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 OWENSOnly by Gods grace have I made it to see today and only by Gods grace will I ever see tomorrow.
More Jesse Owens Quotes
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Life doesn’t give you all the practice races you need.
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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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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 -
To a sprinter, the hundred-yard dash is over in three seconds, not nine or ten.
JESSE OWENS -
A lifetime of training for just ten seconds.
JESSE OWENS -
One chance is all 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 -
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 -
We used to have a lot of fun. We never had any problems. We always ate. The fact that we didn’t have steak? Who had steak?
JESSE OWENS -
Find the good. It’s all around you. Find it, showcase it and you’ll start believing in it.
JESSE OWENS -
Only by Gods grace have I made it to see today and only by Gods grace will I ever see tomorrow.
JESSE OWENS -
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 -
For a time, at least, I was the most famous person in the entire world.
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






