Jesse Owens Quotes

"One chance is all you need."

"The road to the Olympics leads — in the end — to the best within us."

"It all goes so fast, and character makes the difference when it's close."

"The only bond worth anything between human beings is their humanness."

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

"Although I wasn't invited to shake hands with Hitler, I wasn't invited to the White House to shake hands with the President either."

"Friendships are born on the field of athletic strife and the real gold of competition. Awards become corroded, friends gather no dust."

"We all have dreams. In order to make dreams come into reality, it takes an awful lot of determination, dedication, self-discipline and effort."

"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."

"People say that it was degrading for an Olympic champion to run against a horse, but what was I supposed to do? I had four gold medals, but you can't eat four gold medals. There was no television, no big advertising, no endorsements then. Not for a black man, anyway."

"I always loved running – it was something you could do by yourself and under your own power. You could go in any direction, fast or slow as you wanted, fighting the wind if you felt like it, seeking out new sights just on the strength of your feet and the courage of your lungs."