"Hard training, easy combat; easy training, hard combat" Marshal Suvorov, famous Russian General who understood training specificity

"Cry "Havoc," and let slip the dogs of war."  Shakespeare, Julius Caesar 

"Superficial goals lead to superficial results." Attila the Hun

"The secret is this: there is no secret." Paraphrased from John L. Parker (novel, Once a Runner)

"Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence." Vince Lombardi

"To exercise at or near capacity is the best way I know of reaching a true introspective state. If you do it right, it can open all kinds of inner doors." Al Oerter -4 time Olympic Gold Medalist in Discus

"Part of the beauty and much of the moral seriousness of sport derives from the severe justice of strenuous play in a circumscribed universe of rules that protect the integrity of competition. Records are worth recording, and worth striving to surpass, because they serve as benchmarks of excellence achieved under the pressure of competition." George F. Will

"Often the true test of courage is not to die but to live" Count Vittorio Alfieri

"You have to go into the jungle, find the lion, and spit in his face...then shoot him. You guys are not good enough to win on talent alone...you have to want it." Herbie Brooks- coach of the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team

"it's a dream until you write it down, and then its a goal." Anonymous

"Vision without action is a dream. Action without vision is aimless. Vision with action will achieve." Anonymous

"Action without thought is a form of insanity; Thought without action is a crime." Albert Einstein

"You never fail, you simply produce results. Learn from these." Anonymous

"Failure is the path of least persistence." Anonymous

"I have not failed 10,000 times. I have successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work" Thomas Edison

"Today, the most common form of physical ABUSE is DISUSE." Stephen Seiler

"He's soft and he's fat and he's wearing my clothes and he's getting too old and he was born on my birthday and I'm afraid if I stop running, he'll catch up with me." The Nike poster definition of masters athlete motivation

"When a person trains once, nothing happens. When a person forces himself to do a thing a hundred or a thousand times, then he certainly has developed in more ways than physical. Is it raining? That doesn't matter. Am I tired? That doesn't matter, either. Then willpower will be no problem." Emil Zatopek

"Those who think they have no time for bodily exercise will sooner or later have to find time for illness." Edward Stanley (1826-1893) from The Conduct of Life

"Traininig is principally an act of faith. The athlete must believe in its efficacy; he must believe that through training he will become fitter and stronger; that by constant repetition of the same movements he will become more skillfull and his muscles more relaxed...He must be a fanatic for hard work and enthusiastic enough to enjoy it." Franz Stampfl from On Running, 1955

"Running: running: hear the beat!
Busting lungs and pounding feet.
Straining: gaining: 'til your done:
Or you have the race well-won.
Racing: Pacing: rather die:
Than give up or let them by.
First stanza of "The Distance Runner" by Percy Cerutty (who also did some coaching).

"Some men can run the fastest, jump the highest, or lift the heaviest, but no man has the corner on ambition, desire, and hustle." anonymous

"Belief is the thermoststat that regulates all success." anonymous

"Trample the weak. Hurdle the dead." unknown (but apparently a very tough dude who liked obstacle courses)

"The desire to win is born in most of us. The will to win is a matter of training. The manner of winning is a matter of honour." Margaret Thatcher

"Risk more than others think is safe ~ Care more than others think is wise ~ Dream more than others think is practical ~ Expect more than others think is possible." Unknown

"If you love what you do, you won't work a day in your life" origin unknown

"Security is mostly a superstition. It is not found in nature and children of man do not as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing." Helen Keller

"There are some who are born scared, afraid, and not willing to show some sack or guts. We eat those people for breakfast." Read on a NO FEAR T-shirt

"A True Warrior Never Fights Without a Purpose That is Greater Than Oneself." T. Harv Eker

"Wisdom is better than strength. And a wise man is better than a strong man. Book of Wisdom 6:1

"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotion, spends himself in a worthy cause; who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who have never tasted victory or defeat." Theodore Roosevelt

"One cannot consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar." Helen Keller

"If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with the success unexpected in common hours." Henry David Thoreau

"If you believe in yourself, have dedication and pride and never quit, you'll be a winner. The price of victory is high, but so are the rewards." Paul "Bear" Bryant (Late, great coach of the Alabama Crimson Tide football team)

"There will come a point in the race, when you alone will need to decide. You will need to make a choice. Do you really want it? You will need to decide." Rolf Arands

"Habits are cobwebs at first; cables at last. "Chinese Proverb

"Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle." Abraham Lincoln

"We may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion" G. Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

"Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind. "Plato, The Republic

"That which we achieve too easily, we esteem too lightly "Thomas Paine

"If your mind can conceive it and your heart can believe it, you can achieve it."

"It is hard to soar with the eagles, when you're living with a bunch of turkeys!"

"Before the beginning of great brilliance, there must be chaos. Before a brilliant person begins something great, they must look foolish to the crowd." I Ching

"Everyone has the desire to win, but only champions have the desire to prepare." Overheard during the 1997 Boston Marathon 

"I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stilled by dry rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in a significant glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist...."Jack London

"The important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, the important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well. To spread these precepts is to build up a stronger and more valiant and, above all, more scrupulous and more generous humanity." Pierre De Coubertin

"Youth passes, but immaturity can last a lifetime." unknown

"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure . . . than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in a grey twilight that knows not victory nor defeat." Theodore Roosevelt

"The heights which great men reached and kept, Were not attained by sudden flight, They, whilst their companions slept, Were toiling upwards in the night." Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"There's No Easy Way" Allan Wells (1980 Olympic 100m Champion)

"One shouldn't be afraid to lose; this is sport. One day you win; another day you lose. Of course, everyone wants to be the best. This is normal. This is what sport is about. This is why I love it." Olympic Gold Medalist Oksana Baiul

"He who has no time for his health today will have no health for his tomorrow." unknown

"You are all Champions in your own way. That doesn't mean you have to be number 1 or be the best. Just do your best. If you aren't first, then make those people ahead of you break records by pushing them with your personal best. Consider for a moment what we achieve from athletics - the sheer fun of competing - the building of a healthy and alert mind and body - stamina, courage, perseverance, dedication, commitment, selflessness and most importantly, the will to excel." unknown

"All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find out it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible." T.H. Lawrence 

"People are able to wonder at the height of mountains, and the huge waves of the sea, the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars, and then pass by themselves without wondering at all." St. Augustine

"Everything unpleasant is developmental." "Kaikki vittumainen kehittää." translated from a Finnish expression by MAPP reader Mika Salkola

"Progress stops upon satisfaction." "Kehitys loppuu tyytyväisyyteen." another quote from Mika in Finland

"Mind is everything: muscle-pieces of rubber. All that I am, I am because of my mind." Paavo Nurmi

"If not you, who? If not now, when?" Garry Herbert - 1992 Olympic 2+ rowing Finalist (probably not the first guy to say this)

"If you race merely for the tributes from others, you will be at the mercy of their expectations." Scott Tinley

"It is a sublime thing to suffer and be stronger." Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 

"It aint the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog." Author unknown 

"We are all lying in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars." Oscar Wilde - Olympic Rower 1976 (I'm not sure what this one means, perhaps several things. That is why I like it)

"The 5 Ss of sports training are: stamina, speed, strength, skill, and spirit; but the greatest of these is spirit." Ken Doherty

Actions speak louder than coaches. (Speedo ad)

"When all you have is no chance, you still have that" unknown

"The view from the summit is worth the effort" unknown

"We run, not because we think it is doing us good, but because we enjoy it and cannot help ourselves. The more restricted our society and work become, the more necessary it will be to find some outlet for this craving for freedom. No one can say, 'You must not run faster than this, or jump higher than that.' The human spirit is indomitable." Sir Roger Bannister 

"Insanity is doing the same thing you've always done and expecting different results." Roger Milliken

"I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have" Thomas Jefferson

"Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal, nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong attitude." another one from Thomas J.

"If a man does his best, what else is there?" George S. Patton

"DO or DO NOT. There is no 'Try'" Yoda (The Empire Strikes Back)

"The more I talk to athletes, the more convinced I become that the method of training is relatively unimportant. There are many ways to the top, and the training method you choose is just the one that suits you best. No, the important thing is the attitude of the athlete, the desire to get to the top." Herb Elliot (1964)

"We are indeed Masters, I told them. We are professors. We are professionals. We have come into maturity. And we have matured doing what appears to be childish things. Nevertheless our ability to live with questions and without solutions began when we took to the roads. Our belief in ourselves and in the living of our own lives developed through our running. It was running tha treleased the treasures in our subconscious and gave us the creativity to put these treasures in substantial form. Keep running, I told the forties, fifties, and sixties looking up at me, the best is yet to come" George Sheehan M.D. (1983) 

"Sweet is Pleasure after Pain" Dirigo Rowing Shell advertisement

"Let us run with patience the race that is set before us" Hebrews 12:1

"At the peak of tremendous and victorious effort, while the blood is pounding in your head, all suddenly comes quiet within you. Everything seems clearer and whiter than ever before, as if great spotlights had been turned on.At that moment, you have the conviction that you contain all the power in the world, that you are capable of everything, that you have wings. There is no more precise moment in life than this, the WHITE MOMENT, and you will work hard for years, just to taste it again." Yuri Vlason

"Obstacles are those frightening things that become visible when we take our eyes off our goals." Henry Ford

"Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself."  William Faulkner

"Life does not require us to be the biggest or the best, it asks only that we try." Author unknown

"Success isn't permanent and failure isn't fatal." Mike Ditka (Super Bowl Champion as player and coach, also a heart attack victim)

"Success is getting up one more time than you fall down." Author Unknown

"Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly until you learn to do it well." Steve Brown 

"Rather have a bad day Cross-Country Skiing, then a good day at the Beach!" Joseph Gollinger, just before the start of the American Birkebeiner

"Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils." Hector Berliaz

"He that leaveth nothing to chance will do few things ill, but he will do very few things." George Savile

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." Albert Einstein

"It is one of the strange ironies of this strange life that those who work the hardest, who subject themselves to the strictest discipline, who give up certain pleasurable things in order to achieve a goal, are the happiest men. When you see 20 or 30 men line up for a distance race in some meet, don't pity them, don't feel sorry for them. Better envy them instead." Brutus Hamilton (Quoted by Doherty, 1964 and Noakes, 1989)

"Humankind is designed for exercise and not rest - hence the legs located below the torso. If designed for rest, we would at best have castors."Arthur Stewart, a Scottish fellow I met while skiing in Norway.

"Excess, upon occasion can be exhilarating, because it prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit." Somerset Maugham

"A certain amount of opposition can be of great help to a man- Kites rise against, not with the wind." John Neal

"Good judgment is the result of experience and experience is the result of bad judgement." Unknown

"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts." Sir George Picketing, often quoted by Albert Einstein

"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." Albert Einstein

"Significant problems you face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." Albert Einstein

"The health of people is really the foundation upon which all their happiness and all their power as a state depend." Benjamin Disraeli

"The first wealth is health." Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings. Let food be your medicine."  Hippocrates

"The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his patients in the care of human frame, and in the cause and prevention of disease." T. A. Edison

"We are not interested in the possibilities of defeat; They do not
exist." A.J.Balfour

"Man cannot discover new oceans until he has the courage to lose the
sight of land." Unknown

"Man is not cut out for defeat. Man can be destroyed but not defeated."
E. Hemingway

"Never a horse that couldn't be rode. Never a rider that couldn't be throwed." Some old cowboy from Texas with a chronically sore butt

"We will go to the moon. We will go to the moon and do other things, NOT because they are easy but because they are HARD." John F. Kennedy 

"It's better to burn out than to fade away."  Alexander the Great 

"Even the strongest have their moments of fatigue." Friedrich Nietzsche

" Thus i urge you to go on to your greatness if you believe it is in you. Think deeply and seperate what you wish from what you are prepared to do." Percy Wells Cerutty (Famous rnning coach)

"Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it. "HH The Dali Lama

" Here I stand on a hill in my mountain of dreams, telling myself, its not as hard, hard, hard as it seems." Led Zeppelin

"No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn." The Doors

"All men are created equal, some are just faster than others " Darren Franklin, amateur mountain biker

"Don't worry about upgrading your equipment. Upgrade your body." -Anonymous cyclist

"There is a difference between interest and commitment. When you're interested in doing something, you do it only when circumstances permit. When you're committed to something, you accept no excuses, only results."  Art Turock, quoted in Reader's Digest

"The quality of a person's life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence." Vince Lombardi

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