55 Inspiring Quotes From Sports

Sports have an unparalleled ability to inspire and motivate, with athletes pushing the boundaries of human potential and showcasing the power of perseverance, dedication, and passion. Through triumphs and challenges, the world of sports provides us with a treasure trove of wisdom and encouragement. In this compilation, we've curated a collection of the top 55 inspiring quotes from sports—words that capture the essence of ambition, teamwork, and the relentless pursuit of greatness. Whether you're an athlete seeking motivation, a coach instilling courage in your team, or simply someone looking for a boost in your daily life, these quotes are sure to ignite your spirit and fuel your journey.

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

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

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

4. “There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.” - Ernest Hemingway

5. “When the seagulls follow the trawler, it is because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea. ” - Eric Cantona

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

7. “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

8. “The roof was torn off the gym. God's way of telling the jocks that they'd better remember who's really charge.” - Dana Reinhardt

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

10. “The thing about football - the important thing about football - is that it is not just about football.” - Terry Pratchett

11. “Build up your weaknesses until they become your strong points.” - Knute Rockne

12. “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

13. “They say that nobody is perfect. Then they tell you practice makes perfect. I wish they'd make up their minds.” - Wilt Chamberlain

14. “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

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

16. “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

17. “I'm playing; I'm here. I'm going to fight until they tell me they don't want me anymore.” - Steve Nash

18. “You have to give 100 percent in the first half of the game. If that isn't enough, in the second half, you have to give what's left.” - Yogi Berra

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

20. “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

21. “We made a successful, last-minute effort to get the French Open many years ago, when the USA network bailed on it. I remember, four of us jumped on a plane on the spur of the moment to cover it. I think we had someone draw up a sign (by hand) that we could hold up in front of the camera to tell viewers that it was ESPN coverage.” - Patrick McEnroe

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

23. “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

24. “A lifetime of training for just ten seconds. ” - Jesse Owens

25. “Any time Detroit scores more than 100 points and holds the other team below 100 points they almost always win. ” - Doug Collins

26. “As athletes, we're used to reacting quickly. Here, it's 'come, stop, come, stop.' There's a lot of downtime. That's the toughest part of the day. ” - Michael Jordan

27. “Baseball has the great advantage over cricket of being sooner ended. ” - George Bernard Shaw

28. “Baseball is almost the only orderly thing in a very unorderly world. If you get three strikes, even the best lawyer in the world can't get you off. ” - Bill Veeck

29. “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

30. “My swag was phenomenal.” - Gilbert Arenas

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

32. “If a tie is like kissing your sister, losing is like kissing your grandmother with her teeth out.” - George Brett

33. “He already knew he could coach. All you had to do was look at each of your players and ask yourself: What story does this guy wish someone would tell him about himself? And then you told the guy that story.” - Chad Harbach

34. “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

35. “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

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

37. “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

38. “Maybe if I'd agreed to do the debutante thing like she wanted. Or taken up pageants instead of riding jump bikes with a bunch of grungy boys. I'd always tell her, why can't I do both? Who says you have to be either smart or pretty, or into girly stuff or sports? Life shouldn't be about the either/or. We're capable of more than that, you know?” - Sarah Dessen

39. “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

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

41. “One way, he thought, the whole thing of ring fighting was hurting somebody else, deliberately, and particularly when it was not necessary. Two men who have nothing against each other get in a ring and try to hurt each other, to provide vicarious fear for people with less guts than themselves. And to cover it up they called it sports and gambled on it. He had never looked at that way before, and if there was any single thing he could not endure it was to be a dupe.” - James Jones

42. “[On writing:] "There's a great quote by Julius Irving that went, 'Being a professional is doing the things you love to do, on the days you don't feel like doing them.'"(One On 1, interview with Budd Mishkin; NY1, March 25, 2007.)” - David Halberstam

43. “The gods have fled, I know. My sense is the gods have always been essentially absent. I do not believe human beings have played games or sports from the beginning merely to summon or to please or to appease the gods. If anthropologists and historians believe that, it is because they believe whatever they have been able to recover about what humankind told the gods humankind was doing. I believe we have played games, and watched games, to imitate the gods, to become godlike in our worship of eachother and, through those moments of transmutation, to know for an instant what the gods know.” - A. Bartlett Giamatti

44. “When I was in high school I asked myself at one point: "Why do I care if my high school's team wins the football game? I don't know anybody on the team, they have nothing to do with me... why am I here and applaud? It does not make any sense." But the point is, it does make sense: It's a way of building up irrational attitudes of submission to authority and group cohesion behind leadership elements. In fact it's training in irrational jingoism. That's also a feature of competitive sports.” - Noam Chomsky

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

46. “I have failed many times, and that's why I am a success.” - Michael Jordan

47. “[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

48. “You see, sex for Jews is not such a terrible sin. It's just one more physical sport we're gonna stink at.” - Jaffe Cohen

49. “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

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

51. “People focus on role models; it is more effective to find antimodels - people you don't want to resemble when you grow up” - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

52. “Steve [sports psychiatrist] had already taught me to try and stop worrying so much about pleasing everyone. We knew that this was one of my most draining flaws and he again used three groups to clarify my thinking. There would always be some people, Steve said, who would care about me and love me. In contrast there would also be a select group of people who would never warm to me - no matter what I did. And in the middle came the overwhelming mass who were largely indifferent to any of my failures or triumphs. I needed to understand that most people didn't really care what I did or said. All my anguish about how they might perceive me was redundant. Steve helped me realize that I spent too much time trying to please those oblivious people in the middle or, more problematically, the small group who would never change their critical opinion of me. I should concentrate on the people who really did show concern for me.” - Victoria Pendleton

53. “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

54. “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

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