Athlete quotes can both inspire and motivate. Learning from someone who has been there and done that means something.
Sports are a great way to grow as a person through hard work and self-discipline. This collection of quotes from some of the sport’s great athletes will motivate and inspire athletes of all ages to work hard to achieve their goals.
Best Athlete Quotes
1.) The only way to prove you are a good sport is to lose.
Ernie Banks
2.) If you fail to prepare, you’re prepared to fail.
Mark Spitz
3.) Do you know what my favorite part of the game is? The opportunity to play.
Mike Singletary
4.) Never let your head hang down. Never give up and never sit down and grieve. Find another way.
Satchel Paige
5.) I don’t count my situps. I only start counting once it starts to hurt.
Muhammed Ali
6.) It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up.
Babe Ruth
7.) With self-discipline, success is impossible. Period.
Lou Holtz
Good Athlete Goals
8.) A champion is someone who gets up when he can’t.
Jack Dempsey
9.) The difference between the impossible and the possible lies in a man’s determination.
Tommy Lasorda
10.) Never give up! Failure and rejection are only the first steps to succeeding.
Jim Valvano
11.) Sportsmanship, for me, is when a guy walks off the court, and you really can’t tell whether he won or lost when he carries himself with pride either way.
Jim Courier
12.) I can’t play being mad. I go out there and have fun. It’s a game, and that’s how I am going to treat it.
Ken Griffey Jr.
13.) Sports create a bond between contemporaries that lasts a lifetime. It also gives your life structure, discipline, and a genuine, sincere, pure fulfillment that few other areas of endeavor provide.
Bob Cousy
14.) Competitive sports are played mainly on a five-and-a-half-inch court, the space between your ears.
Bobby Jones
15.) Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually, it will subside, and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever.
Lance Armstrong
16.) You need to play with supreme confidence, or else you’ll lose again, and then losing becomes a habit.
Joe Paterno
Check out Best Quarantine Sports Videos.
Short Athlete Quotations
17.) Don’t let anyone work harder than you do.
Carli Lloyd
18.) If your dreams don’t scare you, they aren’t big enough.
Muhammed Ali
19.) The expert in everything was once a beginner.
Unknown
20.) The more I practice, the luckier I get.
Gary Player
21.) You play to win the game!
Herm Edwards
Basketball Athlete Quotes
22.) I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.
Michael Jordan
23.) You always have to take the good with the bad.
Candace Parker
24.) If you’re afraid to fail, you’re probably going to fail.
Kobe Bryant
25.) Ask not what your teammates can do for you. Ask what you can do for your teammates.
Magic Johnson
26.) Nothing is black-and-white, except for winning and losing, and maybe that’s why people gravitate to that so much.
Steve Nash
27.) Winning takes precedence over all. There’s no gray area. No almosts.
Kobe Bryant
28.) Practice like you’ve never won. Play like you’ve never lost.
Michael Jordan
Motivational Quotes For Athletes
29.) I learned that if you want to make it bad enough, no matter how bad it is, you can make it.
Gale Sayers
30.) You can’t put a limit on anything. The more you dream, the farther you get.
Michael Phelps
31.) To succeed…You need to find something to hold on to, something to motivate you, something to inspire you.
Tony Dorsett
32.) If you don’t have confidence, you’ll always find a way not to win.
Carl Lewis
33.) Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.
Muhammed Ali
34.) My coach said I run like a girl. And I said if he ran a little faster, he could too.
Mia Hamm
35.) A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.
Jackie Robinson
36.) I feel like, even if something goes wrong, I have confidence in myself and my team that we’ll fix it.
Patrick Mahomes
37.) I have had a lot of luck in my career, but there has also been a lot of hard work.
Maria Sharapova
Inspirational Quotes For Athletes
38.) I love to compete. That’s the essence of who I am.
Tiger Woods
39.) Every strike brings me closer to the next home run.
Babe Ruth
40.) There may be people who have more talent than you, but there’s no excuse for anyone to work harder than you do.
Derek Jeter
41.) Forget about style, but worry about results.
Bobby Orr
42.) When you win, nothing hurts.
Joe Namath
43.) Drinking water is essential to a healthy lifestyle.
Steph Curry
44.) If you have a chance to accomplish something that will make things better for people coming behind you, and you don’t do that, you are wasting your time on this earth.
Roberto Clemente
45.) I still look at myself and want to improve.
David Beckham
Motivating Athlete Quotes
46.) You’ve got to love what you’re doing. If you love it, you can overcome any handicap or soreness or all the aches and pains and continue to play for a long, long time.
Gordie Howe
47.) Remember these two things: play hard and have fun.
Tony Gwynn
48.) Figure out what it is you love and do it. Dream really big. Write down what you want and make it happen.
Danica Patrick
49.) Passion first, and everything else will fall into place.
Holly Holm
50.) No matter the circumstances you may be going through, just push through it.
Ray Lewis
Famous Athlete Quotes
51.) I figure practice puts your brains in your muscles.
Sam Snead
52.) If you can believe it, the mind can achieve it.
Ronnie Lott
53.) When you don’t give up, you cannot fail.
Adrian Peterson
54.) If you can’t outplay them, outwork them.
Ben Hogan
55.) I think sometimes in life, the biggest challenges end up being the best things that happen in your life.
Tom Brady
Great Athlete Quotes
56.) Train hard, turn up, run your best, and the rest will take care of itself.
Usain Bolt
57.) No matter how good you get, you can always get better, and that’s the exciting part.
Tiger Woods
58.) You have to believe in yourself when no one else does; that makes you a winner right there.
Venus Williams
59.) One man practicing sportsmanship is far better than 50 preaching it.
Knute Rockne
60.) You were born to be a player. You were meant to be here. This moment is yours.
Herb Brooks
Athlete Captions for Instagram
61.) Always make a total effort, even when all the odds are against you.
Arnold Palmer
62.) At one point in your life, you either have the thing you want or the reasons why you don’t.
Andy Roddick
63.) Winners never quit, and quitters never win. Sports do not build character. They reveal it.
Heywood Broun
64.) If you only ever give 90% in training, then you will only ever give 90% when it matters.
Michael Owen
65.) Endure, put up with whatever comes your way, learn to overcome weakness and pain, and push yourself to breaking point but never cave in. If you don’t learn that lesson, you’ll never succeed as an elite athlete.
Toni Nadal
66.) When you’re an elite athlete, it’s a very special moment in time, and you don’t want it to end.
Steve Young
Inspirational Sports Quotes
66.) To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.
Steve Prefontaine
67.) I learned during my career to enjoy suffering.
Rafael Nadal
68.) Leisure time is that five or six hours when you sleep at night.
George Allen
69.) I know what to do, and I go and execute.
Usain Bolt
70.) Success is where preparation and opportunity meet.
Bobby Unser
71.) A trophy carries dust. Memories last forever.
Mary Lou Retton
Good Sports Quotes and Captions
72.) It is more difficult to stay on top than get there.
Mia Hamm
73.) With confidence, you have won before you have started.
Marcus Garvey
74.) You just have to be yourself and go full with confidence and be courageous.
Gabby Douglas
75.) A winner never stops trying.
Tom Landry
76.) An athlete cannot run with money in his pockets. He must run with hope in his heart and dreams in his head.
Emil Zatopek
77.) Sports serve society by providing vivid examples of excellence.
George Will
Note: Do you have any ideas for Athlete Quotes? Please let us know via the contact page.
Sports Captions
78.) I never left the field saying I could have done more to get ready, and that gives me peace of mind.
Peyton Manning
79.) There are only two options regarding commitment. You’re either IN, or you’re OUT. There is no such thing as life in-between.
Pat Riley
80.) The five S’s of sports training are stamina, speed, strength, skill, and spirit, but the greatest of these is spirit.
Ken Doherty
81.) Never give up, never give in, and when the upper hand is ours, may we have the ability to handle the win with the dignity that we absorbed the loss.
Doug Williams
82.) You are never really playing an opponent. You are playing yourself, your own highest standards, and when you reach your limits. That is a real joy.
Arthur Ashe
83.) Keep working, even when no one is watching.
Alex Morgan
84.) Champions keep playing until they get it right.
Billie Jean King
85.) If you aren’t going all the way, why go at all?
Joe Namath
86.) Persistence can change failure into extraordinary achievement.
Matt Biondi
Baseball Quotations
87.) Cardinal rule for all hitters with two strikes on them: Never trust the umpire.
Robert Smith
88.) The most fun I ever had in my life was hittin’ a baseball. And the best sound I ever heard in my life was a ball hit with a bat.
Ted Williams
89.) The best thing about baseball is there’s no homework.
Dan Quisenberry
90.) The last words to the Star-Spangled Banner? Play ball!
Unknown
91.) I was born to play baseball.
Roberto Clemente
92.) Back in my day, we didn’t think about money as much. We enjoyed playing the game. We loved baseball. I didn’t think about anybody else but the Cardinals.
Stan Musial
93.) You win a few; you lose a few. Some get rained out. But you got to dress for all of them.
Satchel Paige
94.) Be humble enough to be coachable.
Unknown
95.) I’d walk through hell in a gasoline suit to play baseball.
Pete Rose
96.) Baseball is not a sport you can achieve individually.
Curt Schilling
Good Baseball Quotes
97.) You hit .350. You’re a leader. You hit .250, and you’re not.
Mickey Mantle
98.) He was our symbol of baseball at a time when the game meant something to us that perhaps it no longer does.
Bob Costas on Mickey Mantle
99.) Poets are like baseball pitchers. Both have their moments. The intervals are the tough things.
Robert Frost
100.) You can’t steal second base and keep one foot on first.
Unknown
101.) Baseball is a man-maker.
Al Spalding
102.) My job is to give my team a chance to win.
Nolan Ryan
103.) In the great department store of life, baseball is in the toy department.
Unknown
104.) Willie Mays’ glove is where triples go to die.
Jim Murray
Motivating Quotes for Athletes
105.) To uncover your true potential, you must first find your own limits, and then you have to have the courage to blow past them.
Picabo Street
106.) Wisdom is always an overmatch for strength.
Phil Jackson
107.) The ballplayer who loses his head, who can’t keep his cool, is worse than no ballplayer at all.
Lou Gehrig
108.) Age is no barrier. It’s a limitation you put on your mind.
Jackie Joyner-Kersee
109.) 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.
Homer Rice
110.) Show me a gracious loser, and I’ll show you a failure.
Knute Rockne
111.) Make sure your worst enemy doesn’t live between your own two ears.
Laird Hamilton
112.) Today I will do what others won’t, so tomorrow, I can accomplish what others can’t.
Jerry Rice
Uplifting Athlete Quotes
113.) It is not the size of a man but the size of his heart that matters.
Evander Holyfield
114.) Cancer can take away all my physical abilities. It cannot touch my mind, it cannot touch my heart, and it cannot touch my soul. And those three things are going to carry on forever.
Jimmy Valvano
115.) One man can be a crucial ingredient on a team, but one man cannot make a team.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
116.) I’ve got a theory that if you give 100% all of the time, somehow, things will work out in the end.
Larry Bird
117.) Somewhere behind the athlete you’ve become and the hours of practice, and the coaches who have pushed you is a little girl who fell in love with the game and never looked back – play for her.
Mia Hamm
118.) Success isn’t measured by money or power, or social rank. Success is measured by your discipline and inner peace.
Mike Ditka
119.) Every kid around the world who plays soccer wants to be Pele. I have a great responsibility to show them not just how to be like a soccer player but how to be like a man.
Pele
Determined Athlete Quotes
120.) Gold medals aren’t really made of gold. They’re made of sweat, determination, and a hard-to-find alloy called guts.
Dan Gable
121.) I hated every minute of training, but I said, don’t quit; suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.
Muhammad Ali
122.) The principle is competing against yourself. It’s about self-improvement, about being better than you were the day before.
Steve Young
123.) I always felt that my greatest asset was not my physical ability; it was my mental ability.
Bruce Jenner
124.) Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.
Tim Notke
125.) Push yourself again and again. Don’t give an inch until the final buzzer sounds.
Larry Bird
126.) 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.
Hank Aaron
127.) The ability to conquer one’s self is no doubt the most precious of all things that sports bestow.
Olga Korbut
128.) There is always going to be a reason why you can’t do something; your job is to constantly look for the reasons why you can achieve your dreams.
Shannon Miller
129.) The more I practice, the luckier I get.
Gary Player
Sports Insights
130.) Take your victories, whatever they may be, cherish them, use them, but don’t settle for them.
Mia Hamm
131.) It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size in the fight of the dog.
Archie Griffin
132.) I became a good pitcher when I stopped trying to make them miss the ball and started trying to make them hit it.
Sandy Koufax
133.) If the point seems lost, I still believe I have a chance to get the ball to keep the point alive.
Carlos Alcarz
134.) To uncover your true potential, you must first find your own limits, and then you have to have the courage to blow past them.
Picabo Street
135.) I can’t stand a ballplayer who plays in fear. Any fellow who has a good shot has got to take it and keep taking it. So he misses — so what?
Red Auerbach
136.) Kill them with success and bury them with a smile.
Usain Bolt
137.) If I fail, at least I am left with the feeling that I went for it.
Carlos Alcaraz
The Importance of Sports and Athlete Quotes
Let’s face it, not many of us have the skills, genetic makeup, and dedication to be professional athletes. But watching athletes compete, listening to interviews, and reading sports quotes give us a glimpse into their lives and how they think. What is it that makes an elite athlete different?
In this manner, sports quotes can both inspire and motivate everyday people to achieve greater things. You might not be in a position to run against Usain Bolt, but if one of his quotes motivates you, it might inspire you to start running again or take on the challenge of a 10k.
These sports quotes also provide great captions for photos, something to post on social media, and a means to inspire a team. By getting that much closer to a sports icon by reading some of their quotes, we feel more connected to those players and their achievements.
By Tom McGowan
Tom is a sportswriter living in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Overtime
You’re on the Athlete Quotes page.
You might like: