Quotes about sport

A collection of quotes on the topic of box, hockey, football, training.

Best quotes about sport

“1. sports 2. opera 3. weapons.”

Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960–1988) American artist

“The GAA is the sporting wing of the IRA.”

Sammy Wilson (1953) British politician

The Irish News (September 6, 1989)

“Sports is to war as pornography is to sex.”

Jonathan Haidt (1963) American psychologist

TED Talk http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html (March 2008).

“My favorite sport is female and my favorite food is beer.”

Glen Cook Cold Copper Tears

Source: Cold Copper Tears

“I play with syllables and sport in song”

William Cowper (1731–1800) (1731–1800) English poet and hymnodist

From:First of the Moral Satires
Table Talk (1782)

“Boxing is the toughest and loneliest sport in the world.”

Frank Bruno (1961) British boxer

Interview with Emma Brockes http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/biography/story/0,6000,1599231,00.html

“Sporting Life 22 January 1909.”

Arthur Frederick Bettinson (1862–1926) Manager and promoter of the National Sporting Club

“My favorite sport is Scrabble.”

Chris Walla (1975) American musician

20 questions with Christopher Walla (2000)

“When this quality sports product…”

Keith Olbermann (1959) American sports and political commentator

Catch Phrases
Source: http://www.sportscenteraltar.com/phrases/phrases.asp Sports Center Catchphrases

“What they call “play” (gym, travel, sports) looks like work.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 40

Quotes about sport

“It's not only me, who is serving this sport. Figure skating is a sport. Yes, there are shows, but we're athletes and competitors. You can't compete with only one skater. There are so many amateur skaters, who gather to compete. This is how figure skating as a sport is made.”

Yuzuru Hanyu (1994) Japanese figure skater (1994-)

Excerpt from Hanyu's acceptance speech at the inaugural ISU Skating Awards, aired 11 July 2020.
Other quotes, 2020

“Joe Louis and I were the first modern national sports figures who were black… But neither of us could do national advertising because the South wouldn't buy it. That was the social stigma we lived under.”

Jesse Owens (1913–1980) American track and field athlete

The Tampa Tribune (1 April 1980)

“Hockey is a sport for white men. Basketball is a sport for black men. Golf is a sport for white men dressed like black pimps.”

Tiger Woods (1975) American professional golfer

Men, Hockey

“Of all the creatures that were made he [man] is the most detestable. Of the entire brood he is the only one — the solitary one — that possesses malice. That is the basest of all instincts, passions, vices — the most hateful…He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain…Also — in all the list he is the only creature that has a nasty mind.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Vol. II, p. 7
Mark Twain's Autobiography (1924)

Pain, Hate, Passion

“Theres no short cut. It’s hard work being a Body builder. If you’re not willing to do the hard work, then it’s the wrong sport for you. You’ve got to love it. If you love it, you will get to where you want to be.”

Rich Piana (1970–2017) American bodybuilder and internet personality

Love

“Mother, I have bargained and bought Govinda!
Let some say:Cheap! Let some say:Costly!
I have weighed in the balance.
Let some say:He is in the house, some say! In the woods!
Sporting in the company of Radha!
When Meera’s Lord Giridhar Krishna comes, love.”

Meera Bai Hindu mystic poet

V.K.Subramanian in "Mystic Songs of Meera", p. 23

Love, Housing

“I wasn't given the genetics for football. This is my gift right here. I was always well-built. You can't do certain sports without the genetics, and talent, too, of course.”

Ronnie Coleman (1964) American bodybuilder

Ellen Mazo (May 1, 1999) "Building the Image of a Role Model", Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, p. A-1.

Football

“With tennis, they say it's a social sport you can play from six to 60 - they should say 90, your friendships go on forever.”

Don Tregonning (1928) Australian professional tennis player and coach

Source: "Life on the court" https://www.medibank.com.au/bemagazine/life-on-the-court/ (January 5, 2014)

Friendship

“Everyone thought I was going to die like a year later, they didn't know. So I helped educate sports, and then the world, that a man living with HIV can play basketball. He's not going to give it to anybody by playing basketball.”

Magic Johnson (1959) American basketball player

Then & Now: Magic Johnson http://edition.cnn.com/2005/US/01/17/cnn25.tan.johnson/index.html

World, Education, Help

“For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors and laugh at them in our turn?”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice (1813)

“The sport is more important than anything. More important than any of the people in it. Of course I say what I think. I always have, even if it upsets people like Ecclestone and Balestre. Why should I be afraid of them? The fans aren't here to see politicians and manipulators. They're here to see me. I am very secure in my feelings about racing. I make a lot of money from it, but one thing I can tell you for sure: if the money disappeared overnight, I would still be in racing, because I love it. The entrepreneurs would be gone.”

Gilles Villeneuve (1950–1982) Canadian racecar driver

Interview during the driver's strike at the 1982 South African Grand Prix, Donaldson, pg. 297

Love, Money, People, Feeling

“Balthasar of Waldshit has fallen into prison here - a man not merely irreverent and unlearned, but even empty. Learn the sum of the matter. When he came to Zurich our Council fearing lest he should cause a commotion ordered him to be taken into custody. Since, however, he had once in freakishness of disposition and fatuity, lurked out in Waldshut against our Council, of which place he, by the gods, was a guardian [i. e., he has pastor there], until the stupid fellow disunited and destroyed everything, it was determined that I should discuss with him in a friendly manner the baptising of infants and Catabaptists, as he earnestly begged first from prison and afterwards from custody. I met the fellow and rendered him mute as a fish. The next day he recited a recantation in the presence of certain Councillors appointed for the purpose [which recantation when repeated to the Two Hundred it was ordered should be publicly made Therefore having started to write it in the city, he gave it to the Council with his own hand, with all its silliness, as he promised. At length he denied that he had changed his opinion, although he had done so before a Swiss tribunal, which with us is a capital offence, affirming that his signature had been extorted from him by terror, which was most untrue].
The council was so unwilling that force should be used on him that when the Emperor or Ferdinand twice asked that the fellow be given to him it refused the request. Indeed he was not taken prisoner that he might suffer the penalty of his boldness in the baptismal matter, but to prevent his causing in secret some confusion, a thing he delighted to do. Then he angered the Council; for there were present most upright Councillors who had witnessed his most explicit and unconstrained withdrawal, and had refused to hand to him over to the cruelty of the Emperor, helping themselves with my aid. The next day he was thrust back into prison and tortured. It is clear that the man had become a sport for demons, so he recanted not frankly as he had promised, nay he said that he entertained no other opinions than those taught by me, execrated the error and obstinacy of the Catabaptists, repeated this three times when stretched on the racks, and bewailed his misery and the wrath of God which in this affair was so unkind. Behold what wantonness! Than these men there is nothing more foolhardy, deceptive infamous - for I cannot tell you what they devise in Abtzell - and shameless. Tomorrow or next day the case will come up.”

Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531) leader of the Protestant Reformation in Switzerland, and founder of the Swiss Reformed Churches

Letter to Capito, January 1, 1526 (Staehelin, Briefe ausder Reformationseit, p. 20), ibid, p. 249-250

Men, God, Secret, Stupidity

“I spent all of my life trying to stay away from sports and here I am in a sporting arena.”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

1993-12-30 at the Great Western Forum, Inglewood, California
Stage banter

Life

“Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"The Sporting Spirit" http://orwell.ru/library/articles/spirit/english/e_spirit, Tribune (14 December 1945)

“He has never broken a racket in anger. It would be showing a lack of respect to people who actually have to buy the equipment to play the sport.”

Rafael Nadal (1986) Spanish tennis player

Uncle Toni Nadal on nephew Rafael. http://nadal-rafael.tripod.com/id9.html

Anger, People

“In sports, it is easier to win a championship than to remain a champion in subsequent seasons. And the same is true in life. Once you reach the top, it is more difficult to stay on top. Because, when you become the best in sports, and in life, everyone expects more from you and they want to take you down.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1999

Life, Season

“Aggressive fighting for the right is the noblest sport the world affords.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

World, Fight

“There is no more exciting sport than flying, for if you lose, you die.”

Christopher Paolini book Brisingr

Source: Brisingr

Flying

“If all the year were playing holidays; To sport would be as tedious as to work.”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

Source: King Henry IV, Part 1

Holiday

“As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods.
They kill us for their sport.”

William Shakespeare King Lear

Source: King Lear

God, Boy

“People who worked with me or knew me still called me the "world's fastest human" because I almost never stopped. I'd found that I could get more done with no regular job or regular hours at all, but by being on my own, flying to speak here, help with a public relations campaign for some client there, tape my regular jazz radio show one morning at 5:00 a. m. before leaving on a plane for another city or another continent three hours later to preside over a major sporting event.”

Jesse Owens (1913–1980) American track and field athlete

Jesse Owens, Champion Athlete (1990)

People, World, Help, Flying

“Undoubtedly many more people in the world are concerned with sports than with human rights.”

Samuel P. Huntington (1927–2008) American political scientist

Source: The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996), Ch. 8 : The West and the Rest: Intercivilizational Issues, § 3 : Human Rights And Democracy, p. 197

People, World

“I wasn't driven to acting by any inner compulsion. I was running away from the sporting goods business.”

Paul Newman (1925–2008) American actor and film director

Quoted in John Skow, "Verdict on a Superstar," Time (1982-12-06)

Business

“Maybe baseball has to accept that it is now more like classical music than popular music, with football and basketball — and soccer? — being the Justin Biebers and Lady Gagas of sports. Baseball need not hang its head in shame. A lot of things that are good and worthy are not popular. And baseball is plenty popular, for heaven's sake.”

Jay Nordlinger (1963) American journalist

2010s, Baseball and Its Worriers (2018)

Music, Football

“I do not believe in taking away the right of the citizen to own guns for sporting, hunting and so forth, or for home defense. But I do believe that an AK-47, a machine gun, is not a sporting weapon.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

At the University of Southern California (February 6, 1989) when asked his opinion on gun control after the January 17, 1989 Cleveland Elementary School shooting that killed five schoolchildren in Stockton ([Becklund, Laurie, `Saddled Up' Reagan Vows to Speak on Issues, Los Angeles Times, February 7, 1989, 1]).
Post-presidency (1989–2004)

Home

“Overturning police cars is a super-intense workout. It’s probably the only sport I enjoy.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

Ai Weiwei Twitter feed: @AiWW (6:46 p.m. June 15, 2009).
2000-09, Twitter feeds, 2009

Cars

“(Sports) provides a wonderful opportunity for initiating acquaintance. Regardless of the degree of our civilization, people still thrill to physical combat and admire the man who excels. He who is of proven merit in the field of major sports has shown to all that he is possessed of strength, vigor, stamina, and courage. The great majority of people want to know such a man…How well I have taken advantage of the football reputation it was my good fortune to gain is for others to judge, but I personally am very thankful for the whole experience and the fun and friends it has brought me.”

Nile Kinnick (1918–1943) College football player

Journal entry (February 22, 1942)

People, Courage, Football, Personality

“I joke about it, fellas, but I tell ya, she runs that house. Good Lord. [Several female audience members cheer] Yeah, I know. I know. And if you're a married guy, I ain't telling you nothing you don't already know. But if you're single, and you're thinking about getting married, listen up. You ain't never gonna win the argument. Yeah. If guys were a sports team, we'd be 0-fer.”

Bill Engvall (1957) American comedian and actor

15° Off Cool (2007)

Guy, Thinking, Housing

“O Lord, self-renunciation is not the work of one day, nor children's sport; yea, rather in this word is included all perfection.”

Thomas à Kempis (1380–1471) German canon regular

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 536.

Children, Perfection

“UFC is definitely a younger guy’s sport. Our target audience is anywhere from age 17 to 35. And our fighters will be household names. Where I’d like to see it is like it is in Japan right now. We were just over there [on August 10, 2003] with Chuck Liddell, who was representing UFC in a UFC versus PRIDE fight. And he knocked out Alistair Overeem in the first round [3:09] of the PRIDE Grand Prix Elimination tournament. That was awesome, man. Chuck couldn’t leave the place on Monday morning. He went to go shopping, to buy some things for his family, and he was swarmed for forty-five minutes. The mall security had to pull him out of there and throw him in a car. There were thirty seven thousand people at the event, and it was the first time the tournament was shown on free TV. So millions of people saw him fight that night – not only in Japan, but in the US.”

Dana White (1969) President of the UFC

Dana White and the future of UFC (2004)

People, Age, Family, Cars

“Even If they (children) fall during their play,
the nature, having come
under the spell of their creative sports,
doesn’t know when they again start to play so full of jest.
Believing that they fall unknowingly
the ground, mostly, does not even hurt them.”

Suman Pokhrel (1967) Nepali poet, lyricist, playwright, translator and artist

Children http://www.occupypoetry.net/children_1/ From Poetry

Children, Nature, Hurt

“I didn't aspire to be a good sport; "champion" was good enough for me.”

Fred Perry (1909–1995) English tennis player

As quoted in Tennis Confidential: Today's Greatest Players, Matches, and Controversies (2003) by Paul Fein, p. 146

“I have twice gone fishing with rod and line just because other boys asked me to, but this sport was soon made impossible for me by the treatment of the worms that were put on the hook for bait, and the wrenching of the mouths of the fishes that were caught. I gave it up, and even found courage enough to dissuade other boys from going.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Memoirs of Childhood and Youth (1924)

Boy, Courage, Fish

“Who are the men, who, without our realizing it, give us our ideas, tell us whom to admire and whom to despise, what to believe about the ownership of public utilities.. about immigration who tell us how our houses should be designed, what furniture we should put into them, what menus we should serve at our table, what kind of shirts we must wear, what sports we should indulge in, what plays we should see, what charities we should support, what pictures we should admire, what slang we should affect, what jokes we should laugh at?”

Edward Bernays book Propaganda

Source: Propaganda (1928), p.59

Men, Idea, Support, Housing

“I believe with all my heart in athletics, in sport, and have always done as much thereof as my limited capacity and my numerous duties would permit; but I believe in bodily vigor chiefly because I believe in the spirit that lies back of it. If a boy can not go into athletics because he is not physically able to, that does not count in the least against him. He may be just as much of a man in after life as if he could, because it is not physical address but the moral quality behind it which really counts. But if he has the physical ability and keeps out because he is afraid, because he is lazy, because he is a mollycoddle, then I haven't any use for him. If he has not the right spirit, the spirit which makes him scorn self-indulgence, timidity and mere ease, that is if he has not the spirit which normally stands at the base of physical hardihood, physical prowess, then that boy does not amount to much, and he is not ordinarily going to amount to much in after life. Of course, there are people with special abilities so great as to outweigh even defects like timidity and laziness, but the man who makes the Republic what it is, if he has not courage, the capacity to show prowess, the desire for hardihood; if he has not the scorn of mere ease, the scorn of pain, the scorn of discomfort (all of them qualities that go to make a man's worth on an eleven or a nine or an eight); if he has not something of that sort in him then the lack is so great that it must be amply atoned for, more than amply atoned for, in other ways, or his usefulness to the community will be small. So I believe heartily in physical prowess, in the sports that go to make physical prowess. I believe in them not only because of the amusement and pleasure they bring, but because I think they are useful. Yet I think you had a great deal better never go into them than to go into them with the idea that they are the chief end even of school or college; still more of life.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1900s, Address at the Prize Day Exercises at Groton School (1904)

Life, Pain, People, Pleasure

“You nobles, you sons of my leading men, soft and dandified, trusting in your birth and your wealth, paying no attention to my command and your advancement, you neglected the pursuit of learning and indulged yourselves in the sport of pleasure and idleness and foolish pastimes. By the King of the heavens I think nothing of your nobility and your beauty. Others can admire you. Know this without any doubt; unless you rapidly make up for your idleness by eager effort, you will never receive any benefit from Charlemagne.”

Charlemagne (748–814) King of the Franks, King of Italy, and Holy Roman Emperor

Quoted in Notker's The Deeds of Charlemagne (translated 2008 by David Ganz)

Men, Pleasure, Beauty, Birth

“Oh, yes … I'm really frightfully human and love all mankind, and all that sort of thing. Mankind is truly amusing, when kept at the proper distance. And common men, if well-behaved, are really quite useful. One is a cynick only when one thinks. At such times the herd seems a bit disgusting because each member of it is always trying to hurt somebody else, or gloating because somebody else is hurt. Inflicting pain seems to be the chief sport of persons whose tastes and interests run to ordinary events and direct pleasures and rewards of life—the animalistic or (if one may use a term so polluted with homoletick associations) worldly people of our absurd civilisation. ……. I may be human, all right, but not quite human enough to be glad at the misfortune of anybody. I am rather sorry (not outwardly but genuinely so) when disaster befalls a person—sorry because it gives the herd so much pleasure. … The natural hatefulness and loathsomeness of the human beast may be overcome only in a few specimens of fine heredity and breeding, by a transference of interests to abstract spheres and a consequent sublimation of the universal sadistic fury. All that is good in man is artificial; and even that good is very slight and unstable, since nine out of ten non-primitive people proceed at once to capitalise their asceticism and vent their sadism by a Victorian brutality and scorn towards all those who do not emulate their pose. Puritans are probably more contemptible than primitive beasts, though neither class deserves much respect.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to James F. Morton (8 March 1923), in Selected Letters I, 1911-1924 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 211-212
Non-Fiction, Letters

Love, Life, Men, Pain

“I came from Paris in the Spring of 1884, and was brought in intimate contact with him [Thomas Edison]. We experimented day and night, holidays not excepted. His existence was made up of alternate periods of work and sleep in the laboratory. He had no hobby, cared for no sport or amusement of any kind and lived in utter disregard of the most elementary rules of hygiene. There can be no doubt that, if he had not married later a woman of exceptional intelligence, who made it the one object of her life to preserve him, he would have died many years ago from consequences of sheer neglect. So great and uncontrollable was his passion for work.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

As quoted in "Tesla Says Edison Was an Empiricist", The New York Times (19 Oct 1931), 25.

Life, Intelligence, Spring, Sleep

“I knew if I quit, nobody would ever believe that women had the capability to run 26-plus miles. If I quit, everybody would say it was a publicity stunt. If I quit, it would set women’s sports back, way back, instead of forward. If I quit, I’d never run Boston. If I quit, Jock Semple and all those like him would win. My fear and humiliation turned to anger.”

Kathrine Switzer (1947) American distance runner

Source: http://kathrineswitzer.com/about-kathrine/1967-boston-marathon-the-real-story/

Women, Fear, Way, Anger

“You know, we're in a sports center. Imagine if you have a team and you don't let half of the team play. That's stupid. That makes no sense. And the evidence shows that communities that give their daughters the same opportunities as their sons, they are more peaceful, they are more prosperous, they develop faster, they are more likely to succeed. […] And that's why one of the most successful development policies you can pursue is giving girls and education, and removing the obstacles that stand between them and their dreams. And by the way, if you educate girls -- they grow up to be moms -- and they, because they’re educated, are more likely to produce educated children.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Remarks to the Kenyan People (July 2015)

Children, Stupidity, Education, Peace

“Ultrarunners — even the fiercest competitors — grow to love each other because we all love the same exercise in self-sacrifice and pursuit of transcendence. Because that’s what we’re all chasing — that “zone” where we are performing at the peak of our abilities. That instant when we think we can’t go on but do go on. We all know the way that moment feels, how rarely it occurs, and the pain we have to endure to grab it back again. The longer an ultrarunner competes, I believe, the more he grows to love not only the sport, not only his fellow ultrarunners, but people in general. We all struggle to find meaning in a sometimes painful world. Ultrarunners do it in a very distilled version.”

Scott Jurek (1973) American ultramarthon runner

Source: Eat and Run (2012), Ch. 12, pp. 119-120

Love, Pain, People, World

“Bourgeois sport [wants] to differentiate itself strictly from play. Its bestial seriousness consists in the fact that instead of reamaining faithful to the dream of freedom by getting away from purposiveness, the treatment of play as a duty puts it among useful purposes and thereby wipes out the trace of freedom in it. This is particularly valid for contemporary mass music. It is only play as a repetition of prescribed models, and the playful release from responsibility which is thereby achieved does not reduce at all the time devoted to duty except by transferring the responsibility to the models, the following of which one makes into a duty for himself.”

Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) German sociologist, philosopher and musicologist known for his critical theory of society

Source: On the Fetish Character in Music and the Regression of Listening (1938), p. 296

Faith, Dreams, Music, Freedom

“For what would I be otherwise but sport,
In love with one who does not care for me?
I will hide pain in smiles, sooner than be
The common talk. It is a bitter art
To sing a happy song with a sad heart.”

Christine de Pizan De triste cuer chanter joyeusement

Car en mon cuer porte couvertement Le dueil qui soit qui plus me puet desplaire, Et si me fault, pour les gens faire taire, Rire en plorant et très amerement De triste cuer chanter joyeusement. Rondeau "De triste cuer chanter joyeusement", line 8; Maurice Roy (ed.) Œuvres Poétiques de Christine de Pisan (1886) vol. 1, p. 154, as translated by http://www.brindin.com/pfpistri.htm by Sheenagh Pugh.

Love, Pain, Sadness, Smile

“We Protestants ought to humbly confess that the theater and the sports have done more for race amity, for race understanding than, on the whole, the Protestant Church in certain type, in certain parts of the nation.”

Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) American protestant theologian

The Mike Wallace Interview (1958)

Understanding, Parting

“By sports like these are all their cares beguil'd;
The sports of children satisfy the child.”

Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774) Irish physician and writer

Source: The Traveller (1764), Line 153.

Children

“I doubt not but one great reason why many children abandon themselves wholly to silly sports, and trifle away all their time insipidly, is, because they have found their curiosity baulk'd, and their inquiries neglected. But had they been treated with more kindness and respect, and their questions answered, as they shuold, to their satisfaction; I doubt not but that they would have taken more pleasure in learning, and improving their knowledge, wherein there would still be newness and variety, which is what they are delighted with, than in returning over and over to the same play and play-things.”

John Locke book Some Thoughts Concerning Education

Sec. 118
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)

Children, Pleasure, Question, Knowledge

“I do not feel inclined to take any initiative. For one thing, Judo in reality is not a mere sport or game. I regard it as a principle of life, art and science. In fact, it is a means for personal cultural attainment.”

Kanō Jigorō (1860–1938) Japanese educator and judoka

Budokwai Bulletin (1947)
Context: I have been asked by people of various sections as to the wisdom and possibility of Judo being introduced with other games and sports at the Olympic Games. My view on the matter, at present, is rather passive. If it be the desire of other member countries, I have no objection. But I do not feel inclined to take any initiative. For one thing, Judo in reality is not a mere sport or game. I regard it as a principle of life, art and science. In fact, it is a means for personal cultural attainment. Only one of the forms of Judo training, so-called randori or free practice can be classed as a form of sport. Certainly, to some extent, the same may be said of boxing and fencing, but today they are practiced and conducted as sports. Then the Olympic Games are so strongly flavored with nationalism that it is possible to be influenced by it and to develop "Contest Judo", a retrograde form as ju-jitsu was before the Kodokan was founded.

Life, Art, Feeling, Game

“I think young people ought to seek that differential experience that is going to knock them off dead center. I was a typical American school boy. I happened to get straight A's and be pretty good in sports. But I had no great vision of what I could be. And I never had any yearning.
My job was to live through Friday afternoon, get through the week, and eat something. And then along came these differential experiences that you don't look for, that you don't plan for, but, boy, you better not miss them. The things that make you bigger than you are. The things that give you a vision. The things that give you a challenge.”

James A. Michener (1907–1997) American author

Academy of Achievement interview (1991)
Context: I do believe that everyone growing up faces differential opportunities. With me, it was books and travel and some good teachers. With somebody else, it may be a boy scout master. With somebody else, it will be a clergyman. Somebody else, an uncle who was wiser than the father. I think young people ought to seek that differential experience that is going to knock them off dead center. I was a typical American school boy. I happened to get straight A's and be pretty good in sports. But I had no great vision of what I could be. And I never had any yearning.
My job was to live through Friday afternoon, get through the week, and eat something. And then along came these differential experiences that you don't look for, that you don't plan for, but, boy, you better not miss them. The things that make you bigger than you are. The things that give you a vision. The things that give you a challenge.

People, School, Boy, Thinking

“Erelong, he no more saw anything alone. — In great variegated images, the perceptions of his senses crowded round him; he heard, saw, touched and thought at once. He rejoiced to bring strangers together. Now the stars were men, now men were stars, the stones animals, the clouds plants; he sported with powers and appearances; he knew where and how this and that was to be found, to be brought into action; and so himself struck over the strings, for tones and touches of his own.”

Novalis (1772–1801) German poet and writer

Pupils at Sais (1799)
Context: Over his own heart and his own thoughts he watched attentively. He knew not whither his longing was carrying him. As he grew up, he wandered far and wide; viewed other lands, other seas, new atmospheres, new rocks, unknown plants, animals, men; descended into caverns, saw how in courses and varying strata the edifice of the Earth was completed, and fashioned clay into strange figures of rocks. By and by, he came to find everywhere objects already known, but wonderfully mingled, united; and thus often extraordinary things came to shape in him. He soon became aware of combinations in all, of conjunctures, concurrences. Erelong, he no more saw anything alone. — In great variegated images, the perceptions of his senses crowded round him; he heard, saw, touched and thought at once. He rejoiced to bring strangers together. Now the stars were men, now men were stars, the stones animals, the clouds plants; he sported with powers and appearances; he knew where and how this and that was to be found, to be brought into action; and so himself struck over the strings, for tones and touches of his own.

Men, Star, Sense, Appearance

“Cockfighting has always been my idea of a great sport— two armed entrées battling to see who'll be dinner.”

P. J. O'Rourke book Holidays in Hell

Holidays in Hell (1989)

Idea

“I don't have time, really, to work out or play a sport. But I love to dance. I like to run in the springtime or in the fall. I like to go outside. I don't like running on a treadmill. I get tired… I just get sick of it. But if I'm outside, I could just run for ages. Or walk, if I need a break.”

AnnaSophia Robb (1993) American actress, singer, and model

Radio Free Entertainment interview (2007)
Context: I like to climb. I don't love to work out. Actually, I hate to work out. You know, I tell myself, "AnnaSophia, you have to work out. You haven't gotten any exercise in the longest time." You know, I don't have time, really, to work out or play a sport. But I love to dance. I like to run in the springtime or in the fall. I like to go outside. I don't like running on a treadmill. I get tired... I just get sick of it. But if I'm outside, I could just run for ages. Or walk, if I need a break.

Love, Age, Time, Dance

“It was his support and encouragement that had helped me to go abroad for training. He was great supporter of sports in general and his passing away is a big loss.”

Sunil Dutt (1929–2005) Hindi film actor

Sports person Joshna Chinnappa in page 69

Loss, Support, Help, Training

“How wonderful it is to celebrate a 27 years career! When you moved from basket ball to music, the world of sports lost a great player, but music won a great singer. You transmit good vibrations, a wonderful energy on the stage.”

Simone Bittencourt de Oliveira (1949) Brazilian singer

Hebe Camargo

World, Music

“I definitely think that I would be a different person without sports; they taught me so much. Just about myself, patience, teamwork, listening... it's taught me so much that I feel like I've applied to being a mom.”

Alex Morgan (1989) American soccer player

"The Advice Alex Morgan Would Give Her Daughter About Getting Into Sports" https://www.romper.com/life/alex-morgan-olympics-daughter-interview (July 10, 2021)

Personality, Thinking, Moms, Patience

“There’s an undeniable pleasure in stepping into an open-top sports car driven by a beautiful woman. It feels like you’re climbing into a metaphor.”

Hugh Laurie book The Gun Seller

Source: The Gun Seller (1996)

Pleasure, Beauty, Cars, Feeling

“… So please, be tolerant of those who describe a sporting moment as their best ever. We do not lack imagination, nor have we had sad and barren lives; it is just that real life is paler, duller, and contains less potential for unexpected delirium.”

Nick Hornby Fever Pitch

Source: Fever Pitch

Life, Sadness, Imagination

“The truth is, if a werewolf behaved like this psychopath it wouldn't be because he was part animal, but because he was still too human. Only humans kill for sport.”

Kelley Armstrong book Bitten

Source: Bitten

Truth, Animals, Parting

“When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport: when the tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity. The distinction between Crime and Justice is no greater.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

#62
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

Justice

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

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Problem, Winter

“Football: A sport that bears the same relation to education that bullfighting does to agriculture.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul

Education, Football

“Oh my gods, when do you not sport wood? There are bathrooms in the back, so go burp the worm or whatever.--Regin”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Dreams of a Dark Warrior

God

“Men forget everything; women remember everything. That's why men need instant replay in sports. They've already forgotten what's happened.”

Rita Rudner (1953) American comedian

Women, Men, Forgetting

“I cannot think well of a man who sports with any woman's feelings; and there may often be a great deal more suffered than a stander-by can judge of.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Feeling, Thinking, Suffering

“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 (1947) American writer

Learning, Personality

“Not the bee upon the blossom,
In the pride o' sunny noon;
Not the little sporting fairy,
All beneath the simmer moon;
Not the poet, in the moment
Fancy lightens in his e'e,
Kens the pleasure, feels the rapture,
That thy presence gi'es to me.”

Robert Burns (1759–1796) Scottish poet and lyricist

Pleasure, Feeling, Bee

“They aren't the brightest crayons in the box
-Max(saving the world and other extreme sports)”

James Patterson (1947) American author

World, Box

“If we would spend on education half the amount of money that we currently lavish on sports and entertainment, we could provide complete and free education for every student in this country.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence

Money, Education, Country

“Writing is like a sport - you only get better if you practice”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

“You can be merry with the king, you can share a joke with him. But as Thomas More used to say, it's like sporting with a tamed lion. You tousle its mane and pull its ears, but all the time you're thinking, those claws, those claws, those claws.”

Hilary Mantel Bring Up the Bodies

Source: Bring Up the Bodies

Thinking, Time

“She was all the things I wasn't. And i was all the things she wasn't. she could paint circles around anyone; I couldn't even draw a straight line. She was never into sports; I've always been. Her hand, it fit mine.”

Jodi Picoult book The Pact

Source: The Pact

Drawing, Painting

“I came home one night, some month ago, and I went to the closet in my bedroom… and a moth ate my sports jacket.
He was laying on the floor, nauseous, y'know.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

Home, Night

“He willed his body to remain unaffected. Sabin would fuss if Strider sported a hard-on around his precious. And, of course, "fuss" meant Strider would find his intestines wrapped around his neck, breathing a thing of the past.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: The Darkest Surrender

Past

“That’s what I like about sports. No matter if everyone playing the game speaks completely different languages, on the field, or the court, wherever they are playing, the language of moves and passes and scores is all the same. Universal.”

Rachel Cohn (1968) American writer

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

Game, Universe

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

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Based on a 1957 Ken Purdy quote, first mentioned in a posthumously published interview with Alfonso de Portago: note: :“I have a quotation in a story, a piece of fiction that won't be published until this summer,” I told Portago, “something that I thought at the time I wrote it you might have said: that of all sports, only bull fighting and mountain-climbing and motor-racing really tried a man, that all the rest are mere recreations. Would you have said that?” I tend to agree with Hemingway who said something to the effect that only mountain climbing, bull fighting and automobile racing were sports and that everything else was a game. Source: Ken W. Purdy (August 1957) "Portaro; The real story of the sizzling Spaniard" https://archive.org/details/sim_car-and-driver_1957-08_3/page/n70 Sports Cars Illustrated (Ziff-Davis: New York) vol. 3 no. 2 p. 63 note: :“There are three sports that try a man,” she remembered Helmut Ovden saying, “bullfighting, motor racing, mountain climbing. All the rest are recreations.” Source: Ken W. Purdy (27 July 1957) "Blood Sport" https://archive.org/details/sim_saturday-evening-post_1957-07-27_230_4/page/92 The Saturday Evening Post (Curtis: Philadelphia) vol. 230 no. 4 p. 92 Source: An early attribution to Hemingway is the essay "Why" by Gene Hill, published in Guns & Ammo and reprinted in 1972 in A Hunter's Fireside Book: Tales of Dogs, Ducks, Birds and Guns (Winchester Press: New York) ISBN 0876910762 p. 96

Mountain, Game

“Rock'n'roll is a teenage sport, meant to be played by teenagers of all ages--they could be 15, 25 or 35. It all boils down to whether they've got the love in their hearts, that beautiful teenage spirit… -Calvin Johnson”

Michael Azerrad (1961) American musician and writer

Source: Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991

Love, Age, Beauty, Heart

“Shoulda gone to China. They give away babies like free iPods. They put them in guns and shoot them out at sporting events.”

Diablo Cody (1978) Screenwriter and author

Source: Juno: The Shooting Script

Baby

“It's Thursday afternoon, and we have sports. These are the choices for the girls: watching an invitational cricket game; studying in one of the classrooms; or watching the senior rugby league. As you can imagine, I'm torn.”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: Saving Francesca

Imagination, Girl, Game, Study

“When a shepherd goes to kill a wolf, and takes his dog to see the sport, he should take care to avoid mistakes. The dog has certain relationships to the wolf the shepherd may have forgotten.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 30
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

Dogs, Wolf

“I wonder if Effie will still be wearing that silly pink wig, or is she'll be sporting some other unnatural color especially for the Victor Tour.”

Suzanne Collins (1962) American television writer and novelist

Color

“Sports, politics, and religion are the three passions of the badly educated.”

William H. Gass (1924–2017) Fiction writer, critic, philosophy professor

Source: In the Heart of the Heart of the Country and Other Stories

Education, Religion, Passion

“That's pretty hot," he said.
"Punching me in the eye?"
"Well, no. Of course not. I meant the idea of getting rough with you is hot. I'm a big fan of full-contact sports."
"I'm sure you are.”

Richelle Mead book Frostbite

Source: Frostbite

Idea

“Shopping is a woman thing. It's a contact sport like football. Women enjoy the scrimmage, the noisy crowds, the danger of being trampled to death, and the ecstasy of the purchase.”

Erma Bombeck (1927–1996) When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent le…

Death, Women, Football

“Then came the war, old sport. It was a great relief, and I tried very hard to die, but I seemed to bear an enchanted life.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

Life, War

“Healthy striving is about striving for internal goals, and wanting to be our best selves. Perfectionism is not motivated internally. Perfectionism is about what people will think. And you do not see effective leaders in corporations sitting on an email for three hours to make sure it’s worded just perfectly. You don’t. They have work to get done.. You don’t see elite athletes letting themselves be discouraged by a bad workout or a single bad performance. It happens all the time. They’re accustomed to winning, they’re accustomed to losing. Once perfectionism becomes the goal, they’re out of the sport.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Washington Post, October 2012 http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/exhaustion-is-not-a-status-symbol/2012/10/02/19d27aa8-0cba-11e2-bb5e-492c0d30bff6_story_2.html Source: The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

People, Motivation, Thinking, Time

“The fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly on whether you are at the right or wrong end of the gun.”

P.G. Wodehouse book The Adventures of Sally

Source: The Adventures of Sally (1922)

Dependency

“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 (1947) American writer

Source: Dave Barry's Complete Guide to Guys

Way, Guy, Wedding

“In France, cooking is a serious art form and a national sport.”

Julia Child (1921–2004) American chef

Art, Cooking

“Chicks dig a dude who’s sporting the latest eggplant turtleneck styles.”

Jordan Sonnenblick (1969) American writer

Source: Drums, Girls & Dangerous Pie

“Ever since then I have believed that God is not only a gentleman and a sport; he is a Kentuckian too.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

God

“I don't even have moderately big breasticles. They just look like - well, nevermind what they look like. At least they stay strapped down when I worm into a sports bra.”

Lilith Saintcrow (1976) American writer

Source: Betrayals

“I will do all I can to win a medal [2012 Olympics]. To see the National flag go up while standing on the podium is the proudest moment in an athlete's life and I will want to experience that for myself in London. Please just keep praying for the entire Indian contingent. We have a really good chance of doing well at these Games and it will provide a huge fillip to Indian Olympic sport if we are all able to perform to potential.”

Sania Mirza (1986) Indian tennis player

Source: Boria Majumdar "I'll play with anyone for my country: Sania Mirza"

Life, Game, Chance

“(Bartender Harry) How can you tell the male bird from the female bird? (Sylvia) He's the one with the furrowed brow; she's the happy-go-lucky one…. He's the one reading the sports page; she's the one with 12 pairs of tiny shoes. (Harry) I don't have time for this.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 9

Shoe, Bird, Time, Reading

“Old-boy networks, alumni giving, affirmative action, sports, and diversity have pretty much put an end to classical meritocratic admissions. That decline of standards in admissions is perversely ironic, because at about the same time, a new campus ethos of grade inflation was predicated on the self-important notion that if you were smart enough to get into Princeton or Harvard, then Harvard and Princeton would make the necessary adjustments and concessions to make sure you graduated. The result of self-congratulation is that a Stanford graduate now usually knows less history than his Hillsdale counterpart. A successful self-made businessman can know a lot more about the economy than does a Harvard M. B. A.”

Victor Davis Hanson (1953) American military historian, essayist, university professor

2010s, The Deflation of the Academic Brand (2018)

History, Boy, Time, Success

“Flora inherited, however, from her father a strong will and from her mother a slender ankle. The one had not been impaired by always having her own way nor the other by the violent athletic sports in which she had been compelled to take part, but she realized that neither was adequate as an equipment for earning her keep.”

Stella Gibbons book Cold Comfort Farm

Source: Cold Comfort Farm (1932), Chapter 1.

Way, Strong, Parting

“"Justice" was done, and the President of the Immortals (in Aeschylean phrase) had ended his sport with Tess. And the d'Urberville knights and dames slept on in their tombs unknowing. The two speechless gazers bent themselves down to the earth, as if in prayer, and remained thus a long time, absolutely motionless: the flag continued to wave silently. As soon as they had strength, they arose, joined hands again, and went on.”

Thomas Hardy book Tess of the d'Urbervilles

Phase the Seventh: Fulfilment, ch. LIX (last lines)
Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891)

Justice, Time

“I am in no way supportive of hunting for trophies or sport - would never do it and don't like it that others do. But if you kill it, then eat it, it's fine.”

Anthony Bourdain book A Cook's Tour

A Cook's Tour (2001)

Way, Support

“Thanks to all these results, people in Portugal are starting know and become more interested in our sport. Tennis is more and more popular in Portugal and we don't talk about only football anymore. I am glad to help in that process.”

João Sousa (1989) Portuguese tennis player

On tennis' rising popularity in Portugal, during the same interview. Source: Intervista esclusiva a Joao Sousa: “Sono d’accordo con Simon, i top player guadagnano troppo” [Exclusive interview to Joao Sousa - 'I agree with Simon, the top players earn too much' http://www.ubitennis.com/blog/2015/11/02/intervista-esclusiva-a-joao-sousa-sono-daccordo-con-simon-i-top-player-guadagnano-troppo/,, Ubitennis.com, Italian, 4 November 2015]

People, Help, Football

“In sports, Vijay Singh wins the Masters golf tournament and is awarded the coveted green jacket, which is quickly snatched away by angry Buick executives and given to Tiger Woods.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Dave Barry's History of the Millennium (So Far) (2007)