Famous Sports Quotations

First 1 Last 
"[Many of these thoughtless, stupid remarks are uttered by sports figures, but not all. In 2002 Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., said the United States could have avoided what he called] all these problems, ... All the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes, our schools, our churches."
by Strom Thurmond
"The bottom line is I have an agreement with him, ... We have had an excellent relationship and I certainly don't want to go down any court route, but at the end of the day I have to look after Sports Network's interests. We're still talking and hopefully something will be resolved."
by Frank Warren
"The minute you start talking about what you're going to do if you lose, you have lost."
by George Shultz
"The mind is the limit. As long as the mind can envision the fact that you can do something, you can do it-as long as you really believe 100 percent."
by Arnold Schwarzenegger
"The results that you achieved at the Athens Olympics last year have shown Chinese sports is really getting to the top."
by Jacques Rogge
"The sports reporters got everything all worked up."
by Jan Johnson
"There are people who think that wrestling is an ignoble sport. Wrestling is not sport, it is a spectacle, and it is no more ignoble to attend a wrestled performance of suffering than a performance of the sorrows of Arnolphe or Andromaque."
by Roland Barthes
"This has been the opportunity of a lifetime, ... I have always wanted swimming to have an ambassador to travel throughout the United States in places like Hawaii to excite swimmers, parents and the community in general about the great sports that involve water. I have dedicated my life to promoting this, and I now have that opportunity. I have been blessed and I want to share my experiences with as many swimmers as possible."
by Aaron Peirsol
"This is a terrific addition to our portfolio of sports ventures. We're thrilled Caesars Palace has joined with NBC Sports to showcase this increasingly popular event in Caesars' new poker room."
by Jeffrey Pollack
"Two hours is about as long as any American can wait for the close of a baseball game, or anything else for that matter."
by Al Spalding
"We meet socially to talk about Australian (or New Zealand) politics, sports."
by Michael Hogan
"We will not pay for an interview for Real Sports . Some former teammates and old-timers have been asked to do a lot of these and ask for payment. But we just don't do it. Once you start, where does it end?"
by Ray Stallone
"When we began our analysis of the videogame landscape, it became apparent that EA SPORTS was best positioned from a marketing and development perspective to maximize the sales opportunities for college football,"
by Pat Battle
"When he races, we get as many hands as we can out on the course with bottles of sports drink for him, because at any point he can start getting fuzzy."
by Luke Bodensteiner
"When Dale Murphy speaks, everyone in sports should listen,"
by Jim Nantz
"Winners never quit and quitters never win."
by Anon.
"You know there really aren't that many sports that the entire family can participate in."
by Lisa Ward
"You can't have a crummy game and win like you could in other sports, because it's all up to you. There is a saying in wrestling, ' If it is to be, it's up to me'. It takes a lot of guts to take on that responsibility and scrutiny."
by Roger Ferguson
"You're never on the sideline, like in sports. There's constant action. That's what people love."
by David Williams
"You couldn't ask for a better scenario if you're a sports fan,"
by Joe Torre
"You could ask any sports bookie and they're going to tell you what the odds are,"
by Anonymous
"Being a part of both organizations, there is no comparison in the two organizations. This is a professional organization. The Hornets were just -- I don't know what the hell it was. There is no explaining for them."
by Felix Sabates
"Boxing has become America's tragic theater."
by Joyce Carol Oates
"Blood sport is brought to its ultimate refinement in the gossip columns."
by Bernard Ingham
"Baseball, I think, is a good channel for reaching children. And at the same time, to convince them of the importance of education. In other words, you can combine education and sports."
by Manny Mota
"Dallas is not only a great sports town, it has become a great hockey town."
by Anonymous
"Everyone thought I was going to die like a year later. They didn't know. So I helped educate sports, and then the world, that a man living with HIV can play basketball. He's not going to give it to anybody by playing basketball."
by Magic Johnson
"For him to get to the professional level of sports, he's going to need to go where he's going to be able to excel. . . . I think he made the absolute right choice with baseball."
by Burton
"Even from their infancy we frame them to the sports of love: their instruction, behavior, attire, grace, learning and all their words azimuth only at love, respects only affection. Their nurses and their keepers imprint no other thing in them."
by Michel de Montaigne
"He potentially could be as good of an athlete as has ever played sports in this town. And we've had some super kids."
by Butch Pedersen
"I don't think I can be expected to take seriously any game which takes less than three days to reach its conclusion."
by Tom Stoppard
"I know it's got a lot of sports fields. We're going to set all sorts of records."
by Jason Anderson
"I enjoyed being involved in team sports and making close friendships."
by Brian McBride
"I don't think the WNBA is going to disappear from the sports landscape anytime soon. It's likely to keep chugging along. It's never going to be part of the mainstream in pro sports leagues, but it can find its place as long as expectations don't get too high."
by David Carter
"I have missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot. . . and missed. And I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why. . . I succeed."
by Anonymous
"I'm a big Denver sports fan. I guess you can say that it's a little bit toward that, but more so just doubling up sevens."
by Josh Bard
"I was so hoping my beloved Saints would get there but I'm still thrilled to be part of one of the great days on the Australian sports calendar."
by Katie Mactier
"It's always cool to be a part of anything that hasn't happened before. This is a great sports town, and the fans around here are about to really have some fun following both teams."
by Joe Dumars
"Leadership is a matter of having people look at you and gain confidence, seeing how you react. If you're in control, they're in control."
by Anonymous
"My theory of hitting was just to watch the ball as it came in and hit it."
by Tommy Lasorda
"Our country is the only one in the world with a national anthem that the last two words are Play Ball!"
by Source Unknown
"That was a big deal at the time, because no blacks were integrated with whites in anything - not in sports, basketball, football, nothing."
by Lionel Hampton
"It's a funny thing, the more I practice the luckier I get"
by Anonymous
"It wasn't until later on that more and more sports started holding competitions for women. Now the only event women don't take part in is ski jumping, and I've heard that there may be a time pretty soon when women start ski jumping also."
by Sue Macy
"It?s a lot better than being down 0-2 like last year. Anything is possible in sports. We expect them to come out swinging on Saturday."
by Dirk Nowitzki
"I'm not involved in sport, I'm commited. Do you know the difference? Think of eggs and ham! The chicken is involved but the pig is commited!"
by Martina Navratilova
"I'm like a kid in a candy store right now. I'm excited to be running, which is funny, because a lot of guys dread coming to preseason and sprinting around and working your butt off, but I'm really excited just to be out there with the guys. I really missed it."
by Alecko Eskandarian
"It kind of goes back and forth. In some sports, we might be OK. In others, we're going to get crushed. We're a Group 4 school, but we're not as competitive. We're getting there, but we're not there yet."
by Dina James
"I just feel like every kid who wants to play sports ought to have the opportunity to do it, and this is a good way to get them going."
by Brad Long
"I still think we have got opportunities to improve that, but some of our other sports have got a lot of work to do. The reason why sailing does so well is because it has really got its act together and some others could learn from them."
by Keith Mills
"I see great things in baseball. It's our game - the American game. It will take our people out-of-doors, fill them with oxygen, give them a larger physical stoicism. Tend to relieve us from being a nervous, dyspeptic set. Repair these losses, and be a blessing to us."
by Anonymous
"I never expected to go into producing but I wanted to do sports broadcasting."
by Joanna Lien
"I might be at the top level of sports cars now . . . but I can't drop down and start over. The next thing would be a jump to the trucks, Busch Series, Nextel Cup or Champ Car."
by Michael McDowell
"I can't imagine taking another job in sports, ... I have no interest in professional athletics. Pacific happens to be a place I have two degrees from and I think I can help."
by Ted Leland
"Exposure for the city. It's the first time any one of the four major sports has ever done anything like this. So you start with that, and I think it's going to blow up from there."
by George Maloof
"I don't care how long you've been around, you'll never see it all."
by Bob Lemon
"For truly it is to be noted, that children's plays are not sports, and should be deemed as their most serious actions."
by Michel de Montaigne
"Anyone with talent can play in the Major Leagues; for someone like me to stay around as long as I did, I think that's a much greater achievement."
by Bob Uecker
"Aside from Kobe (Bryant), he's probably the most recognizable sports figure in Southern California."
by Steve Sarkisian
"I have been trying to do this since high school. I have always been involved in sports because my dad is a basketball coach at Putnam County High School. My father has been a basketball, football, track and cross country coach."
by Brandon Williams
"I have a funny feeling he'll be back. I think he has something to prove. I don't think he wants to end his career like that (with an injury). I have a feeling he's coming back, but that's just me. I could be wrong."
by Anonymous
"100% of the shots you don't take don't go in."
by Anonymous
"It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness."
by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"Sports do not build character. They reveal it."
by Haywood Hale Broun
"Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom."
by Gen. George Patton
"Skiing: the art of catching cold and going broke while rapidly heading nowhere at great personal risk."
by Anonymous
"A rabid sports fan is one that boos a TV set."
by Jimmy Cannon
"Auto racing, bull fighting, and mountain climbing are the only real sports. . . all others are games."
by Ernest Hemingway
"Children's playthings are not sports and should be deemed as their most serious actions."
by Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
"I always turn to the sports pages first, which records people's accomplishments. The front page has nothing but man's failures."
by Earl Warren
"I am delighted to have you play football. I believe in rough, manly sports. But I do not believe in them if they degenerate into the sole end of any one's existence. I don't want you to sacrifice standing well in your studies to any over-athleticism and I need not tell you that character counts for a great deal more than either intellect or body in winning success in life. Athletic proficiency is a mighty good servant, and like so many other good servants, a mighty bad master."
by Theodore Roosevelt
"I cannot think well of a man who sports with any woman's feelings and there may often be a great deal more suffered than a stander-by can judge of."
by Jane Austen
"I don't know anything that builds the will to win better than competitive sports."
by Richard M. Nixon
"I don't think we'll ever answer all the critics in sports,"
by Mack Brown
"I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense."
by H. L. Mencken
"I was going to sue for defamation of character, but then I realised I have no character."
by Charles Barkley
"It's great to beat your goals -- and it's not that sports goals are bad, but this one was much better, ... This combines my two main passions in life, outside of my children."
by Lance Armstrong
"Ninety percent of all mental errors are in your head."
by Yogi Berra
"Not only is he ambidextrous, but he can throw with either hand."
by Duffy Daugherty, football coach and sports analyst
"Not every age is fit for childish sports."
by Titus Maccius Plautus
"Science would be ruined if (like sports) it were to put competition above everything else, and if it were to clarify the rules of competition by withdrawing entirely into narrowly defined specialties. The rare scholars who are nomads-by-choice are essential to the intellectual welfare of the settled disciplines."
by Benoit Mandelbrot
"Sports serve society by providing vivid examples of excellence."
by George F. Will
"The dancing pair that simply sought renown,By holding out to tire each other downThe swain mistrustless of his smutted face,While secret laughter titter'd round the placeThe bashful virgin's side-long looks of love,The matrons glance that would those looks reproveThese were thy charms, sweet village sports like these,With sweet succession, taught e'en toil to pleaseThese were thy bowers their cheerful influence shed,These were thy charms -- but all these charms are fled."
by Oliver Goldsmith
"The latter part of the year with the rumor, that was a nightmare. Fortunately, sports fans see through it."
by Lance Armstrong
"The more violent the body contact of the sports you watch, the lower your class."
by Paul Fussell
"The other sports are just sports. Baseball is a love"
by Bryant Gumbel
"The plays and sports of children are as salutary to them as labor and work are to grown persons."
by Samuel Richardson
"The problem with winter sports is that - follow me closely here - they generally take place in winter."
by Dave Barry
"The sports page records people's accomplishments; The front page nothing but their failures."
by Jutice Earl Warren
"The sports page records people's accomplishments The front page nothing but their failures."
by Earl Warren
"The word 'genius' isn't applicable in football. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein."
by Joe Theisman NFL football quarterback and sports analyst
"There are only 3 sports, Bullfighting, Motor Racing and Mountain climbing. All the rest are games."
by Earnest Hemingway
"We know better, but we don't act because we don't want to look, ... The Superdome made those people impossible to ignore, but we could look down the streets of every city in America and see enough poor and forgotten families to fill all the sports stadiums in America."
by John Edwards
"The great men among the ancients understood very well how to reconcile manual labour with affairs of state, and thought it no lessening to their dignity to make the one the recreation to the other. That indeed which seems most generally to have employed and diverted their spare hours, was agriculture. Gideon among the Jews was taken from threshing, as well as Cincinnatus amongst the Romans from the plough, to command the armies of their countries...and, as I remember, Cyrus thought gardening so little beneath the dignity and grandeur of a throne, that he showed Xenophon a large field of fruit trees all of his own planting . . . Delving, planting, inoculating, or any the like profitable employments would be no less a diversion than any of the idle sports in fashion, if men could be brought to delight in them."
by John Locke
"'Recorded history shows the relationship between human and animal has been very one-sided! Man's exploitation/treatment of animals stands out as one of the darkest stains on his reputation. Is the purpose of life for the indulgence of selfish desires? Or a medium for soul growth? If we behave brutally or selfishly, then we are brutes and selfish. No religious label or outward facade alters this truth. Can we believe in and preach life after death, and yet be party to murdering millions of innocent animals via the blood-drenched abattoir, vivisection, fur trade, 'games', entertainment, 'sports'???'"
by Brother John
"For all we know that English people are/ Fed upon beef - I won't say much of beer/ Because 'tis liquor only, and being far/ From this my subject, has no business here;/ We know too, they are very fond of war,/ A pleasure - like all pleasures - rather dear;/ So were the Cretans - from which I infer/ That beef and battle both were owing her” “[t]he art of angling [is] the cruelest, the coldest, and the stupidest of the pretended sports."
by George Byron
"That the use of animal food disposes man to cruel and ferocious action is a fact to which the experience of ages gives ample testimony . . . The barbarous and unfeeling 'sports' (as they are called) of the English - their horse-racing, hunting, shooting, bull and bear baiting, cock-fighting, prize fighting, and the like, all proceed from their immoderate addiction to animal food. Their natural temper is thereby corrupted, and they are in the habitual and hourly commission of crimes against nature, justice, and humanity, from which a feeling and reflective mind, unaccustomed to such a diet, would revolt, but in which they profess to take delight."
by Joseph Ritson
"At one time or another I have insulted everybody, and I am proud of that. Folks, let me sum it up for you: I think religion is bad, and drugs are good. I think America causes cancer, longevity is less important than fun and young people should be discouraged from voting. I think stereotypes are true, abstinence is a pervsion, Bush’s lies are worse than Clinton’s and there is nothing sexy about being old or pregnant. I think 9-11 changed nothing, and if I had known the onset of war would add a hundred points on to Bush’s IQ, I would have started one. I think pornography stops rape, I think AIDS ribbons are stupid, and flag burning makes me feel patriotic. I think death is not the worst thing that can happen. I think people have too much self-esteem, and being drunk is funny. I think children are not innocent, God doesn’t write books, and Jesus wasn’t a republican. I am for mad cow disease, and against suing tobacco companies. I think girls hate each other, no doesn’t always mean no, you have to lie to stay married, women’s sports are boring, and the Olympics are gay. We’ll be on for another six weeks here on ABC…"
by Bill Maher
"Competing in sports has taught me that if I'm not willing to give 120 percent, somebody else will."
by Ron Blomberg
"Civilization is drugs, alcohol, engines of war, prostitution, machines and machine slaves, low wages, bad food, bad taste, prisons, reformatories, lunatic asylums, divorce, perversion, brutal sports, suicides, infanticide, cinema, quackery, demagogy, strikes, lockouts, revolutions, putsches, colonization, electric chairs, guillotines, sabotage, floods, famine, disease, gangsters, money barons, horse racing, fashion shows, poodle dogs, chow dogs, Siamese cats, condoms, peccaries, syphilis, gonorrhea, insanity, neuroses, etc., etc."
by Henry Miller


Hire a Writer