Roger Bannister Quotes

Aiming for the marathon is a task of sorts which can include terrific highs and lows.

Whatever course you have chosen for yourself, it will not be a chore but an adventure if you bring to it a sense of the glory of striving.

I am still where I started. I am still struggling. In fact, the struggle has only got bigger. I always try to go beyond my means, and this where the struggle comes in.

You can't ever reach perfection in this business, but that's one of the things I love. It's something that can't ever be mastered, but you can attempt to get as close as possible.

The attempt is all the wedge that splits its knotty way betwixt the impossible and possible.

We strain hardest for things which are almost but not quite within our reach.

I've challenged (Donovan McNabb) to whatever athletic endeavor he wants, but he laughs it off

Utopia is on the horizon. I move two steps closer; it moves two steps further away. I walk another ten steps and the horizon runs ten steps further away. As much as I may walk, I'll never reach it. So what's the point of utopia? The point is this: to keep walking.

It takes all the running you can do just to keep in the same place.

I want to be remembered as one who tried.

It provides a different type of element and mental strain athletes love. That's what makes the game of golf so special.

Happiness is experienced largely in striving towards a goal, not in having attained things, because our nature is always to want to go on to the next endeavor.

You can't climb a tile wall.

In human affairs, the best stimulus for running ahead is to have something we must run from.

If someone had said to me before I started doing this that a human being is capable of running 100 miles nonstop, I would have just said: 'No way. I mean, how?' If you just go out there and run 100 miles, it breaks down a lot of barriers in terms of self-imposed limitations.

Goals should always be made to a point that will make us reach and strain.

I find faith in human perseverance, even as the universe throws challenge after challenge our way.

There was a race that I was running in Mexico City and I was the only high school athlete running against grown women. It was a professional race, but I ended up winning. That was kind of a turning point for me where I felt like, "Okay, I'm pretty good at this and there's a possibility for this to be a career for me." That was a defining moment for me.

I surprised myself with my ability to run. It's kind of like tippy toe running. I would not be able to outrun Indominus Rex, but with enough practice I might be able to make it 40 or 50 feet before I was killed.

I saw the horizon. It's out there. And though I may not ever be able to touch it, it's worth reaching for.

Man is never honestly the fatalist, nor even the stoic. He fights his fate, often desperately. He is forever entering bold exceptions to the rulings of the bench of gods. This fighting, no doubt, makes for human progress, for it favors the strong and the brave. It also makes for beauty, for lesser men try to escape from a hopeless and intolerable world by creating a more lovely one of their own.

Let us set our goals too high; let us demand more of ourselves than we believe we possess

Aspire, break bounds. Endeavor to be good, and better still, best.

There is magic in misery. Just ask any runner.