Lance Armstrong
I don't think anybody else from my generation had federal agents standing at their door with a badge and a gun, saying: 'You are going to answer my questions'.Collection: Gun
For 15 years I was a complete arsehole to a dozen people. I said I would try and make it right with those people, and anybody that gave me an audience, I was there.Collection: Years
When I made the decision - when my team-mates made that decision, when the whole peloton made that decision - it was a bad decision and an imperfect time. But it happened.Collection: Team
I know what happened to cycling from 1999 to 2005. I saw its growth, I saw its expansion.Collection: Cycling
My ruthless desire to win at all costs served me well on the bike but the level it went to, for whatever reason, is a flaw. That desire, that attitude, that arrogance.Collection: Attitude
I look forward to a time when lawyers aren't in the top three calls every day, and all you care about is how your kids are doing in school or what the weather's like and the great day you had with your family.Collection: School
What matters is ultimately what collectively those people on the street - whether that's the cycling community, the cancer community - it matters what they think.Collection: Cancer
I would love to be in a place, and I may never get there, where I can help people. It's something that I never really cared to advertise. It got advertised. I still do it on one-on-one level almost daily.Collection: People
I don't need a field of a thousand people. Anybody can tell you that whoever needs help, I'm happy to help.Collection: People
I wanted to win the Tour de France. And when I won it once, I wanted to do it again, and again, and again, it just kept going. So there wasn't another competitive environment.Collection: Winning
That was my decision, so I have to be responsible for that. It was one of the biggest mistakes of my life and I don't have a good reason for why I wanted to come back, I don't have a good reason for doing it all.Collection: Mistake
I guess if I looked at it from an athletic standpoint, I don't really need to win another Tour. Seven Tours for me was a dream, six broke the record, so that eight doesn't really mean much.Collection: Dream
If you go to Wikipedia and you look at the Tour de France, there's this huge block in World War One with no winners, and there's another block in World War Two. And then it seems like there's another world war.Collection: Block
When you win, you don't examine it very much, except to congratulate yourself. You easily, and wrongly, assume it has something to do with your rare qualities as a person. But winning only measures how hard you've worked and how physically talented you are; it doesn't particularly define you beyond those characteristics.Collection: Winning
I don't think history is stupid.History ultimately rectifies a lot of these things. If you had to ask me what I think happens in 50 years, I don't think it sits empty in 50 years. Maybe somebody else's name is there. But you can't leave it empty.Collection: Stupid
Do it even if you shouldn't, do it becuase you want to, do it becuase it will make things better.Collection: Want
I believed in belief, for its own shining sake. To believe in the face of utter hopelessness, every article of evidence to the contrary, to ignore apparent catastrophe - what other choice was there? We do it every day, I realized. We are so much stronger than we imagine, and belief is one of the most valiant and long-lived human characteristics. To believe, when all along we humans know that nothing can cure the briefness of this life, that there is no remedy for our basic mortality, that is a form of bravery. To continue believing in yourself, believing in the doctors, believing in thetreatent, believing in whatever I chose to believe in, that was the most important thing.Collection: Believe
My house is burned, but I can see the sky.Collection: Sky
The body is telling the mind to stop. The mind is telling the body to shut up.Collection: Mind
I guess if a person never quit when the going got tough, they wouldn't have anything to regret for the rest of their life.Collection: Teamwork
I believe that the mind powers the body, and once the mind says we want to do it, then the body will follow.Collection: Believe
What makes a great endurance athlete is the ability to absorb potential embarrassment, and to suffer without complaint.Collection: Running
A bicycle is the long-sought means of transportation for all of us who have runaway hearts.Collection: Heart
At least I didn't invent a dead girlfriendCollection: Girlfriend
In my most painful moments on the bike, I am at my most curious and I wonder each and every time how I will respond.Collection: Painful Moments
You know what they say, the high trees get the wind.Collection: Wind
I can get up in the morning and look myself in the mirror and my family can look at me too and that's all that matters.Collection: Family
My cocktail, so to speak, was only EPO, but not a lot, transfusions and testosterone.Collection: Cocktails
So if there is a purpose to the suffering that is cancer, I think it must be this: it's meant to improve us.Collection: Cancer
The idea that anybody was forced, or pressured, or encouraged, is not true.Collection: Ideas
When you know your not going to die, you have to ask yourself... What's the highest and best use for myself.Collection: Use
I'm sorry you don't believe in miracles.Collection: Sorry
How do you fight an invisible opponent like suspicion?Collection: Fighting
Made plenty of mistakes along the way - all of which I am truly sorry.Collection: Sorry
The answer is hard work. What are you doing on Christmas Eve? Are you riding your bike? January 1st - are you riding your bike?Collection: Hard Work
It's ironic, I used to ride my bike to make a living. Now I just want to live so that I can ride.Collection: Ironic
Live strong is exactly I guess what it says. It's one thing to live, but it's another thing to live strong, to attack the day and attack your life with a whole new attitude. This was a gift for me. I guess before the illness I just lived. Now, after the illness, I live strong.Collection: Encouraging
The Tour (de France) is essentially a math problem, a 2,000-mile race over three weeks that's sometimes won by a margin of a minute or less. How do you propel yourself through space on a bicycle, sometimes steeply uphill, at a speed sustainable for three weeks? Every second counts.Collection: Math
My advice to you is never stop believing.Collection: Believe
Chasing records doesn't keep me on my bike. Happiness does.Collection: Cycling
We are much better than we know.Collection: Knows
We have two options, medically and emotionally: give up or fight like hell.Collection: Inspirational
But the fact is that I wouldn't have won even a single Tour de France without the lesson of illness. What it teaches is this: pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever.Collection: Pain
I rode, and I rode, and I rode. I rode like I had never ridden, punishing my body up and down every hill I could find. I rode when no one else would ride.Collection: Body
Yellow wakes me up in the morning. Yellow gets me on the bike every day. Yellow has taught me the true meaning of sacrifice. Yellow makes me suffer. Yellow is the reason I'm here.Collection: Morning
Anyone who imagines they can work alone winds up surrounded by nothing but rivals, without companions. The fact is, no one ascends alone.Collection: Inspirational
[The] pain is temporary. It may last a minute, an hour, a day, or a year, but eventually it subsides. And when it does, something else takes its place, and that thing might be called a greater space for happiness ... Each time we overcome pain, I believe that we grow.Collection: Pain
Suffering, I was beginning to think, was essential to a good life, and as inextricable from such a life as bliss. It’s a great enhancer. It might last a minute, but eventually it subsides, and when it does, something else takes its place, and maybe that thing is a great space. For happiness. Each time I encountered suffering, I believed that I grew, and further defined my capacities – not just my physical ones, but my interior ones as well, for contentment, friendship, or any other human experience.Collection: Life
The team wasn't just riders. It was the mechanics, masseurs, chefs, soigneurs, and doctors. But the most important man on the team may have been the chiropractor.Collection: Team