Human Performance Quotes

Humans are built for endurance, not speed. We're awful sprinters compared to every other animal. We try to run our races as if they were speed races, but they are not. They're endurance races. Even a marathon, the way it's run now, it's not an endurance contest.

The Tour de France is a wicked sport in the way that it's not just man against man or woman against woman; it's not flesh against flesh. It's flesh against machine.

No man or woman is uniformly successful... we must all expect a rather high percentage of failure in the things we attempt.

The mountains seem to have conquered us long before we set foot on them, and they will remain long after our brief existence. This indomitable force of the mountains gives us humans a blank canvas on which to paint the drive of discovery and, in the process, test the limits of human performance.

I think there is definitely a physical peak for people, and it's probably a little bit later than most people would believe.

Because you have things like 'American Idol' and you've got radio stations that play music made entirely by computers, it's easy to forget there are bands with actual people playing actual instruments that rock.

The more you learn about the science of boxing, the more appreciation you have for man's ability to think and perform in violent situations, and that's what interests me in film.

It is a paradox to say the human body has no 'limit.' There must be a limit to the speed at which men can run. I feel this may be around 3:30 for the mile. However, another paradox remains - if an athlete manages to run 3:30, another runner could be found to marginally improve on that time.

Take the great example of the four-minute mile. One guy breaks it, then all of a sudden everyone breaks it. And they break it in such a short period of time that it can't be because they were training harder. It's purely that it was a psychological barrier, and someone had to show them that they could do it.

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

I'm betting 100,000 that I'm the fastest man on the planet.

The things that people do now in sports, you can't even believe. These are complete total athletes. To see what human beings can do in the highest level is amazing.

I was a huge Muppet fan growing up. I want to bring it back to the early '80s Muppet movies, when the scripts could have been performed by humans.

I get up at 7:30 and work four hours a day. Nine to twelve in the morning, five to six in the evening. Businessmen would achieve better results if they studied human metabolism. No one works well eight hours a day. No one ought to work more than four hours.

What people who are doing shift work or managing shift workers or deciding to put people on shift schedules to begin with should realize that we're not robots.

The Olympics is about showing what you've done with your life, your dream as an athlete and sharing that with the world.

There is something fundamentally fascinating about the mechanics, I guess, of the human body and where consciousness and mind exist, and what you can do with the mechanics of the body while keeping those intact, and where those two cross over.

All athletes, without fail, are potentially great and good. A great athlete is a little man tirelessly inspired.

Your body's an amazing machine and it's created to do stuff. See what you can get out of it.

If I am ever put to death on the hook, expect a very human performance.

Coaching done well may be the most effective intervention designed for human performance.

Actors will never be replaced. The thought that somehow a computer version of a character is going to be something people prefer to look at is a ludicrous idea.

The microgravity or the very, very low amount of gravity that we have up in space forces some changes in different processes. It forces changes in us as human beings.

I think sometimes there's this perception that players are supposed to be robots.

You can fix things with digital technology and there's a temptation to fix everything or make it perfect and what you're losing there is the human performance that may not be perfect but there may be magic in it. You can make it perfect but music doesn't sound good perfect for some reason.