Quotes about marathon (28 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“Lies run sprints but the truth runs marathons.”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

Press statement (November 2003); quoted in "Michael Jackson Calls Child Molestation Charges 'Lies'" (8 December 2003) Jet
Variant: Lies run sprints, but the truth runs marathons.

Truth

“Essentially, we distinguish ourselves from the rest. If you want to win something, run the 100 meters. If you want to experience something, run a marathon.”

Emil Zátopek (1922–2000) Czech Olympic long-distance runner

Attributed in "Making a run at the Olympic dream", an unsigned article from The StarPhoenix, 9 May 2007, at canada.com (CanWest MediaWorks Publications Inc.) http://www.canada.com/saskatoonstarphoenix/news/sports/story.html?id=b111ee9e-182a-4cff-831a-f784cc7bb37e

“If you are losing faith in human nature, go out and watch a marathon.”

Kathrine Switzer (1947) American distance runner

Source: 26.2: Marathon Stories

Faith , Nature

“Rincewind had always been happy to think of himself as a racist. The One Hundred Meters, the Mile, the Marathon -- he'd run them all.”

Terry Pratchett book The Last Continent

Source: The Last Continent

Thinking , Happiness

“It's certain that, when hearing from any of those people the story of their sexual marathons, a vague suspicion pervades us, at about the seventh deflowering.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., p. 243
The Book of Disquiet
Original: É certo que, ao ouvir contar a qualquer destes indivíduos as suas maratonas sexuais, uma vaga suspeita nos invade, pela altura do sétimo desfloramento.

People

“[What her career looks like] "It looks like a marathon. And I'm proud that I'm not a DNF (did not finish). I'm not a DNF yet. I just kept going. I think that's been the key is just to keep going and really try to get better and try to be as truthful as I can and hope that good things come my way."”

Jennifer Beals (1963) American actress and a former teen model

Chicago Tribune (21 March 2011) http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/ct-live-0321-jennifer-beals-20110320,0,3798764.column,

Truth , Hope , Way , Thinking

“I'd treat myself to a reading marathon all weekend. All the ice cream I could eat, all the pages I could read..”

Laurie Halse Anderson (1961) American children's writer

Source: The Impossible Knife of Memory

Reading

“Man, he wasn't going to need a stress test anytime soon. If his heart could get through a kiss from her, he could probably run a marathon.

While dragging a car behind him.

Sideways to the road.”

Jessica Bird book Dark Lover

Source: Dark Lover

Cars , Kiss , Heart

“Love affairs are for emotional sprinters; the pleasures of love are for the emotional marathoners.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

Love , Pleasure

“It's about time! It's supposed to be a ritual, not a marathon.”

Karen Chance American writer

Source: Claimed By Shadow

Time

“If you insist on the chase," I say, my voice much surer than I feel."Then you better start training. 'Cause, dude you're in for a marathon.”

Alyson Nöel book Blue Moon

Source: Blue Moon

Feeling , Training

“I'm not exploring. I’m in. And this is the beginning of a marathon”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Referring to his choice not to set up an "exploratory committee" and instead enter the race directly; interview on ABC News after announcing candidacy for the 2008 Democratic president nomination (January 30, 2007)
2000s

“This has been a marathon election as you can tell with a record turnout and I think it has been good for politics and it has been good for London.”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

2000s, 2008, First Speech As London Mayor (May 3, 2008)

Thinking

“Everyone in Boston of a certain age knows the story of Rosie Ruiz, the marathoner who crossed the Boston finish line in 1980 at 2:31.56, flabby thighs and all, having barely broken a sweat. Despite mounting skepticism, she basked in the glory of having run the third-fastest female marathon in history – for a few days, that is, until a couple of students remembered seeing her jump out of the crowd half a mile from the finish.
Something of the sort has been going on recently with the shade of Friedrich von Hayek. The Austrian economist, who died in 1992 just short of what would have been his ninety-third birthday, never made false claims for himself – far from it: he knew all too well the loneliness of the long distance runner. And scrupulous work as editor by the late W. W. Bartley, interpreter Bruce Caldwell, and biographer Alan Ebenstein, have made it possible to see the man clear.
But the claims conservatives are making about the role he played as an economist are beginning to smack of Ruizismus. That is, they have jumped a caricature out of the bushes late in the day and claim that their guy ran a great race.”

David Warsh (1944) American journalist

"Ruizismus among the Austrians," 4 December 2011

Age , Guy , History , Birthday

“Anybody visiting the Middle East in the last decade has had the experience: meeting the hoarse and aggressive person who first denies that Osama Bin Laden was responsible for the destruction of the World Trade Center and then proceeds to describe the attack as a justified vengeance for decades of American imperialism… professor Noam Chomsky decides to leave that central question open. We have no more reason to credit Osama Bin Laden's claim of responsibility, he states, than we would have to believe Chomsky's own claim to have won the Boston Marathon… Nothing serious," as Chomsky puts it, "has been provided since.".. So is one to assume that he [Chomsky] has pored through the completed findings of the 9/11 Commission? Viewed any of the videos in which the 9/11 hijackers are seen in the company of Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri? Read the transcripts of the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called "20th hijacker"? Followed the journalistic investigations of Lawrence Wright, Peter Bergen, or John Burns, to name only some of the more salient? Acquainted himself with the proceedings of associated and ancillary investigations into the bombing of the USS Cole or indeed the first attempt to bring down the Twin Towers in the 1990s?”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2010s, 2011

World , Question , Reading , Personality

“Not all books are created equal, and for the special ones, you begin to know it sometimes even before the work is finished, but always by the time you slam that last line home and shriek, "Done! Done!," and fall head-down across your keyboard like the runner from Marathon.”

Lois McMaster Bujold (1949) Science Fiction and fantasy author from the USA

"'A Conversation With Lois McMaster Bujold", p. 54
The Vorkosigan Companion (2008)

Books , Home , Time

“I meet men all the time who can bench 400 pounds but can't climb up through a window to pull someone from a burning building. I know guys who can run marathons but can't sprint to anyone's rescue unless they put their shoes on first. Lots of swimmers do laps every day but can't dive deep enough to save a friend, or know how to carry him over rocks and out of the surf.”

Erwan Le Corre (1971)

A Wild Workout for the Real World, Men'sHealth http://www.menshealth.com/fitness/fitness-to-survive-in-the-wild_r=0

Men , Shoe , Guy , Time

“I learned that people in wheelchairs are allowed to have marathons … which, to me, seems like cheating, but what are you gonna say?”

Sarah Silverman (1970) American comedian and actress

The Sarah Silverman Program

People , Learning , Cheating

“Soon I must vote for Oscars and BAFTAs, so I've been having marathon screening sessions. Top of my list so far is ROOM, which is brilliant in every way. The boy actor, Jacob Tremblay, is astounding. But most of all, it's a film that never stoops to the rigged mini-plots so often used to generate viewer excitement: it goes its own way, always surprising, always utterly believable. The writer of both the novel and the screenplay, Emma Donoghue, has produced a perfect work. People seem surprised that a first-time screenwriter can be so good, but the truth is screenwriting's not hard, it's having something strong and real and true to write about that's hard. Emma Donoghue is original and wise: that's rare.”

Emma Donoghue (1969) Irish novelist, playwright, short-story writer and historian

William Nicholson, "Oscar voting" http://www.williamnicholson.com/blog/2016/1/3/oscar-voting-2 (January 3, 2016)
About

People , Truth , Way , Boy

“Truth-loving Persians do not dwell upon
The trivial skirmish fought near Marathon.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

"The Persian Version," lines 1–2, from Poems 1938-1945: Satires and Grotesques (1946).
Poems

Love , Truth

“My favorite athletes of any Olympics are always the African distance runners. You never have to drug test an African distance runner.
"Are you on drugs?"
"No, I'm looking for food."
And I'm sure in Kenya they have a chicken that can run a sub 2-hour marathon…. One of my favorite runners of all time was Abebe Bikila. He was an Ethiopian distance runner and he won the Rome Olympics [marathon] running barefoot. He was then sponsored by Adidas. He ran the next Olympics, he carried the fuckin' shoes. No performance enhancement there.”

Robin Williams (1951–2014) American actor and stand-up comedian

Weapons of Self Destruction (2010)

Food , Shoe , Time

“Do you know the Boston Marathon explosion? I did it.”

Tamerlan Tsarnaev (1986–2013) Chechen-American perpetrator of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing

To Dun Meng (April 2013), as quoted in "Boston Bombing Day 4: The Firefight: 'I Thought We Were Gonna Die'" http://abcnews.go.com/US/boston-bombing-day-firefight-thought-gonna-die/story?id=38554342 (21 April 2016), by Brian Ross, ABC News

“That man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona.”

Samuel Johnson book A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland

A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775), Inch Kenneth

Envy

“The Lookout was by far the hardest thing I've ever done. Partially because both Brick and Mysterious Skin were four to five week shoots, and The Lookout was nine or 10. So there's the marathon aspect, as well as the fact that Chris Pratt is having a harder go of it than either of the other two characters ever did. You know, waking up in the morning is difficult for him. Putting a sentence together is difficult for him. Getting dressed properly, driving a car, all these things. He can do them fine, but it's just much harder than it is for a normal person, so I had to try to make it hard for myself somehow. So it was challenging.”

Joseph Gordon-Levitt (1981) American actor, director, producer, and writer

AV Club, March 28, 2007.

Cars , Personality

“No one who works 40 hours a week will beat me in a marathon.”

Bill Rodgers

Elite marathoners who work full time http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=6520216#6520293,

“The process of peace and pacification is a work that requires long breath, like a marathon”

Catherine Samba-Panza (1954) Central African politician

As quoted on GWToday, "Leader of the Central African Republic in Roundtable at GW" https://gwtoday.gwu.edu/leader-central-african-republic-roundtable-gw, March 2, 2016.
2010s, 2016, Roundtable at GW (2016)
Context: Violence is in the mind and on the hearts of our [Central African Republic] population for many, many years. The process of peace and pacification is a work that requires long breath, like a marathon.

Peace

“It will be difficult for each of us to even begin to part with our share of honor in those achievements. This must be why all those talking heads on TV are going crazy. Unless Donald Trump decides to reverse his decision to begin withdrawals from Syria and Afghanistan, cable news for the next few weeks is going to be one long Scanners marathon of exploding heads.”

Matt Taibbi (1970) author and journalist

We Know How Trump’s War Game Ends, Rolling Stone:Nothing unites our political class like the threat of ending our never-ending war https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-syria-withdrawal-772177/ (22 December 2018)

Parting , Decision

“You know, in his last six months Vasyl had changed a lot. Many tried to talk him out of going to the war, but he was adamant. All his money and all his energy he gave to the cause of the new Ukraine. It was his motivation in life. What a shame that a sharpshooter’s bullet took the life of terrific vocalist and patriot. Our duty is to remember Vasyl Slipak. I want to join my Ukrainian colleagues to discuss some future art projects. We already had a meeting with Volodymyr Syvokhip, director of the Lviv Philharmonic Society, and we plan to hold a Vasyl Slipak Open International Memorial Music Marathon in Lviv from June 29 till July 1.”

Vasyl Slipak (1974–2016) Ukrainian opera singer

2017
Nicolas Krauze, conductor, the Orchestre de Chambre Nouvelle Europe (France). “He loved Ukraine above all”. The Day. Кyiv.ua. - 2017. - 7 March. https://day.kyiv.ua/en/article/culture/he-loved-ukraine-above-all

Money , War , Future , Art