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 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
-
-
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 -
I had four gold medals, but you can’t eat four gold medals.
JESSE OWENS -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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.
JESSE OWENS -
Awards become corroded, friends gather no dust.
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 -
Only by Gods grace have I made it to see today and only by Gods grace will I ever see tomorrow.
JESSE OWENS -
Life doesn’t give you all the practice races you need.
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 -
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 -
I decided I wasn’t going to come down. I was going to fly. I was going to stay up in the air forever.
JESSE OWENS -
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 -
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 -
The only victory that counts is the one over yourself.
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 -
Friendships born on the field of athletic strife are the real gold of competition. Awards become corroded, friends gather no dust.
JESSE OWENS -
To a sprinter, the hundred-yard dash is over in three seconds, not nine or ten.
JESSE OWENS -
People come out to see you perform and you’ve got to give them the best you have within you.
JESSE OWENS -
Find the good. It’s all around you. Find it, showcase it and you’ll start believing in it.
JESSE OWENS -
It all goes so fast, and character makes the difference when it’s close.
JESSE OWENS -
If you don’t try to win you might as well hold the Olympics in somebody’s back yard.
JESSE OWENS -
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 -
One chance is all you need.
JESSE OWENS -
The only bond worth anything between human beings is their humanness.
JESSE OWENS