Lance Armstrong Quotes - Page 2

The answer is hard work. What are you doing on Christmas Eve? Are you riding your bike? January 1st - are you riding your bike?

Chasing records doesn't keep me on my bike. Happiness does.

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

It's ironic, I used to ride my bike to make a living. Now I just want to live so that I can ride.

A boo is a lot louder than a cheer.

The Tour (de France) is essentially a math problem, a 2,000-mile race over three weeks that's sometimes won by a margin of a minute or less. How do you propel yourself through space on a bicycle, sometimes steeply uphill, at a speed sustainable for three weeks? Every second counts.

The riskiest thing you can do is get greedy.

But the fact is that I wouldn't have won even a single Tour de France without the lesson of illness. What it teaches is this: pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever.

One of the redeeming things about being an athlete is redefining what is humanly possible.

My advice to you is never stop believing.

I realize that there are many variables outside my control in my quest, but focusing on the big goal down the road really motivates me. To help me stay focused, I set micro-goals such as races or training achievements that bring me one step closer to being at my best for major goals

We have two options, medically and emotionally: give up or fight like hell.

We are much better than we know.

I rode, and I rode, and I rode. I rode like I had never ridden, punishing my body up and down every hill I could find. I rode when no one else would ride.

Yellow wakes me up in the morning. Yellow gets me on the bike every day. Yellow has taught me the true meaning of sacrifice. Yellow makes me suffer. Yellow is the reason I'm here.

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

[The] pain is temporary. It may last a minute, an hour, a day, or a year, but eventually it subsides. And when it does, something else takes its place, and that thing might be called a greater space for happiness ... Each time we overcome pain, I believe that we grow.

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.

The team wasn't just riders. It was the mechanics, masseurs, chefs, soigneurs, and doctors. But the most important man on the team may have been the chiropractor.

What makes a great endurance athlete is the ability to absorb potenial embarrassment, and to suffer without complaint. I was discovering that if it was a matter of gritting my teeth, not caring how it looked, and outlasting everybody else, I won. It didn't seem to matter what sport it was-in a straight-ahead, long-distant race, I could beat anybody. If it was a suffer-fest, I was good at it.

Truth is, a triathlete won the Tour de France seven times.

Losing ... 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.

The day it all changed. The day I stated never to take anything for granted. The day I learned to take charge of my life. It was the day I was diagnosed with cancer.

The way you live your life, the perspective you select, is a choice you make every single day when you wake up. It's yours to decide.

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.