Carl Lewis Quotes

First of all, I really never imagined myself being a professional athlete.

I worked my whole life and dreamed my whole life of being a professional athlete.

When I look at the way I was able to play in my 17th year, I feel like I earned the right to play in the NFL for another one.

Being athletic has really become a big part of my career.

I was a borderline guy in the NFL.

I just felt all along that if I could get a certain amount of years in the league, have great years and still have my health when I walked away, that would be great.

In my youth I thought I was going to be a professional rugby player.

When I played, I had a natural ability to jump and run, and I just wanted to get bigger and heavier.

I always wanted to be a professional athlete, it just took me a while to realise it would be in racing. I played field hockey competitively for Ontario since I was 13, 14. Then I tried for the national side and made it. But it was so competitive. The girls were just so big and strong. I was getting crushed.

I had jumped about 6.40 metres with no training, no run-up, and certainly no skill, when this big, good-looking guy came up to me and told me I could be great.

If it wasn't for finding out that my right leg could kick a ball really far, which is what I did, I am 100 percent certain that I would be attempting to be or would be a professional wrestler.

Oh, I never knew I was going to be a great player.

I've always dreamed of being a professional athlete.

I had a little bit of expectations just to be not terrible, because you can't be named so similar to a sport and not be at least adequate at that sport. I don't think there's been expectations to be really good, because my parents never put that kind of pressure on me, but I had to be at least decent.

A male athlete's peak, I believe, should be somewhere between 26 and 30.

What if you didn't have education for sports? People with a natural inclination for sports, athletes without any kind of education, without any kind of training, they would just be couch athletes instead of the world class Olympians that we have.

I think every young man's goal is to be a professional athlete, whether it's the NBA, MLB, or the NFL.

Normal athletes couldn't do what Premier League football players can do.

I think the average MLB career now is just a few years. The quote that has always resonated with me is 'We're going to be former players a lot longer than we were current players.'

I was a very good athlete: actually professional in the sport of handball.

Over the long term, it is definitely my ambition to play in the midfield.

I got to play first-team men's football from a young age.

Trying to make the NBA is one of the very few areas where a Harvard degree won't necessarily help.

Anybody with ability can play in the big leagues. To last as long as I did with the skills I had, with the numbers I produced, was a triumph of the human spirit.

We think Eli is taller and handsomer now that he's won the Super Bowl. Imagine what would've happened if [Jaws] won the Super Bowl.