Athlete Quotations

Yesterday is a cancelled check. Today is cash on the line. Tomorrow is a promissory note.

Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.

Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way.

Everything is practice.

A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.

Let the pitcher move first, then, as he draws his arm back, you draw the bat back and you are ready.

I never predict anything, and I never will.

Allow me a bit of philosophy here... We started tele skiing as a rebellion against rules.

Never get married in the morning - you never know who you might meet that night.

I'm in the facial-hair phase of my career.

Canada has always been a strong supporter of China's accession to the WTO... We look forward to playing a constructive role in helping complete China's accession.

My name is usually the one on the end of people's lips.

Finance is critical. If sufficient investment is made in infrastructure and venture capital is made available, there will be a big improvement in the situation.

If history is going to repeat itself I should think we can expect the same thing again.

The hurricane flooded me out of a lot of memorabilia, but it can't flood out the memories.

But the manager's bought wisely - the players who've come in have taken us on to a different level and the players who won promotion have also performed at the top level, so long may it continue.

Golf is an awkward set of bodily contortions designed to produce a graceful result.

Internal marketing is probably much more important than external marketing. That's even more true today than it's ever been.

To bathe a cat takes brute force, perseverance, courage of conviction - and a cat. The last ingredient is usually hardest to come by.

At that level, every goal is like a knife in the ribs.

So I say keep yelling and hustling every minute you're in uniform.

There are a lot of young players here right now, and these guys are going to eventually learn as they go. Next year we can't use that as an excuse that we had so many young players on the team.

You spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.

Every man's got to figure to get beat sometime.

They were two halves that together formed a magical whole.

I could feel it in my bones, how I missed the heat of my country and the love of my family.

A diploma only proves that you know how to look up answers.

Anyone who thinks they're important is usually just a pompous moron who can't deal with his or her own pathetic insignificance and the fact that what they do is meaningless and inconsequential.

If you are going to throw a club, it is important to throw it ahead of you, down the fairway, so you don't have to waste energy going back to pick it up.

My God, he looks like he's beating a chicken.

Some people are so busy learning the tricks of the trade that they never learn the trade.

Personality has power to uplift, power to depress, power to curse, and power to bless.

I'm not so mean. I wouldn't ever go out to hurt anybody deliberately - unless it was, you know, important, like a league game or something.

Do your best when no one is looking. If you do that, then you can be successful in anything that you put your mind to.

The British system had requirements, including Latin. I'm not positive you ever had to know Greek, but there are certainly kinds of curricula where you had to know Greek too. I think in Britain there was the most mindless, repetitive sort of learning.

Never let inexperience get in the way of ambition.

What you lack in talent can be made up with desire, hustle and giving 110 percent all the time.

According to the percentage people, you would be perfectly comfortable.

It is harder for a poor man to be successful than it is for a rich man.

We have a pretty tough schedule coming up. We have to stay strong mentally and must focus on getting better.

Someone who wants to write should make an effort to write a little something every day. Writing in this sense is the same as athletes who practice a sport every day to keep their skills honed.

I am very much aware that if I am getting good press at the moment I could just as easily be getting bad press. I cannot have the good and forget the bad. You have to accept it both ways.

To go to hospitals and see people fight and overcome cystic fibrosis or cancer or any number of illnesses is to see courage that is humbling. And athletes constantly need to be humbled.

I was introverted, shy. But if you win a lot you need to be extroverted, or they'll think you're arrogant.

When an athlete has relegated the persistent rumors of cheating to the back room of the mind, he hasn't really forgotten them. And when he glances back to where rumors hunker in the darkness, he hopes with a savage heart that somehow, some day, those cheaters will be brought to justice.

To me, lighting really sets the mood for a room. A 40 watt bulb in a cheap lamp is the same as a 40 watt bulb in an expensive one.

Halfway through the decade, we realized that we had a great team and that we could do great things, and that we could probably have something here that we believed we had a chance to reach greatness.

When Ted Williams was here, inducted into the Hall of Fame 37 years ago, he said he must have earned it, because he didn't win it because of his friendship with the writers. I guess in that way, I'm proud to be in this company that way.

No business in the world has ever made more money with poorer management.

Don't forget this club nearly went out of extinction last year.

The biggest difference is in the leadership. It was better for us. We had more coaches and mentors to help us. A lot of the younger players today suffer from a lack of direction.

I begin by taking. I shall find scholars later to demonstrate my perfect right.

One of the great lessons I've learned in athletics is that you've got to discipline your life. No matter how good you may be, you've got to be willing to cut out of your life those things that keep you from going to the top.

At the end of the day, if you're a professional athlete in track and field you are the CEO of your company.

If you're a goalkeeper, it doesn't matter what you save the ball with - if you keep it out, it's not a goal.

Hitting Ali in the body or on the arms was like hitting a piece of cement.

My heroes, I couldn't imagine them practicing. Like Bob Dylan, you know? Bob Dylan's a very, very good guitar player, but it's like he's trying to hide it. I always loved this attitude. When you're very good... it's like being an athlete - and I always hated sports!

All things being equal, if we could simulate the same scenario, he has a lot more difficult task. He's elected to swim six individual events, as opposed to what I elected to do, which was four.

Much in the way Olympic athletes optimize their game by paying an enormous - borderline maniacal - amount of attention to things like diet, exercise, sleep, and of course the essential R&R, we all would do well to pay more attention to those key aspects of our lives that comprise our overall health equation.

I'm just a ballplayer with one ambition, and that is to give all I've got to help my ball club win. I've never played any other way.

They wanted to jump on their own bandwagon. Bobby Charlton had never made it as a manager. Bobby Moore hadn't either. I think they never stopped trying to put me in the same category. That was the road they went down with me.

With a fresh start, I hope it'll work out good. I know the whole Fox story and how he came over here and had a great year for them. I'm hoping that's what it'll be - fresh start, new faces, new team, new city. I'm looking forward to getting out there.

I love the city and the people here. I've been with them for many years and I fought alongside them.

When somebody was looking in my locker, it was like going in my desk. Somebody happened to be looking in my locker when they shouldn't have been.

When you remove the risk, you remove the challenge. When you remove the challenge, you wither on the vine.

Remedies, indeed, are our great analysers of disease.

There are a lot of people who influenced me, nurtured me, helped me along the way. But I can just recall looking back, the first time I got my baseball glove. Put it on the wrong hand, all those kind of things.

Focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it.

It is the inspiration of the Olympic Games that drives people not only to compete but to improve, and to bring lasting spiritual and moral benefits to the athlete and inspiration to those lucky enough to witness the athletic dedication.

Great champions have an enormous sense of pride. The people who excel are those who are driven to show the world and prove to themselves just how good they are.

I believe as human beings we are out of balance, out of synch with the earth.

Luck has nothing to do with it, because I have spent many, many hours, countless hours, on the court working for my one moment in time, not knowing when it would come.

Even if you have a bad game, you have to swallow your pride and sign. It takes a little time, but it makes the kids happy. And it makes you feel good, too.

Everything in Formula 1 has been sterilised now, the whole thing is controlled too much.

I was a terrible athlete and a pretty bad student. I couldn't focus. My imagination was always racing.

As a youngster, I enjoyed sport and my ambition was to be a great sportsman.

I always believed I was an ugly duckling in a family of swans, you know? I was such a black sheep, and it was the same way in high school... I was just kind of that awkward theater kid with a bunch of athletes... it was very Glee.

Adopting a new healthier lifestyle can involve changing diet to include more fresh fruit and vegetables as well as increasing levels of exercise.

Athletes who take to the classroom naturally or are encouraged to focus on grades should be able to do well in the classroom. I believe the reason you go to college is to get your degree. It's not a minor league or an audition for the pros

God places the heaviest burden on those who can carry its weight.

Skating everywhere is unpredictable, no amount of money or facilities is going to create a skating star. You have to have a skater who is dedicated, passionate, and willing to learn.

He sliced the ball when he had it on a plate.

I became a good pitcher when I stopped trying to make them miss the ball and started trying to make them hit it.

I want to find that defining moment that you're satisfied and you've done what you want to do in your life.

Friendship... is not something you learn in school. But if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven't learned anything.

Truthfully, this is how I approach my workout: I want to be the best athlete I can possibly be. If I can out-perform some of the better athletes then I'm happy. When I look at the NFL or the NBA, these guys look how I want to look - it's useable, functional muscle.

Models are like athletes: You burn hard and fast.

When we reach the point where the women athletes are getting their pick of dates just as easily as the men athletes, then we've really and truly arrived. Parity at last!

If a pitcher sees you fiddling with the bat, he'll stall until your arms are tired before you even get a chance to hit.

For me, being able to go anywhere you want, with an element of precision and control, has been the goal.

I thought you were supposed to be flying this thing, not pleasuring it.

I think I tried to separate indoors and out. And so when he beat me indoors, I did not see that as letting anybody down, I saw it as a good head to head competition, and so it was. It was fine.

I've often had people ask me, would you allow a homosexual to be your friend. Yes, I will. And the reason I will is because I know that that person has problems, and if I can minister to those problems, I will.

We can't win at home. We can't win on the road. As general manager, I just can't figure out where else to play.

The ultimate aim of all science to penetrate the unknown. Do you realize we know less about the earth we live on than about the stars and the galaxies of outer space? The greatest mystery is right here, right under our feet.

The car business is a lot like football. In football, you have to win once a week. In the car business, you have to win every day.

Scoring two goals at against Wembley against a Dutch team that was supposed to rip us apart and ripping them apart - it doesn't get any better than that.

It's easy for women to say they don't understand and ask a man for help. As the saying goes, boys play with toys, and girls play with boys.

Would I buy a cell phone for my 12-year-old?... No. I should have closer control over my child than that. He really shouldn't be in places where he needs to contact me by cell.

That save from Pele's header was the best I ever made. I didn't have any idea how famous it would become - to start with, I didn't even realise I'd made it at all.