58 Inspirational Sports Quotes

In the realm of sports, motivation and inspiration are often the driving forces that propel athletes to achieve greatness. Whether you're an amateur enthusiast or a seasoned professional, the power of words can ignite a spark that leads to victory. This curated collection of the top 58 inspirational sports quotes serves as a testament to the resilience, perseverance, and indomitable spirit that athletes embody. From legendary figures to contemporary icons, these quotes encapsulate the essence of sportsmanship and offer valuable insights into the mindset required to conquer challenges. Join us as we delve into a world where words become a catalyst for action and a source of profound inspiration.

1. “The problem with winter sports is that -- follow me closely here -- they generally take place in winter.” - Dave Barry

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

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

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

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

6. “I later discovered that in order to be a good athlete one must care intensely what is happening with a ball, even if one doesn't have possession of it. This was ultimately my failure: my inability to work up a passion for the location of balls.” - Haven Kimmel

7. “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

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

9. “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

10. “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

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

12. “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

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

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

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

16. “The strong one doesn't win, the one that wins is strong.” - Franz beckenbauer

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

18. “Running isn't a sport for pretty boys...It's about the sweat in your hair and the blisters on your feet. Its the frozen spit on your chin and the nausea in your gut. It's about throbbing calves and cramps at midnight that are strong enough to wake the dead. It's about getting out the door and running when the rest of the world is only dreaming about having the passion that you need to live each and every day with. It's about being on a lonely road and running like a champion even when there's not a single soul in sight to cheer you on. Running is all about having the desire to train and persevere until every fiber in your legs, mind, and heart is turned to steel. And when you've finally forged hard enough, you will have become the best runner you can be. And that's all that you can ask for.” - Paul Maurer

19. “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

20. “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

21. “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

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

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

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

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

26. “Baseball happens to be a game of cumulative tension but football, basketball and hockey are played with hand grenades and machine guns. ” - John Leonard

27. “Baseball is the only field of endeavor where a man can succeed three times out of ten and be considered a good performer. ” - Ted Williams

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

29. “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

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

31. “Philippine culture was clearly different. It wasn't the fan's duty to remain aloof in the presence of stars; it was the player's responsibility to show gratitude to the average Filipino.” - Rafe Bartholomew

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

33. “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

34. “Love is a violent recreational sport. Proceed at your own risk. Helmets, armor, and steel-toe boots are required by law.” - H.C. Paye

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

36. “In sport the mind serves as the acolyte and apprentice of the body. Nothing interferes with the flow of the game more than the athlete who obsesses about his every move on the court. You move, you react, you recover, you drive, and the thinking is seamless and invisible in the secret codes of your game.” - Pat Conroy

37. “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

38. “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

39. “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

40. “(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

41. “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

42. “Without self-discipline, success is impossible, period.” - Lou Holtz

43. “Baseball has so much history and tradition. You can respect it, or you can exploit it for profit, but it's still being made all over the place, all the time.” - Michael Lewis

44. “Baseball is a soap opera that lends itself to probabilistic thinking. [Dick Cramer]” - Michael Lewis

45. “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

46. “With sports, you have no time to reflect. You just do.” - Terri Giuliano Long

47. “Look, girls. It is important to all of us that we win this game, right? Well, when it comes to athletics, boys are simply better suited than girls. It’s a fact of nature that no one can change. I’m sorry, but maybe you can play next time when it’s less crucial.” - Francine Pascal

48. “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

49. “Sport, properly directed, develops character, makes a person courageous, a generous loser, and a gracious victor; it refines the senses, gives intellectual penetration, and steels the will to endurance. It is not merely a physical development then. Sport, rightly understood, is an occupation of the whole person, and while perfecting the body as an instrument of the mind, it also makes the mind itself a more refined instrument for the search and communication of truth….” - Pope Pius XII

50. “Ich hasste Sport. Ich hasste Sport, und ich hasste Sportler, und ich hasste Leute, die sich Sport ansahen, und ich hasste Leute, die Leute, die sich Sport ansahen, nicht hassten.” - John Green

51. “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

52. “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

53. “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

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

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

56. “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

57. “Training energy system to effectively resynthesize ATP – as quickly as possible – so that muscle contraction continues without onset of fatigue – forms the basis of most exercise protocols.” - The Fitness Doc

58. “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