18 quotes
The battles that count aren't the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself — the invisible, inevitable battles inside all of us — that's where it's at.
Blackthink: My Life as Black Man and White Man (1970)
Hitler didn't snub me; it was our president who snubbed me. The president didn't even send me a telegram.
The road to the Olympics, leads to no city, no country. It goes far beyond New York or Moscow, ancient Greece or Nazi Germany. The road to the Olympics leads — in the end — to the best within us.
It's like having a pet dog for a long time. You get attached to it, and when it dies you miss it.
Jesse Owens, Champion Athlete (1990)
To a sprinter, the hundred-yard dash is over in three seconds, not nine or ten.
Jesse Owens, Champion Athlete (1990)
It all goes so fast, and character makes the difference when it's close.
Jesse Owens, Champion Athlete (1990)
People say that it was degrading for an Olympic champion to run against a horse, but what was I supposed to do? I had four gold medals, but you can't eat four gold medals. There was no television, no big advertising, no endorsements then. Not for a black man, anyway.
Interview (1971)
We used to have a lot of fun. We never had any problems. We always ate. The fact that we didn't have steak? Who had steak?
Jesse Owens, Champion Athlete (1990)
We'd get into these little towns and tell 'em to get out the fastest guy in town and Jesse Owens would spot him ten yards and beat him.
Jesse Owens, Champion Athlete (1990)
It dawned on me with blinding brightness. I realized: I had jumped into another rare kind of stratosphere — one that only a handful of people in every generation are lucky enough to know.
Jesse Owens, Champion Athlete (1990)
I realized now that militancy in the best sense of the word was the only answer where the black man was concerned, that any black man who wasn't a militant in 1970 was either blind or a coward.
I Have Changed (1972)
I decided I wasn't going to come down. I was going to fly. I was going to stay up in the air forever.
Jesse Owens, Champion Athlete (1990)
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.
It was bad enough to have toppled from the Olympic heights to make my living competing with animals. But the competition wasn't even fair. No man could beat a race horse, not even for 100 yards.
Jesse Owens, Champion Athlete (1990)
Mr. Hitler had to leave the stadium early, but after winning I hurried up to the radio booth. When I passed near the Chancellor he arose, waved his hand at me and I waved back at him."
It took a lot of courage for him to befriend me in front of Hitler... You can melt down all the medals and cups I have and they wouldn't be a plating on the 24-karat friendship I felt for Lutz Long at that moment.
She was unusual because even though I knew her family was as poor as ours, nothing she said or did seemed touched by that. Or by prejudice. Or by anything the world said or did. It was as if she had something inside her that somehow made all that not count.
Jesse Owens, Champion Athlete (1990)
The black fist is a meaningless symbol. When you open it, you have nothing but fingers — weak, empty fingers. The only time the black fist has significance is when there's money inside. There's where the power lies.
Jesse Owens, Champion Athlete (1990)