Victory is in having done your best. If you've done your best, you've won.
The real purpose of running isn't to win a race, it's to test the limits of the human heart.
The idea that the harder you work, the better you're going to be is just garbage. The greatest improvement is made by the man or woman who works most intelligently.
Men of Oregon, I invite you to become students of your events. Running, one might say, is basically an absurd past-time upon which to be exhausting ourselves. But if you can find meaning, in the kind of running you have to do to stay on this team, chances are you will be able to find meaning in another absurd past-time: life.
There's no such thing as bad weather, just soft people.
Everything you need is already inside.
If you have a body, you are an athlete!
If at the end of a race you know yourself that you have done your best, you're a winner.
Don't give anything away. Never make it easy for the guys you are trying to beat.
The athlete makes himself, the coach doesn't make the athlete.
To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete* in the world.
If someone says, 'Hey, I ran 100 miles this week. How far did you run?' ignore him! What the hell difference does it make?.... The magic is in the man, not the 100 miles.
A teacher is never too smart to learn from his pupils.
A teacher is never too smart to learn from his pupils. But while runners differ, basic principles never change. So it's a matter of fitting your current practices to fit the event and the individual. See, what's good for you might not be worth a darn for the next guy.
It's easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission.
God determines how fast you're going to run; I can help only with the mechanics.
There is no bad weather, just soft runners.
This killing of Israel athletes is an act of war. And if there's one place that war doesn't belong, it's here. 1200 years. From 776 B.C. to 393 A.D., your fellow Olympians laid down their arms to take part in these games. They understood there was more honor in out running a man than in killing him. I hope the competition will resume, and if it does, you must not think that running or throwing or jumping is frivelous. The games were once your fellow Olympians answer to war – competition, not conquest. Now, they must be your answer.
I still bother with runners I call hamburgers. They're never going to run any record times. But they can fulfill their own potential.
Several of my critics have said, 'Bowerman just tacks up a piece of paper in the locker room and turns his runners loose.' They're partially right. I do give the athletes a relatively free rein and for good reason. One of my principles is? 'Don't overcoach.'
I think people can handle 150 to 200 miles a week. But something has to give somewhere. If he's a student, how's he going to study? He may be at the age of chasing and courtship, and that's an important form of sport and recreation, too.
Now to explore the limits of the one competitor above everyone else you've always loved to face: Steve Prefontaine.
