Lance Armstrong Athlete Quotations

It's tough to be a 15- or 16-year-old athlete competing around the country. There's tension, there's media. I had no idea what I was getting into.

Winning is about heart, not just legs. It's got to be in the right place.

While I'm absolutely enjoying my time as a retired athlete with Sheryl and the kids, the recent smear campaign out of France has awoken my competitive side. I'm not willing to put a percentage on the chances, but I will no longer rule it out.

not happy because Lance did them in front of their own birds.

What makes a great endurance athlete is the ability to absorb potential embarrassment, and to suffer without complaint.

I have never doped … I have competed as an endurance athlete for 25 years with no spike in performance, passed more than 500 drug tests and never failed one.

Everybody wants to know what I'm on. What am I on? I'm on my bike busting my ass six hours a day. What are you on?

One of the redeeming things about being an athlete is redefining what is humanly possible.

The ban doesn't have anything to do with Livestrong or my ability to work in [the cancer] community. Perhaps it speeds it up. I don't know the examples in Great Britain of athletes who have fallen. I know the examples in the United States - the Tiger Woods, the Michael Vicks, even the Bill Clintons - people who are still out there able to work.

I didn't just jump back on the bike and win. There were a lot of ups and downs, good results and bad results, but this time I didn't let the lows get to me.

What makes a great endurance athlete is the ability to absorb potenial embarrassment, and to suffer without complaint. I was discovering that if it was a matter of gritting my teeth, not caring how it looked, and outlasting everybody else, I won. It didn't seem to matter what sport it was-in a straight-ahead, long-distant race, I could beat anybody. If it was a suffer-fest, I was good at it.

Athletes don't have much use for poking around in their childhoods, because, introspection doesn't get you anywhere in a race.

What athletes do may not be that healthy, the way we push our bodies completely over the edge to the degrees that are not human. I've said all along that I will not live as long as the average person.

Life to me is a series of false limits and my challenge as an athlete is to explore those limits

I realize that there are many variables outside my control in my quest, but focusing on the big goal down the road really motivates me. To help me stay focused, I set micro-goals such as races or training achievements that bring me one step closer to being at my best for major goals