Top 100 Best Quotes for Athletes

1. BRUCE LEE: "Be Water, My Friend. Empty your mind. Be formless, shapeless, like water. You put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put it into a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend." 

2. MUHAMMAD ALI: "He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life."

3. DEREK JETER: "You’re playing a game, whether it’s Little League or Game 7 of the Word Series. It’s impossible to do well unless you’re having a good time. People talk about pressure. Yeah, there’s pressure. But I just look at it as fun."

4. BRUCE JENNER: "I always felt that my greatest asset was not my physical ability, it was my mental ability."

5. ROSS PEROT "Most people give up just when they’re about to achieve success. They quit on the one yard line. They give up at the last minute of the game one foot from a winning touchdown."

6. HANK AARON: "My motto was always to keep swinging. Whether I was in a slump or feeling badly or having trouble off the field, the only thing to do was keep swinging."

7. MICHAEL JORDON: "I’ve failed over & over & over again in my life & that is why I succeed."

8. JERRY WEST: "You can’t get much done in life if you only work on the days when you feel good."

9. FRED DEVITO: "If it doesn’t challenge you, it won’t change you."

10. BABE RUTH: "It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up."

11. MICHAEL JORDON: "Never say never."

12. NATASHA HASTINGS: “You'll never know what you're capable of until you take that first step and just go for it.”

13. UNKNOWN: "Sometimes the easiest, shortest path leads to the longest, hardest road." 

14. UNKNOWN: "Life isn't about working as hard as possible or constantly fighting up stream. All that matters is going as far as you can away from where you first started and, most of the time, that means going downstream."

15. UNKNOWN: "Don’t think: I failed. Think this: everything I did was done perfectly to get that result."

16. UNKNOWN: "Fear is such a silly game to play."

17.  LAO TZU: "New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings" 

18. CHINESE PROVERB: "The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now."

19. UNKNOWN: "If you're not interested in what you're doing, you're wasting your time"

20. VENUS WILLIAMS: "Just believe in yourself. Even if you don’t pretend that you do and, and some point, you will."

21. JACKIE JOYNER-KERSEE: "The only person who can stop you from reaching your goals is you."

22. LARRY BROWN: "You have to do something in your life that is honorable and not cowardly if you are to live in peace with yourself."

23. KEN DOHERTY: "The five S’s of sports training are: stamina, speed, strength, skill, and spirit; but the greatest of these is spirit."

24. MARV LEVY: "Persistence can change failure into extraordinary achievement."

25. WILLIAM JAMES: "Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they’ve got a second."

26. MIKE SINGLETARY: "Do you know what my favorite part of the game is? The opportunity to play." 

27. M.H. ALDERSON: "If at first you don’t succeed, you are running about average."

28. VIN SCULLY: "Good is not good when better is expected."

29. ANDRE AGASSI: "What makes something special is not just what you have to gain, but what you feel there is to lose."

30. PELE: "The more difficult the victory, the greater the happiness in winning."

31. UNKNOWN: "I am never disappointed with the results as long as I put my heart into it." 

32. BRETT FAVRE: "Most talented players don’t always succeed. Some don’t even make the team. It’s more what’s inside."

33. UNKNOWN:  "A man's strength is the combination of both his precision and resilience." 

34. UNKNOWN: "It may sound impossible, but one person can actually make a huge difference between winning and losing a game"

35. MICHAEL JORDAN: “You have to expect things of yourself before you can do them.” 

36. HOMER RICE: "You can motivate by fear, and you can motivate by reward. But both those methods are only temporary. The only lasting thing is self motivation."

37. CAMERON TRAMMEL: "Win If You Can, Lose If You Must, But NEVER QUIT!"

38. MICHAEL PHELPS: "You can’t put a limit on anything. The more you dream, the farther you get."

39. JOHN WOODEN: "Do not let what you can not do interfere with what you can do."

40. WILLIAM WARD: "Adversity cause some men to break; others to break records."

41. VENUS WILLIAMS: "Some people say I have attitude – maybe I do…but I think you have to. You have to believe in yourself when no one else does – that makes you a winner right there."

42. MUHAMMAD ALI: "I hated every minute of training, but I said, ‘Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion."

43. PHIL JACKSON: "You're only as strong as your weakest link."

44. VINCE LOMBARDI: "It’s not whether you get knocked down; it’s whether you get up."

45.  WALT DISNEY: "The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing."

46. ELEANOR ROOSEVELT: "The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams." 

47. UNKNOWN: "The only way you can go from rags to riches is to start with having nothing to lose."

48. UNKNOWN: "Once you get it in your head that you are going to die, that's when you really start to live."

49. UNKNOWN: "Convenience is man's greatest achievement and downfall." 

50. TAO TE CHING: "Accomplish the small task while it's still small."

51. UNKNOWN: "Slow is smooth and smooth is fast."

52. UNKNOWN: "Winning and losing are just two different ways of saying we're human."

53. CHIENSE PROVERB: "Train in the conditions your enemy does not like to, then choose to fight them in such conditions."

54. UNKNOWN: "A master once told me that I could see things differently by wearing different glasses, she was right."

55. ABRAHAM LINCOLN: "In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years." 

56. DR. SEUSS: "You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose."

57. OSCAR WILDE: "Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not."

58. UNKNOWN: "Shit just happens."

59. CONFUCIUS: "It's really simple, but we insist on making it complicated."

60. UNKNOWN: "What's believed somehow comes true." 

61. UNKNOWN: "Only the balanced are left standing."

62. UNKNOWN: "A man reaches his peak only when he learns take care of himself for the betterment of others."

63. MAHATMA GANDHI: "Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever."

64. UNKNOWN: "All greatness is preceded by a little torture."

65. UNKNOWN: "Instead of gifts, give your word."

66. UNKNOWN: "Life is either terribly perfect, or perfectly terrible. The choice is up to you."

67. UNKNOWN: "Winners are remembered, but legends never die."

68. UNKNOWN: "Pleasure without direction is the definition of suffering and pain with purpose is the definition of success."

69. ESTE LAUDER: "I never dreamed about success. I worked for it."

70. WILL ROGERS: "Don't let yesterday take too much up of today." 

71. JIM ROHN: "Either you control the day or it controls you."

72.  WINNIE THE POOH: "People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day."

73. LILY TOMLIN: “I always wanted to be somebody, but now I realize I should have been more specific.”

74. HENRY FORD: "Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success."

75. JEAN-FRANCOIS COPE: "I invite everyone to choose forgiveness rather than division, teamwork over personal ambition."

76. DALAI LAMA: "Just one small positive thought in the morning can change your whole day."

77. GEORGE ELIOT: "It is never too late to be what you might have been."

78. STEPHEN R. COVEY: "I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions."

79. ANNE LAMOTT: "Don't look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance."

80. A.A. MILNE: "Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day."

81. BO JACKSON: "Set your goals high, and don’t stop till you get there."

82. UNKNOWN: "Do not wait for the perfect time and place to enter, for you are already onstage."

83. CLAYTON CHRISTENSEN: "If the decisions you make about where you invest your blood, sweat, and tears are not consistent with the person you aspire to be, you’ll never become that person."

84. CINDY GALLOP: "The best moment of my life was the day I realized that I no longer give a damn what anybody thinks. That’s enormously liberating and freeing, and it’s the only way to live your life."

85. UNKNOWN: "A year from now you will wish you had started today." 

86. CARL SAGAN: "Somewhere, something incredible is waiting."

87. MARK TWAIN: "The two most important days in your life are the day you’re born and the day you find out why."

88. THOMAS AQUINAS: "If the highest aim of a captain were to preserve his ship, he would keep it in port forever."

89. DOLLY PARTON: “If you don’t like the road you’re walking, start paving another one.”

90. BILLIE JEAN KING: “No one changes the world who isn’t obsessed.”

91. ARTHUR ASHE: "Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can."

92. ELON MUSK: "When something is important enough, you do it despite the odds."

93. NELSON MANDELA: "It always seems impossible until it's done."

94. ARISTOTLE: "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."

95. KEVIN TRUDEAU: "If you continue to think they way you’ve always thought, you’ll continue to get what you’ve always got."

96. UNKNOWN: "If you do what everybody else does, you get what everybody else gets."

97. BRUCE FEIRSTEIN: "The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success."

98. COLIN DAVIS: "The road to success and the road to failure are almost exactly the same."

99. EARL NIGHTINGALE: "We become what we think about most of the time, and that’s the strangest secret."

100. NIKE: "Just do it."