Lance Armstrong Quotes Page 2

“Obviously, I come from one background, and the people that design fitness equipment have been doing it for years and years, and they know what works and doesn't work.”

“Portland, Oregon won't build a mile of road without a mile of bike path. You can commute there, even with that weather, all the time.”

“The riskiest thing you can do is get greedy.”

“There comes a point in every man's life when he has to say: 'Enough is enough'.”

“There's no rule, no law, no regulation that says you can't come back. So I have every right to come back.”

“Through my illness I learned rejection. I was written off. That was the moment I thought, Okay, game on. No prisoners. Everybody's going down.”

“Two things scare me. The first is getting hurt. But that's not nearly as scary as the second, which is losing.”

“What ever your 100% looks like, give it.”

“Winning is about heart, not just legs. It's got to be in the right place.”

“My house is burned, but I can see the sky.”

“Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever.”

“Suffering, I was beginning to think, was essential to a good life, and as inextricable from such a life as bliss. It’s a great enhancer. It might last a minute, but eventually it subsides, and when it does, something else takes its place, and maybe that thing is a great space. For happiness. Each time I encountered suffering, I believed that I grew, and further defined my capacities – not just my physical ones, but my interior ones as well, for contentment, friendship, or any other human experience.”

“When you win, you don't examine it very much, except to congratulate yourself. You easily, and wrongly, assume it has something to do with your rare qualities as a person. But winning only measures how hard you've worked and how physically talented you are; it doesn't particularly define you beyond those characteristics.

Losing on the other hand, really does say something about who you are. Among other things it measures are: do you blame others, or do you own the loss? Do you analyze your failure, or just complain about bad luck?

If you're willing to examine failure, and to look not just at your outward physical performance, but your internal workings, too, losing can be valuable. How you behave in those moments can perhaps be more self-defining than winning could ever be. Sometimes losing shows you for who you really are.”

“Anyone who imagines they can work alone winds up surrounded by nothing but rivals, without companions. The fact is, no one ascends alone.”

“During our lives we experience so many setbacks, and fight such a hand-to-hand battle with failure, head down in the rain, just trying to stay upright and to have a little hope.”

“For most of my life I had operated under a simple schematic of winning and losing, but cancer was teaching me a tolerance for ambiguities.”

“Hope, that is the only antidote to fear.”

“I asked myself what I believed. I had never prayed a lot. I hoped hard, wished hard, but I didn't pray. I had developed a certain distrust of organised religion growing up, but I felt I had the capacity to be a spiritual person, and to hold some fervent beliefs. Quite simply, I believed I had a responsibility to be a good person, and that meant fair, honest, hardworking and honorable.

If I did that, if I was good to my family, true to my friends, if I gave back to my community or to some cause, if I wasn't a liar, a cheat, or a thief, then I believed that should be enough. At the end of the day, if there was indeed some Body or presence standing there to judge me, I hoped I would be judged on whether I had lived a true life, not on whether I believed in a certain book, or whether I'd been baptised.”

“I believed in belief, for its own shining sake. To believe in the face of utter hopelessness, every article of evidence to the contrary, to ignore apparent catastrophe ? what other choice was there? We are so much stronger than we imagine, and belief is one of the most valiant and long-lived human characteristics.

To believe, when all along we humans know that nothing can cure the briefness of this life, that there is no remedy for our basic mortality, that is a form of bravery. To continue believing in yourself, believing in whatever I chose to believe in, that was the most important thing.”

“I wanted to live, but whether I would or not was mystery, and in the midst of confronting that fact, even at that moment, I was beginning to sense that to stare into the heart of such a fearful mystery wasn't a bad thing. To be afraid is a priceless education.”

“My mother told me if you're going to get anywhere, you're going to have to do it yourself, because no one is going to do it for you.”

“Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever. That surrender, even the smallest act of giving up, stays with me. So when I feel like quitting, I ask myself, which would I rather live with?”

“Son, you never quit.”

“The night before brain surgery, I thought about death. I searched out my larger values, and I asked myself, if I was going to die, did I want to do it fighting and clawing or in peaceful surrender? What sort of character did I hope to show? Was I content with myself and what I had done with my life so far? I decided that I was essentially a good person, although I could have been better – but at the same time I understood that the cancer didn't care.”

“What is stronger, fear or hope?”