9 Jesse Owens Quotes on Life

Jesse Owens quotes on life

2. The battles that count aren't the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself - the invisible, inevitable battles inside all of us - that's where it's at.

7. 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.

11. She was unusual because even though I knew her family was as poor as ours, nothing she said or did seemed touched by that. Or by prejudice. Or by anything the world said or did. It was as if she had something inside her that somehow made all that not count. I fell in love with her some the first time we ever talked, and a little bit more every time after that until I thought I couldn't love her more than I did. And when I felt that way, I asked her to marry me ... and she said she would.

16. 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.

20. People who worked with me or knew me still called me the 'world's fastest human' because I almost never stopped. I'd found that I could get more done with no regular job or regular hours at all, but by being on my own, flying to speak here, help with a public relations campaign for some client there, tape my regular jazz radio show one morning at 5:00 a.m. before leaving on a plane for another city or another continent three hours later to preside over a major sporting event.

23. Find the good. It's all around you. Find it, showcase it and you'll start believing in it.

30. Life doesn't give you all the practice races you need.

31. One chance is all you need.

32. People come out to see you perform and you've got to give them the best you have within you. The lives of most men are patchwork quilts. Or at best one matching outfit with a closet and a laundry bag full of incongruous accumulations. A lifetime of training for just 10 seconds.