Wilma Rudolph
I have spent a lifetime trying to share what it has meant to be a woman first in the world of sports so that other young women have a chance to reach their dreams.Collection: Women
Winning is great, sure, but if you are really going to do something in life, the secret is learning how to lose. Nobody goes undefeated all the time. If you can pick up after a crushing defeat, and go on to win again, you are going to be a champion someday.Collection: Time
Never underestimate the power of dreams and the influence of the human spirit. We are all the same in this notion: The potential for greatness lives within each of us.Collection: Dreams
When the sun is shining I can do anything; no mountain is too high, no trouble too difficult to overcome.Collection: Inspirational
I loved the feeling of freedom in running, the fresh air, the feeling that the only person I'm competing with is me.Collection: Freedom
You become world famous, and you sit with kings and queens, and then your first job is just a job. You can't go back to living the way you did before because you've been taken out of one setting and shown the other. That becomes a struggle and makes you struggle.Collection: Famous
No one has a life where everything that happened was good. I think the thing that made life good for me is that I never looked back. I've always been positive, no matter what happened.Collection: Positive
But when you come from a large, wonderful family, there's always a way to achieve your goals.Collection: Family
The triumph can't be had without the struggle.
My doctor told me I would never walk again. My mother told me I would. I believed my mother.
I ran and ran and ran every day, and I acquired this sense of determination, this sense of spirit that I would never, never give up, no matter what else happened.
I believe in me more than anything in this world.
After the scarlet fever and the whooping cough, I remember I started to get mad about it all... I went through the stage of asking myself, 'Wilma, what is this existence all about? Is it about being sick all the time? It can't be.' So I started getting angry about things, fighting back in a new way with a vengeance.
It doesn't matter what you're trying to accomplish. It's all a matter of discipline. I was determined to discover what life held for me beyond the inner-city streets.
Down South, there was the old 'ladies-don't-do-such-things' way of thinking. You couldn't be a lady and a good athlete at the same time.
Sometimes it takes years to really grasp what has happened to your life.
The feeling of accomplishment welled up inside of me, three Olympic gold medals. I knew that was something nobody could ever take away from me, ever.
There were good jobs, but they were never what I wanted to do. Somehow, people always thought of Wilma Rudolph as a threat.
When I ran, I felt like a butterfly that was free.
I don't know why I run so fast. I just run.
They would say, 'If you run around too much as a girl, you'll never be able to have children.' The running was supposed to be too much strain for your body, and your body would never be the same again.
Later on in life, I discovered that in order for me to be successful, I had to have a challenge. I can't do a nine to five job.
No matter what accomplishments you make, somebody helps you.
In college, I was an education major and qualified for several jobs. But the fame that came with the Olympic medals was too threatening to many people.
I was six years old before I realized that there was something wrong with me... But I did have this crooked left leg, and my left foot was turned inward.
'I can't' are two words that have never been in my vocabulary. I believe in me more than anything in this world.Collection: Happiness
Winning is great, sure, but if you are really going to do something in life, the secret is learning how to lose.Collection: Sports
No matter what great things you accomplish, somebody helps you.Collection: Matter
Believe me, the reward is not so great without the struggle.Collection: Motivational
The potential for greatness lives within us all.Collection: Inspirational Sports
I knew that whatever I set my mind to do. I could do.Collection: Mind
I had a series of childhood illnesses... scarlet fever.... pneumonia.... Polio. I walked with braces until I was at least nine years old. My life wasn't like the average person who grew up and decided to enter the world of sports.Collection: Sports
I tell them that the most important aspect is to be yourself and have confidence in yourself.Collection: Confidence
The triumph can't be had without the struggle. And I know what struggle is. I have spent a lifetime trying to share what it has meant to be a woman first in the world of sports so that other young women have a chance to reach their dreams.Collection: Motivational
My mother taught me very early to believe I could achieve any accomplishment I wanted to. The first was to walk without braces.Collection: Inspirational
I would be disappointed if I were remembered as a runner because I feelthat my contribution to the youth of America has far exceeded the woman who was the Olympic champion.Collection: America
When I was going through my transition of being famous, I tried to ask God, why was I here? What was my purpose? Surely, it wasn't just to win three gold medals. There has to be more to this life than that.Collection: Winning
I know black women in Tennessee who have worked all their lives, from the time they were twelve years old to the day they died. These women don't listen to the women's liberation rhetoric because they know that it's nothing but a bunch of white women who had certain life-styles and who want to change those life-styles.Collection: Change
I don't consciously try to be a role model, so I don't know if I am or not. That's for other people to decide.Collection: People
I'm in my prime. There's no goal too far, no mountain too high.Collection: Goal
I thought I'd never get to see that. Florence Griffith Joyner -- every time she ran, I ran.Collection: Florence
By the time I was 12 I was challenging every boy in our neighborhood at running, jumping, everything.Collection: Running
Black women . . . work because their husbands can't make enough money at their jobs to keep everything going. . . . They don't go to work to find fulfillment, or adventure, or glamour and romance, like so many white women think they are doing. Black women work out of necessity.Collection: Jobs
What do you do after you are world-famous and nineteen or twenty and you have sat with prime ministers, kings and queens, the Pope? Do you go back home and take a job? What do you do to keep your sanity? You come back to the real world.Collection: Kings