119 Inspiring Sports Quotes

Are you searching for a dose of motivation to fuel your passion for sports? Look no further. We've gathered a collection of the top 119 inspiring sports quotes that have the power to ignite determination, perseverance, and the drive to succeed. Whether you're an athlete, a coach, or simply a sports enthusiast, these quotes are designed to uplift your spirit and encourage you to push through challenges. Dive into this treasure trove of wisdom from some of the greatest minds in sports history and let their words empower you to achieve greatness.

1. “I think all of us are looking for that which does not admit of bullshit . . . If you tell me you can bench press 450, hell, we'll load up the bar and put you under it. Either you can do it or you can't do it—you can't bullshit. Ultimately, sports are just about as close to what one would call the truth as it is possible to get in this world.” - Harry Crews

2. “It ain't over 'til it's over.” - Yogi Berra

3. “Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight Protestants, today it's open to anybody who owns hideous clothing.” - Dave Barry

4. “Have you noticed that whatever sport you're trying to learn, some earnest person is always telling you to keep your knees bent? ” - Dave Barry

5. “Winning is a habit. Unfortunately so is losing.” - Vince Lombardi

6. “If a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared legally dead.” - Erma Bombeck

7. “Winning isn't everything--but wanting to win is.” - Vince Lombardi

8. “I didn't cry when they buried my father - I wouldn't let myself. I didn't cry when they buried my sister. On Thursday night, with my family asleep upstairs, my eyes filled as Agassi and Marcos Baghdatis played out the fifth set of their moving second-round match.” - Greg Garber

9. “My best moment? I have a lot of good moments but the one I prefer is when I kicked the hooligan” - Eric Cantona

10. “I can't believe it. I can't believe it. Football. Bloody hell.” - Sir Alex Ferguson

11. “Guys care about sports teams. I'm not talking about simply rooting; I'm talking about a relationship that guys develop, a commitment to a sport team that guys take way more seriously than, for example, wedding vows.” - Dave Barry

12. “Everything you need is already inside.” - William J. Bowerman

13. “Golf: A plague invented by the Calvinistic Scots as a punishment for man's sins.” - James Barrett Reston

14. “Sports is to war as pornography is to sex.” - Jonathan Haidt

15. “nihil novum nihil varium nihil quod non semel spectasse sufficiat” - Pliny the Younger

16. “I never smile when I have a bat in my hands. That's when you've got to be serious. When I get out on the field, nothing's a joke to me. I don't feel like I should walk around with a smile on my face.” - Hank Aaron

17. “I haven't celebrated coming in No. 2 too many times.” - Mark Messier

18. “Developing better people should be the number one goal for any coach when dealing with kids. In trying to develop better people, we are going to develop more and better pros.” - Bobby Orr

19. “There are no environments where you're only going to win, because life just isn't like that.” - Bobby Orr

20. “football is like life - it requires perserverance, self-denial, hard work, sacrifice, dedication and respect for authority.” - Vince Lombardi

21. “Why do you like show jumping?""... Beauty and excitement. The elements of trust, talent, training, love, and danger make show jumping a thrilling and aesthetic experience. It's really the ultimate test of two nervous systems--the kinetic transfer of the rider's muscle to the horse's muscle enables them to clear those jumps. And there's nothing like it--horse and rider forming an arc of beauty, efficiency, and power, like a double helix.""DNA,""Yes, DNA, the code to life.” - Ainslie Sheridan

22. “Never let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game” - Babe Ruth

23. “On the road we're somebody else's guests and we play in a way that they'renot going to forget we visited them.” - Knute Rockne

24. “I'll play baseball for the Army or fight for it, whatever they want me to do.” - Mickey Mantle

25. “Many people say I'm the best women's soccer player in the world. I don't think so. And because of that, someday I just might be.” - Mia Hamm

26. “Like all the other arrivals to the tournament, Hank had erected a banner in front. It was a long, tapering pennant with a blue and red circular design in the center and the words GO CUBS! on both sides. Interesting," said Hugo. "What does it mean?"It was a gift from Sam," Hank explained as they entered the tent. "He said it used to represent Triumph over Adversity, but now better represents Impossible Quests and Lost Causes."I think I preferred not knowing that," said Hugo.Hank grinned. "You're a Sox fan too, hey?” - James A. Owen

27. “The score never interested me, only the game.” - Mae West

28. “Hello, Max," he said quietly, searching my face. "How do you feel?"Which was a ten on the "imbecilic question" scale of one to ten. Why, I feel fine, Jeb," I said brightly. "How about you?"Any nausea? Headache?" Yep. And it's standing here talking to me.” - James Patterson

29. “I feel the need to endanger myself every so often.” - Tim Daly

30. “wouldn't you like to make sure all those millions you give to Uncle Sam went to schools and hospitals instead of nuclear warheads?'As a matter of fact, he would. Playgrounds for big kids, preschool programs to little ones, and mandatory LASIK surgery for NFL refs.” - Susan Elizabeth Phillips

31. “Revolution is a spectators sport. The majority will sit in the stands and watch the factions fight. At the end they will choose side with the team that is winning. ” - George Lincoln Rockwell

32. “I'm the best there is, the best there was, and the best there ever will be.” - Bret Hart

33. “Don't let them drag you down by rumors just go with what you believe in.” - Michael Jordan

34. “I've never lost a game. I just ran out of time.” - Michael Jordan

35. “Run and become.Become and run.Run to succeed in the outer world.Become to proceed in the inner world.” - Sri Chinmoy

36. “I'd only seen Julius play a few times, but he had that gift, that grace, those fingers like a goddamn medicine man. One time, when the tribal school traveled to Spokane to play this white high school team, Julius scored sixty-seven points and the Indians won by forty.I didn't know they'd be riding horses," I heard the coach of the white team say when I was leaving....Hey," I asked Adrian. "Remember Silas Sirius?"Hell," Adrian said. "Do I remember? I was there when he grabbed that defensive rebound, took a step, and flew the length of the court, did a full spin in midair, and then dunked that fucking ball. And I don't mean it looked like he flew, or it was so beautiful it was almost like he flew. I mean, he flew, period."I laughed, slapped my legs, and knew that I believed Adrian's story more as it sounded less true.Shit," he continued. "And he didn't grow no wings. He just kicked his legs a little. Held that ball like a baby in his hand. And he was smiling. Really. Smiling when he flew. Smiling when he dunked it, smiling when he walked off the court and never came back. Hell, he was still smiling ten years after that.” - Sherman Alexie

37. “If teams keep playing us this way, it's going to be like this” - Peyton Manning

38. “Ever bike? Now that's something that makes life worth living!...Oh, to just grip your handlebars and lay down to it, and go ripping and tearing through streets and road, over railroad tracks and bridges, threading crowds, avoiding collisions, at twenty miles or more an hour, and wondering all the time when you're going to smash up. Well, now, that's something! And then go home again after three hours of it...and then to think that tomorrow I can do it all over again!” - Jack London

39. “When we plant a rose seed in the earth, we notice that it is small, but we do not criticize it as "rootless and stemless." We treat it as a seed, giving it the water and nourishment required of a seed. When it first shoots up out of the earth, we don't condemn it as immature and underdeveloped; nor do we criticize the buds for not being open when they appear. We stand in wonder at the process taking place and give the plant the care it needs at each stage of its development. The rose is a rose from the time it is a seed to the time it dies. Within it, at all times, it contains its whole potential. It seems to be constantly in the process of change; yet at each state, at each moment, it is perfectly all right as it is.” - W. Timothy Gallwey

40. “if you gone come in second, you're just the first loser!” - Tiger Woods

41. “An atheist is a man who watches a Notre Dame - Southern Methodist University game and doesn't care who wins.” - Dwight D. Eisenhower

42. “All hockey players are bilingual. They know English and profanity.” - Gordie Howe

43. “Other than sports, only war and catastrophe can create this sort of national unity.” - Simon Kuper

44. “The building of publicly funded stadiums has become a substitue for anything resembling an urban policy.” - Dave Zirin

45. “It seems that soccer tournaments create those relationships: people gathered together in pubs and living rooms, a whole country suddenly caring about the same event. A World Cup is the sort of common project that otherwise barely exists in modern societies.” - Simon Kuper

46. “I read that Monica Seles got stabbed. And although I have nothing against Monica Seles, I'm glad somebody in sports got stabbed. I like the idea of it; it's good entertainment. If we're lucky, it'll spread through sports. And show business, too! Wouldn't you like to see a guy jump up on stage and stab some famous singer? Especially a real shitty pop singer? Maybe they'll even start stabbing comedians. Fuck it, I'm ready! I never perform without my can of mace. I have a switchblade knife, too. I'll cut your eye out and go right on telling jokes.” - George Carlin

47. “Who else, when we stepped to the line in Torino, was going to be so mentally tough? Who else would have proven to himself that he could do anything he set out to do? In a sport that was always one tick away from being entirely out of control, who else would have done everything he could to take charge of the things he could-and should- control to put himself in position to excel?” - Apolo Ohno

48. “Our lives are mere flashes of light in an infinitely empty universe. In 12 years of education the most important lesson I have learned is that what we see as “normal” living is truly a travesty of our potential. In a society so governed by superficiality, appearances, and petty economics, dreams are more real than anything anything in the “real world”. Refuse normalcy. Beauty is everywhere, love is endless, and joy bleeds from our everyday existence. Embrace it. I love all of you, all my friends, family, and community. I am ceaselessly grateful from the bottom of my heart for everyone. The only thing I can ask of you is to stay free of materialism. Remember that every day contains a universe of potential; exhaust it. Live and love so immensely that when death comes there is nothing left for him to take. Wealth is love, music, sports, learning, family and freedom. Above all, stay gold.” - Dominic Owen Mallary

49. “Defeated misery is what all sport is about, eventually, if you follow the story for long enough; all sportsmen know this.” - Nick Hornby

50. “I've got a Don Baylor," J.T. said."California sucks this year."Ralph snickered. "I wouldn't use a Baylor card to scrape dog shit off the street.” - Jodi Picoult

51. “Pain? Yes, of course. Racing without pain is not racing. But the pleasure of being ahead outweighed the pain a million times over. To hell with the pain. What's six minutes of pain compared to the pain they're going to feel for the next six months or six decades. You never forget your wins and losses in this sport. YOU NEVER FORGET.” - Brad Alan Lewis

52. “The flow. Yeah. Knowing you could step on the court and make it happen. You practiced, sure. But then, when you walked out there, you could just go. You could flow, that was it: you created and you didn't totally know how. You just knew you could, so you did. It wasn't thinking and it wasn't imitating somebody else's moves, though you always looked carefully when you watched good players play. But when you played... it was something you couldn't explain. Neal used to know. It didn't come from thinking about it.” - Doug Wilhelm

53. “After joyfully working each morning, I would leave off around midday to challenge myself to a footrace. Speeding along the sunny paths of the Jardin du Luxembourg, ideas would breed like aphids in my head—for creative invention is easy and sublime when air cycles quickly through the lungs and the body is busy at noble tasks.” - Roman Payne

54. “Academe, n.: An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught. Academy, n.: A modern school where football is taught.” - Ambrose Bierce

55. “Adversity causes some men to break; others to break records. ” - William Arthur Ward

56. “All sports for all people. ” - Pierre de Coubertin

57. “Approach the game with no preset agendas and you'll probably come away surprised at your overall efforts. ” - Phil Jackson

58. “As you walk down the fairway of life you must smell the roses, for you only get to play one round. ” - Ben Hogan

59. “Bobby Knight told me this: 'There is nothing that a good defense cannot beat a better offense.' In other words a good offense wins.” - Dan Quayle

60. “Boxing has become America's tragic theater. ” - Joyce Carol Oates

61. “Boxing is smoky halls and kidneys battered until they bleed. ” - Roger Kahn

62. “Champions keep playing until they get it right.” - Billie Jean King

63. “Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you.” - Satchel Paige

64. “Fans don't boo nobodies. ” - Reggie Jackson

65. “God made me fast. And when I run, I feel His pleasure. ” - Eric Liddell

66. “Gold medals aren't really made of gold. They're made of sweat, determination, and a hard-to-find alloy called guts.” - Dan Gable

67. “If a team intimidate you physically and you let them, they've won.” - Mia Hamm

68. “In the sweep of its appeal, its ability to touch every corner of humanity, football is the only game that needed to be invented.” - Bobby Charlton

69. “Greatness, whether athletic or otherwise, doesn’t come from those content on just being but from those who seek being the difference.” - Kirk Mango

70. “Anyone who likes or hates Dana White should take a look at this.” - June White

71. “I love the smell of the ice... And the cold. The sound the puck makes when it's sliding across the ice or when hits the net for a goal... as long as it's our goal. I love the sound of sticks crashing against one another. The sound my skates make when I come to a hard stop. The roar of the crowd. The way I feel when i'm playing. I can do things on this ice that I can't do anywhere else.” - J. Sterling

72. “I was never very good with either my hands or feet. It always seemed to me they'd just been stuck on as an afterthought during my making. Dreams didn't translate through sports, or music, dancing, carpentry, plumbing. I was the bookish kid, more at home in the pages of a fantasy than in the room in the town on the planet.” - Steve Rasnic Tem

73. “The attraction of snowboarding is the freedom it gives you. With a snowboard on your feet the sky is the limit. You can do anything and go anywhere. This is not just for pro riders. It is for everyone.The other amazing thing with snowboarding is how easy it is to get away from people and enjoy the solitude of the mountains. Its almost impossible in surfing but with snowboarding it is a short hike from the top of the lift or the side of the road.” - Jeremy Jones

74. “Golf is a good walk spoiled.” - Mark Twain

75. “He speaks in that strange sports talk, telling me about the start of the new season and asks if I follow baseball. No. I really don’t. He assures me if I stay in town long enough I will become a baseball fan. It’s a requirement of living in St. Louis. Everyone is a Cardinal’s fan. “Loyal,” he tells me. St. Louis is a loyal town.” - Gwenn Wright

76. “Why is luge a sport? You dress up like a giant sperm and go sledding really fast. That’s hardly athletic. Phallic and sexy, yes. But hardly athletic.” - Jessica Park

77. “I've never questioned the integrity of an umpire. Their eyesight, yes.” - Leo Durocher

78. “The pleasure of sport was so often the chance to indulge the cessation of time itself--the pitcher dawdling on the mound, the skier poised at the top of a mountain trail, the basketball player with the rough skin of the ball against his palm preparing for a foul shot, the tennis player at set point over his opponent--all of them savoring a moment before committing themselves to action.” - George Plimpton

79. “Things that aren't important, that have nothing to do with winning and losing, don't have to be a rule.” - Peter Richmond

80. “There's something about putting on a pair of skates, and getting out there and moving like nobody else can. Freedom is a word that comes to mind.” - Randy Gardner

81. “The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.” - Phil Jackson

82. “Tennis taught me to take chances, to take life as it comes. To hit every ball that comes to me no matter how hard it looks, to give it my best shot.” - Thisuri Wanniarachchi

83. “I've fallen in love with baseball.” - Nick Jonas

84. “A baseball club for girls?” - Emily J. Proctor

85. “I've never had an interest, but baseball looks abnormal.” - Emily J. Proctor

86. “Deep down, it's all baseball, no matter what kind of geometrical shape you play it with.” - Vernon D. Burns

87. “Cassidy's heart tried to leap out through his taught skin and hop into his wet hands. But outwardly it was all very calm, very serene, just as always, and it seemed to last a tiny forever, just like that, a snapshot of them all on the curved parabola of a starting line, eight giant hearts attached to eight pairs of bellows-like lungs mounted on eight pairs of supercharged stilts. They were poised on the edge of some howling vortex they had run 10,000 miles to get to. Now they had to run one more” - John L. Parker Jr.

88. “If you have not seen it, FOOTBALL is a game in which men shove one another back and forth for no reason. They do not choose how, when, or whom they shove. All that has been decided for them in advance. All they need to do is follow the orders given to them before the game, showing them where to run and how to violently deploy the meat of their bodies against the meat that is running at them. They are doing this in order to please one angry old man on the sidelines. This old man is called the "coach" or "yelling surrogate dad who will never be happy.” - John Hodgman

89. “Sometimes, in a tight game with runners on, digging in at short, ready to break with the ball, a peace I'd never felt before would paralyze the diamond. For a moment of eternal stillness I felt as if I were cocked at the very heart of the Midwest.” - Stuart Dybek

90. “Any game becomes important when you know and love the players.” - W.P. Kinsella

91. “That's why he was here, to surrender himself to longing, to listen to his host recite the anecdotal texts, all the passed-down stories of bonehead plays and swirling brawls, the pitching duels that carried into twilight, stories that Marvin had been collecting for half a century--the deep eros of memory that separates baseball from other sports.” - Don DeLillo

92. “If you want to find the real competition, just look in the mirror. After awhile you'll see your rivals scrambling for second place.” - Criss Jami

93. “You either commit yourself as a professional racing driver that's designed to win races or you come second or you come third or fifth and am not design to come third, fourth or fifth, I race to win.” - Ayrton Senna

94. “Részvétet éreztem az ismeretlen sportember iránt, és egyúttal kárörömet is. Úgy kell neki, miért sportember, de ha már sportember, mit keres minálunk. Valószínűleg ő is így érzett volna irányomban, ha a golfpályán látott volna meg engem.” - Antal Szerb

95. “(Baseball) is a game with a lot of waiting in it; it is a game with increasingly heightened anticipation of increasingly limited action” - John Irving

96. “Sports represent a shared vision of how we continue, as individual, team, or community, to experience a happiness or absence of care so intense, so rare, and so fleeting that we associate their experience with experience otherwise described as religious or we say the sports experience must be the tattered remnant of an experience which was once described, when first felt, as religious.” - A. Bartlett Giamatti

97. “There's something about sports. You can be setting fire to cats and burying them in your backyard, but as long as you're playing team sports, people think you're okay.” - Polly Horvath

98. “Is it or is it not a matter of importance that a young man starts out in life with an ability to shut his jaw hard and say "I will," or "I will not," and mean it?” - John William Heisman

99. “In Gym, the kids on my team learned not to pass me the ball and to step quickly in front of me if the other team tried to take advantage of my weakness. I happily stayed out of their way.” - Stephenie Meyer

100. “Someone who doesn't make the (Olympic) team might weep and collapse. In my day no one fell on the track and cried like a baby. We lost gracefully. And when someone won, he didn't act like he'd just become king of the world, either. Athletes in my day were simply humble in our victory.I believe we were more mature then...Maybe it's because the media puts so much pressure on athletes; maybe it's also the money. In my day we competed for the love of the sport...In my day we patted the guy who beat us on the back, wished him well, and that was it.” - Louis Zamperini

101. “It's considered good sportsmanship not to pick up lost golf balls while they are still rolling.” - Mark Twain

102. “[Lizzie Bennington to a reporter who has asked for her opinion about Jack Archer's celebrated thighs.] “When you come back from a set down and bring the match to a final set tiebreak and are a point away from winning the match, only to have what looks like an extremely fit player call a time out because of a cramp and then watch that player sit back and casually converse and laugh while you do your best to keep your mental focus and your body moving so you don’t grow cold and cramp yourself, I hardly think you’d concern yourself with his burgeoning manhood, let alone his thighs!” - A.G. Starling

103. “What would be the natural thing? A man goes to college. He works as he wants to work, he plays as he wants to play, he exercises for the fun of the game, he makes friends where he wants to make them, he is held in by no fear of criticism above, for the class ahead of him has nothing to do with his standing in his own class. Everything he does has the one vital quality: it is spontaneous. That is the flame of youth itself. Now, what really exists?""...I say our colleges to-day are business colleges—Yale more so, perhaps, because it is more sensitively American. Let's take up any side of our life here. Begin with athletics. What has become of the natural, spontaneous joy of contest? Instead you have one of the most perfectly organized business systems for achieving a required result—success. Football is driving, slavish work; there isn't one man in twenty who gets any real pleasure out of it. Professional baseball is not more rigorously disciplined and driven than our 'amateur' teams. Add the crew and the track. Play, the fun of the thing itself, doesn't exist; and why? Because we have made a business out of it all, and the college is scoured for material, just as drummers are sent out to bring in business."Take another case. A man has a knack at the banjo or guitar, or has a good voice. What is the spontaneous thing? To meet with other kindred spirits in informal gatherings in one another's rooms or at the fence, according to the whim of the moment. Instead what happens? You have our university musical clubs, thoroughly professional organizations. If you are material, you must get out and begin to work for them—coach with a professional coach, make the Apollo clubs, and, working on, some day in junior year reach the varsity organization and go out on a professional tour. Again an organization conceived on business lines."The same is true with the competition for our papers: the struggle for existence outside in a business world is not one whit more intense than the struggle to win out in the News or Lit competition. We are like a beef trust, with every by-product organized, down to the last possibility. You come to Yale—what is said to you? 'Be natural, be spontaneous, revel in a certain freedom, enjoy a leisure you'll never get again, browse around, give your imagination a chance, see every one, rub wits with every one, get to know yourself.'"Is that what's said? No. What are you told, instead? 'Here are twenty great machines that need new bolts and wheels. Get out and work. Work harder than the next man, who is going to try to outwork you. And, in order to succeed, work at only one thing. You don't count—everything for the college.' Regan says the colleges don't represent the nation; I say they don't even represent the individual.” - Owen Johnson

104. “Think of yourself as an athlete. I guarantee you it will change the way you walk, the way you work, and the decisions you make about leadership, teamwork, and success.” - Mariah Burton Nelson

105. “Beauty is not the goal of competitive sports, but high-level sports are a prime venue for the expression of human beauty. The relation is roughly that of courage to war.The human beauty we're talking about here is beauty of a particular type; it might be called kinetic beauty. Its power and appeal are universal. It has nothing to do with sex or cultural norms. What it seems to have to do with, really, is human beings' reconciliation with the fact of having a body.” - David Foster Wallace

106. “While sports are indisputably a positive source of strength and self-development for girls, they can accomplish this only if the environment in which female athletes throw their javelins, kick their soccer balls, and swim their fast and furious laps is an environment that respects girls and takes them seriously as athletes.” - Leslie Heywood

107. “Politicians and sports coaches both need to be smart enough to master the game, but dumb enough to think it matters.” - David Mitchell

108. “Why isn’t it fun to watch a videotape of last night’s football game even when we don’t know who won? Because the fact that the game has already been played precludes the possibility that our cheering will somehow penetrate the television, travel through the cable system, find its way to the stadium, and influence the trajectory of the ball as it hurtles toward the goalposts!” - Daniel Gilbert

109. “If you're not at the front, you're not in the race.” - David Millar

110. “I might have changed, but that did not mean the sport had.” - David Millar

111. “The reporter asked, "why did you play so hard.""Because there might have been somebody in the stands today who'd never seen my play before, and might never see me again"-Joe DiMaggio” - Joe DiMaggio

112. “Sleepwalking is the perfect exorcise for lazy people” - Benny Bellamacina

113. “If not for sports, I do not think my father would have ever talked to me.” - Pat Conroy

114. “Basketball allowed me to revere my father without him knowing what I was up to. I took up basketball as a form of homage and mimicry.” - Pat Conroy

115. “What the hell happened to your leg?" Ang asked him. Matt looked down at his shin, which was scraped and oozing and seemed to be caked in mud. "Crashed.""Crashed what?" Ang asked. "My mountain bike. We just got back.""You crashed, then what? Rolled in dirt?"He laughed. "Something like that actually. It's not a successful ride if you don't bleed." He must not have noticed the look of horror on my face, because he asked, suddenly enthusiastic, "You guys ride?"Angelo and I just looked at each other, and he seemed to realize that was a "no." "Too bad. Well, make yourselves at home. Beer's in the fridge. I have to get cleaned up. Kickoff's in ten minutes.""Football?" Angelo asked. Matt looked at his as if he had just asked if the sky was really blue. "Yeah! First game of the regular season!" We just stared blankly at him, and he just laughed and disappeared down the hall. Angelo looked at me with a smile on his face. "Four fags watchin' football. Must be pretty fuckin' cold in hell right now.” - Marie Sexton

116. “I learned a long time ago that there is something worse than missing the goal, and that's not pulling the trigger.” - Mia Hamm

117. “Life would be better if the Leafs would make the playoffs. Life would be perfect if they’d win the Stanley Cup.” - Tom Earle

118. “Will we ever see his like again? It is doubtful. But at least for a brief moment in time we were lucky to have him as one of our own: an English lionheart who was the terror of the continent, who earned the love and respect of everyone who had the privilege to see him in action and above all was a thoroughly decent hero of whom we can be proud. Rest in peace 'Big Dunc'. Your feats will echo in eternity.” - James Leighton

119. “The sad fact of life: Winners love the game. Losers don't.” - The Wombat