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 OWENSThe only victory that counts is the one over yourself.
More Jesse Owens Quotes
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To a sprinter, the hundred-yard dash is over in three seconds, not nine or ten.
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I had four gold medals, but you can’t eat four gold medals.
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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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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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The only victory that counts is the one over yourself.
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Awards become corroded, friends gather no dust.
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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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For a time, at least, I was the most famous person in the entire world.
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I fought, I fought harder, but one cell at a time, panic crept into my body, taking me over.
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One chance is all you need.
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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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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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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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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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If you don’t try to win you might as well hold the Olympics in somebody’s back yard.
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I let my feet spend as little time on the ground as possible. From the air, fast down, and from the ground, fast up.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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Find the good. It’s all around you. Find it, showcase it and you’ll start believing in it.
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Life doesn’t give you all the practice races you need.
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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.
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A lifetime of training for just ten seconds.
JESSE OWENS