Olympic Quotes

The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not winning but taking part; the essential thing in life is not conquering but fighting well.

The Olympic Movement gives the world an ideal which reckons with the reality of life, and includes a possibility to guide this reality toward the great Olympic Idea.

I have a phenomenal team behind me who have helped get me here and I, along with them, will now put everything we can into the final few weeks of preparations before the Olympic Games, where I am aiming to race well, work well through the rounds, post good times and maybe even a personal best time on the biggest stage of them all.

The dullest Olympic sport is curling, whatever 'curling' means.

I want to experience that massive adrenalin rush when you step into a new stadium, all the more so when that Olympic Stadium is packed full of people waving British flags.

If you're the Olympic champion then they have to wait four more years to get you again.

The women of the Senate are like the U.S. Olympic team: we come in different sizes, but we sure are united in our determination to do the best for our country!

Growing up, Michael Jordan was my Olympic hero.

The Olympic Spirit is neither the property of one race nor of one age.

Getting to the Olympics was, has always been, my swimming dream since I was 8 or 9 years old. You know, right after I started swimming it was, 'I want to make an Olympic team. That's where I want to be.'

I thought that when I won the Olympic trials I was going to be the happiest person in the whole world. And I was happy. But it wasn't like I thought it was going to be. I had already imagined it in my head so many times. It was real before it happened.

Football, basketball, and the Olympic sports all have their problems with banned substances.

It took me time to realize that the men who won Olympic gold medals in the decathlon are just men, just like me.

The first time I walked into the Olympic athlete village seeing the Visa ATM machine with my picture on it and the Chinese characters saying 'Destiny.' For some reason, it just boosted my confidence and it was before I had even worked out or had my first training or competed.

It wasn't until I was 14 and watched the 1976 Olympic games on television that I really started to dream about the big time. I remember seeing Evelyn Ashford in the 100 meters, and she was going to UCLA.

The 'Bird's Nest' National Stadium, which I helped to conceive, is designed to embody the Olympic spirit of 'fair competition.' It tells people that freedom is possible but needs fairness, courage and strength.

I love short track. I competed in short track, I was a world champion in 1986 but at that point in time it wasn't in the Olympic Games so I moved into long track. Short track is a blast to skate and it's a blast to watch.

The Olympic Games is the ultimate level of competition.

We enter the government essentially in a hotel that is on fire. We're throwing people from the windows into the pool to save their lives and this is the evaluation of the Olympic diving committee: Well, the splash was too big.

I set myself some specific goals, but the key one is just getting myself into as good a shape as possible for one day this year: the Olympic marathon.

My goals were last year to win the world champs and this year to win the Olympic Games and I've done that and I couldn't be happier.

I can't believe that I'm on the Olympic team.

So when people go to the park this summer, they are not going to have the same quality of a visit. There is not going to be a ranger out on the trail to tell them about the important cultural and historic areas within the Olympic National Park.

The Olympic Games are highly commercialised. They purport to follow the traditions of an ancient athletics competition, but today it is the commercial aspect that is most apparent. I have seen how, through sport, cities and corporations compete against each other for financial gain.

That's pretty rewarding in itself coming from where I started. Obviously the next goal for me is to make the Olympic team.

If the Palestinian Olympic Committee or Palestinian Federation provide good facilities to the athletes then maybe I can become better than these Bahraini or Qatari athletes.

I was ready in 2008 for the Olympic Games but unfortunately I missed the Kenyan trials with a thigh injury. I watched those Olympics but it was tough to watch. But it was good in the end because a Kenyan, Wilfred Bungei, was the champion.

My senior year of high school, when I was getting recruited for college, my dad goes to me, 'You can become an Olympic champion.' And that's the first time that I'd heard someone else say that to me. I was like, 'Uh, are you talking to me?'

I've been training super hard at the Lopez Taekwondo Academy in Houston, which belongs to my brother Jean. For me, I think confidence is the biggest thing; it's all mental. I train with the best of the best, including my brother Steven, a five-time world champion who won Olympic gold medals.

I am almost 30 so I am approaching this one as if it will be my last Olympic Games. I want to put out 110 percent to make sure that I am up at the top.