Lance Armstrong
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.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Sports
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.Collection: Past
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.Collection: Fighting
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.Collection: Pain
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?Collection: Inspirational
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.Collection: Running
I become a happier man each time I sufferCollection: Men
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.Collection: Stars
Well, you better ride like you stole something 'cause you are about to win a stage in the Tour de Fance.Collection: Winning
It works better for me to be nervous and hungry.Collection: Giving Up
Nothing goes to waste, you put it all to use, the old wounds and long-ago slights become the stuff of competitive energy.Collection: Long Ago
I thought I knew what fear was, until I heard the words 'You have cancer'.Collection: Cancer
If there was a god, I'd still have both nuts.Collection: God
I'm cycling to take cancer message worldwide.Collection: Cancer
We've all made mistakes, they are not toxic and evil.Collection: Mistake
Cancer doesn’t care if you’re Republican or Democrat.Collection: Cancer
I'm not willing to put a percentage on the chances but I will no longer rule it out.Collection: Chance
If there is a defining characteristic of a man as opposed to a boy, maybe it's patience.Collection: Boys
The question was, which would the chemo kill first: the cancer or me?Collection: Cancer
Pain is only temporary. Quitting is forever!Collection: Pain
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.Collection: Gratitude
Losing and dying: it's the same thing.Collection: Dying
You can teach someone how to control their strength, but you can't teach them to be strong.Collection: Strong
I love this race from the very depths of my heart. It gives me motivation and it transcendsme like nothing else in the world.Collection: Motivation
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.Collection: Moon
My greatest point is my persistence... However down I am, I fight until the last ball.Collection: Fighting
Hope that is the only antidote to fear.Collection: Antidote
My actions and reactions, and the way I treated certain scenarios, were way out of line, so I deserved some punishment.Collection: Punishment
I'm not trying to justify myself, or say I'm not sorry, or not contrite.Collection: Sorry
Pain is temporary. Eventually it will subside. If I quit, however, the surrender stays with me.Collection: Pain
I tried to control the narrative.Collection: Narrative
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.Collection: Thinking
The biggest losers are those who care only about winning.Collection: Winning
No one automatically gives you respect just because you show up. You have to earn itCollection: Giving
We have unrealized capacities that sometimes only emerge in crisis.Collection: Sometimes
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.Collection: Thinking
Cancer taught me a plan for more purposeful living, and that in turn taught me how to train and to win more purposefully. It taught me that pain has a reason, and that sometimes the experience of losing things-whether health or a car or an old sense of self-has its own value in the scheme of life. Pain and loss are great enhancers.Collection: Pain
People refer to 'the good ol' days', but I don't know what they're talking about. As someone who's battled cancer, if I lived more than 20 years ago, I'd be a dead man.Collection: Cancer
It's something I find enjoyable. Whether it is a road bike or mountain bike or tandem bike. I enjoy riding a bike.Collection: Mountain
I have never doped. I can say it again, but I've said it for seven years.Collection: Years
I want to finish by saying that I intend to be an avid spokesperson for testicular cancer once I have beaten the disease. I want this to be a positive experience and I want to take this opportunity to help others who might someday suffer from the same circumstance I face today.Collection: Cancer
There were no shortcuts, I realized. It took years of racing to build up the mind and body and character until a rider had logged hundreds of races and thousands of miles of road. I wouldn't be able to win a Tour de France until I had enough iron in my legs, and lungs, and brain and Heart.Collection: Heart
I've given gifts in the Tour de France and it's come back to bit me. So no gifts.Collection: France
I've read that I flew up the hills and mountains of France. But you don't fly up a hill. You struggle slowly and painfully up a hill, and maybe, if you work very hard, you get to the top ahead of everybody else.Collection: Inspirational
At the end of the day, if there was indeed some Body or presence standing there to judge me, I hoped I would be judged on whether I had lived a true life, not on whether I believed in a certain book, or whether I'd been baptized. If there was indeed a God at the end of my days, I hoped he didn't say, But you were never a Christian, so you're going the other way from heaven. If so, I was going to reply, You know what? You're right. Fine.Collection: Christian
It's a fact that children with cancer have higher cure rates than adults with cancer, and I wonder if the reason is their natural, unthinking bravery... Adults know too much about failure; they're more cynical and resigned and fearful.Collection: Children
Before my diagnosis [cancer] I was a competitor but not a fierce competitor. When I was diagnosed, that turned me into a fighter.Collection: Cancer