David Goggins Quotes

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.

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. Say you’re running and you think, ‘Man, this hurts, I can’t take it anymore. The ‘hurt’ part is an unavoidable reality, but whether or not you can stand anymore is up to the runner himself.

People think I'm crazy to put myself through such torture, though I would argue otherwise. Somewhere along the line we seem to have confused comfort with happiness... Dostoyevsky had it right: 'Suffering is the sole origin of consciousness.' Never are my senses more engaged than when the pain sets in. There is a magic in misery. Just ask any runner.

Pain is weakness leaving the body,

Discipline is something we despise for the moment.... We all look for a place to run, an excuse with which to stall. No one enjoys it. Yet those of us who have endured it know that the fruit it produces and the pain from which it ultimately spares us makes it worth the agony.

And, as long as you can make yourself go on choosing the pain over the relief, you can keep going.

To keep from decaying, to be a winner, the athlete must accept pain - not only accept it, but look for it, live with it, learn not to fear it.

I ran. I ran until my muscles burned and my veins pumped battery acid. Then I ran some more.

A human being can stand any amount of pain.

When I’m running, there’s always this split second when the pain is ripping through me and I can hardly breathe and all I see is color and blur—and in that split second, right as the pain crests, and becomes too much, and there’s a whiteness going through me, I see something to my left, a flicker of color […]—and I know then, too, that if I only turn my head he’ll be there, laughing, watching me, and holding out his arms. I don’t ever turn my head to look, of course. But one day I will. One day I will, and he’ll be back, and everything will be okay. And until then: I run.

Pain is that last quarter of a mile. You feel it, but when you’re through racing, your whole body just feels elated. So the pain is worth it.

It wasn't until my late twenties that I learned that by working out I had given myself a great gift. I learned that nothing good comes without work and a certain amount of pain. When I finish a set that leaves me shaking, I know more about myself. When something gets bad, I know it can't be as bad as that workout.

It hurts, but that’s all it does. The most difficult part of the training is training your mind. You build calluses on your feet to endure the road. You build calluses on your mind to endure the pain. There’s only one way to do that. You have to get out there and run.

There is magic in misery. Just ask any runner.

People live through such pain only once. Pain comes again—but it finds a tougher surface.

She likes the people with the endurance to tolerate the drudge, the ones who know that pain is a requirement, not a curse.

ignore the pain, play through it.

Long distance running is particularly good training in perseverance.

Pain, scorned by yonder gout-ridden wretch, endured by yonder dyspeptic in the midst of his dainties, borne bravely by the girl in travail. Slight thou art, if I can bear thee, short thou art if I cannot bear thee!

Pain pays no attention to moans or excuses.

Pain only hurts when you are looking for a reason to quit. You don't feel a thing when you know you can still win.

If it felt good, you didn't push hard enough. It's supposed to hurt like hell.

Exerting yourself to the limit over and over again, that is the essence of running. Running is painful, but the pain doesn't leave me, I can take care of it. That agrees with my mentality.

Even still, we run. We have not reached our average of 57.92 years without knowing that you run through it, and it hurts and you run through it some more, and if it hurts worse, you run through it even more, and when you finish, you will have broken through. In the end, when you are done, and stretching, and your heartbeat slows, and your sweat dries, if you've run through the hard part, you will remember no pain.

Pain is part of the sport.