Black Fingers Money Power Time Yourself
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.
JESSE OWENS

Best Life Live Man Oneself Time Training
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

Bright Enough Hands Kind Morning Myself People
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

Animal Bad Enough Live Man Myself Race
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.
JESSE OWENS

Animal Right Secret Start Weapon
To a sprinter, the hundred-yard dash is over in three seconds, not nine or ten.
JESSE OWENS

Run Sports Time
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

Appearance Himself Job Myself People Responsibility See
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

Hands Home Job Myself Oneself Reward
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

Beyond Freedom Joy Reality Run
If you don’t try to win you might as well hold the Olympics in somebody’s back yard.
JESSE OWENS

Inspirational Win Yourself
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

Game Himself Myself Play Run

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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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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Popular Authors

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