Lance armstrong quotes

Nineteen hundred meters up there is completely different from1,900 any place else. There's no air, there's no oxygen. There's no vegetation, there's no life. There's no life. Rocks. Any other climb there's vegetation, grass and trees. Not there on the Ventoux. It's more like the moon than a mountain.

I want to die at a hundred years old with an American flag on my back and the star of Texas on my helmet, after screaming down an Alpine descent on a bicycle at 75 miles per hour. I want to cross one last finish line as my wife and my ten children applaud, and then I want to lie down in a field of those famous French sunflowers and gracefully expire, the perfect contradiction to my once anticipated poignant early demise.

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

Hey. Pain can last a moment, it can last a day, it can last a week, it can last a long..long time, but it can't last forever and the only thing that can last forever is if you quit.

I may be in timeout forever. But I hope not to be.

You know, once I was thinking of quitting when I was diagnosed with brain, lung and testicular cancer all at the same time. But with the love and support of my friends and family, I got back on the bike and won the Tour de France five times in a row. But I'm sure you have a good reason to quit.

If I was racing in 2015, no, I wouldn't do it again because I don't think you have to. If you take me back to 1995, when doping was completely pervasive, I would probably do it again.

No one automatically gives you respect just because you show up. You have to earn it

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.

Do it even if you shouldn't, do it becuase you want to, do it becuase it will make things better.

For whatever reason, maybe it's because of my story, but people associate Livestrong with exercise and physical fitness, health and lifestyle choices like that.

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.

My advice to you is never stop believing.

[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.

We have unrealized capacities that sometimes only emerge in crisis.

Giving up was never an option

What makes a great endurance athlete is the ability to absorb potential embarrassment, and to suffer without complaint.

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

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

If you ever get a second chance in life for something, you've got to go all the way.

I believe that the mind powers the body, and once the mind says we want to do it, then the body will follow.

Pain is only temporary. Quitting is forever!

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.

Cancer doesn’t care if you’re Republican or Democrat.

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.

Everybody wants to know what I'm on. What am I on? I'm on my bike busting my ass six hours a day. What are you on?

Well, you better ride like you stole something 'cause you are about to win a stage in the Tour de Fance.

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.

If you worried about falling off the bike, you'd never get on.

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

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

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.

I'm cycling to take cancer message worldwide.

The body is telling the mind to stop. The mind is telling the body to shut up.

Hard work, sacrifice and focus will never show up in tests.

I have never had a single positive doping test, and I do not take performance-enhancing drugs.

If children have the ability to ignore all odds and percentages, then maybe we can all learn from them. When you think about it, what other choice is there but to hope? We have two options, medically and emotionally: give up, or fight like hell.

The biggest losers are those who care only about winning.

Anything is possible. You can be told that you have a 90-percent chance or a 50-percent chance or a 1-percent chance, but you have to believe, and you have to fight.

Make an obstacle an opportunity, make a negative a positive.

I raced because I was paid to do a job and I felt like I had to do the job. Number two: I raced because I loved the process, I loved training, getting ready for the race, I loved all of that. And number three I raced for my memories. Regardless of what somebody wants to give or take away, you can't take my memories.

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

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. P 99

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

A boo is a lot louder than a cheer.

Cycling is a sport of the open road and spectators are lining that road.

When I was sick, I didn't want to die. When I race, I don't want to lose. Dying and losing, it's the same thing.

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.

The last thing I'll say for the people that don't believe in cycling, the cynics and the sceptics, I'm sorry for you. I'm sorry you can't dream big and I'm sorry you don't believe in miracles.

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.

Lance Armstrong is not the biggest fraud in the history of world sport. US Postal was not the most sophisticated doping programme.

Life to me is a series of false limits and my challenge as an athlete is to explore those limits

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.

Extraordinary allegations require extraordinary evidence.

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.

It can't be any simpler: the farewell is going to be on the Champs-Elysees.

Knowledge is power, community is strength and positive attitude is everything

Nobody wants to hear how I think I've been mistreated, or how I think my punishment should be lifted, or tweaked, or reduced. Nobody wants to hear me say that, nobody cares what I think about this. I get it.

A boo is a lot louder than a cheer, if you have 10 people cheering and one person booing, all you hear is the booing.

I thought I knew what fear was, until I heard the words 'You have cancer'.

Live strong is exactly I guess what it says. It's one thing to live, but it's another thing to live strong, to attack the day and attack your life with a whole new attitude. This was a gift for me. I guess before the illness I just lived. Now, after the illness, I live strong.

Average is Your Enemy.

Cycling is so hard, the suffering is so intense, that it’s absolutely cleansing. The pain is so deep and strong that a curtain descends over your brain….Once; someone asked me what pleasure I took in riding for so long. ‘PLEASURE???? I said.’ ‘I don’t understand the question.’ I didn’t do it for the pleasure; I did it for the pain.

[A 2005 response to doping allegations] Unfortunately, the witch hunt continues and tomorrow's article is nothing short of tabloid journalism. The paper even admits in its own article that the science in question here is faulty and that I have no way to defend myself. They state: 'There will therefore be no counter-exam nor regulatory prosecutions, in a strict sense, since defendant's rights cannot be respected.' I will simply restate what I have said many times: I have never taken performance enhancing drugs.

I have never doped … I have competed as an endurance athlete for 25 years with no spike in performance, passed more than 500 drug tests and never failed one.

There were something like 50 good, arduous climbs around Nice, solid inclines of ten miles or more. The trick was not to climb every once in awhile, but to climb repeatedly. I would do three different climbs in one day, over the course of a six- or seven-hour ride. A 12 mile climb took about an hour, so that tells you what my days were like.

Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever.

I am just coming into my best years. This year I did new things; stretching and abdominal work.

Anything is possible, but you have to believe and you have to fight.

Motivation can't take you very far if you don't have the legs.

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.

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.

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.

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

It was great to fight in training, great to fight in the race, but you don't need to fight in a press conference, or an interview, or a personal interaction.

If we don't somehow stem the tide of childhood obesity, we're going to have a huge problem.

We've all made mistakes, they are not toxic and evil.

I guess if a person never quit when the going got tough, they wouldn't have anything to regret for the rest of their life.

We are much better than we know.

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.

I didn't invent the culture, but I didn't try to stop the culture.

Everything in my life is in perspective. OK, perspective ebbs and flows. I've had bad days, but they weren't in the last years. A bad day is 2 October 1996: 'We've got bad news for you, you've got advanced testicular cancer and you've got a coin's toss chance of survival.' That's a bad day.

The truth is, if you asked me to choose between winning the Tour de France and cancer, I would choose cancer. Odd as it sounds, I would rather have the title of cancer survivor than winner of the Tour, because of what it has done for me as a human being, a man, a husband, a son, and a father.

I got the three things I wanted. I did my job, I worked hard in the process, and I cherish the memories, and they're mine.

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

I love this race from the very depths of my heart. It gives me motivation and it transcendsme like nothing else in the world.

Nothing goes to waste, you put it all to use, the old wounds and long-ago slights become the stuff of competitive energy.

Twenty-plus-year career, 500 drug controls worldwide, in and out of competition. Never a failed test. I rest my case.

I exercise everyday. I swim, I bike, I run and I go to the gym.

If there was a god, I'd still have both nuts.

It's frustrating in the sense that I still think I could be competing at some sport at a fairly high level, which nobody cares about. Nobody wants to hear me say that.

I become a happier man each time I suffer

Marathons are hard because of the physical pain, the pounding on the muscles, joints, tendons.

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.

Nobody is going to feel sorry for me if I've lost a dollar or $100m.

Pain is temporary. Eventually it will subside. If I quit, however, the surrender stays with me.

Your past forms you, whether you like it or not. Each encounter and experience has its own effect, and you're shaped the way the wind shapes a mesquite tree on a plain.

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

I think I bit off more than I could chew. I thought the marathon would be easier. For the level of condition that I have now... that was without a doubt the hardest physical thing I have ever done.

It's simple. Success comes from training harder, living better and digging deeper than the others.

I tried to control the narrative.

What is stronger, fear or hope?

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

I want to die at a hundred years old with an American flag on my back and the star of Texas on my helmet, after screaming down an Alpine descent on a bicycle at 75 miles per hour.

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 do it every day, I realized. 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 the doctors, believing in thetreatent, believing in whatever I chose to believe in, that was the most important thing.

Me and running don’t always see eye to eye. Some days it hurts more than others. But it doesn’t mean I don’t do it. I deal with it and I keep running because not everything that is good for you, always feels good for you.

Hope that is the only antidote to fear.

My greatest point is my persistence... However down I am, I fight until the last ball.

The riskiest thing you can do is get greedy.

Fear is priceless education.

You can teach someone how to control their strength, but you can't teach them to be strong.

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.

I know what happened to my foundation, from raising no money to raising $500m, serving three million people. Do we want to take that away? I don't think anybody says yes.

If life gives you lemons, drink the juice in order to mask the presence of performing-enhancing drugs.

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.

Losing and dying: it's the same thing.

It works better for me to be nervous and hungry.

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

If you're trying to hide something, you wouldn't keep getting away with it for 10 years. Nobody is that clever.

I take nothing for granted. I now have only good days, or great days.

I didn't live a lot of lies, but I lived one big one.

I don't think history is stupid.History ultimately rectifies a lot of these things. If you had to ask me what I think happens in 50 years, I don't think it sits empty in 50 years. Maybe somebody else's name is there. But you can't leave it empty.

I figure the faster I pedal, the faster I can retire.

I am flawed, deeply flawed. I didn't invent the [doping] culture but I didn't try to stop the culture and that's my mistake, and that's what I have to be sorry for.