Bill Bowerman famous quotes

03-28-2025

There's no such thing as bad weather, just soft people.
-- Bill Bowerman

#Motivational #Running #Not Giving Up
Everything you need is already inside.
-- Bill Bowerman

#Running #Needs
Victory is in having done your best. If you've done your best, you've won.
-- Bill Bowerman

#Sports #Victory #Done
The real purpose of running isn't to win a race, it's to test the limits of the human heart.
-- Bill Bowerman

#Running #Real #Heart
The idea that the harder you work, the better you're going to be is just garbage. The greatest improvement is made by the man or woman who works most intelligently.
-- Bill Bowerman

#Men #Ideas #Garbage
If you have a body, you are an athlete!
-- Bill Bowerman

#Motivational #Athlete #Body
If someone says, 'Hey, I ran 100 miles this week. How far did you run?' ignore him! What the hell difference does it make?.... The magic is in the man, not the 100 miles.
-- Bill Bowerman

#Running #Fitness Motivational #Men
Men of Oregon, I invite you to become students of your events. Running, one might say, is basically an absurd past-time upon which to be exhausting ourselves. But if you can find meaning, in the kind of running you have to do to stay on this team, chances are you will be able to find meaning in another absurd past-time: life.
-- Bill Bowerman

#Running #Team #Men
The athlete makes himself, the coach doesn't make the athlete.
-- Bill Bowerman

#Athlete #Coaches
A teacher is never too smart to learn from his pupils. But while runners differ, basic principles never change. So it's a matter of fitting your current practices to fit the event and the individual. See, what's good for you might not be worth a darn for the next guy.
-- Bill Bowerman

#Running #Teacher #Smart
Several of my critics have said, 'Bowerman just tacks up a piece of paper in the locker room and turns his runners loose.' They're partially right. I do give the athletes a relatively free rein and for good reason. One of my principles is? 'Don't overcoach.'
-- Bill Bowerman

#Running #Athlete #Giving
God determines how fast you're going to run; I can help only with the mechanics.
-- Bill Bowerman

#Running #Helping #Mechanic
I think people can handle 150 to 200 miles a week. But something has to give somewhere. If he's a student, how's he going to study? He may be at the age of chasing and courtship, and that's an important form of sport and recreation, too.
-- Bill Bowerman

#Sports #Running #Thinking
This killing of Israel athletes is an act of war. And if there's one place that war doesn't belong, it's here. 1200 years. From 776 B.C. to 393 A.D., your fellow Olympians laid down their arms to take part in these games. They understood there was more honor in out running a man than in killing him. I hope the competition will resume, and if it does, you must not think that running or throwing or jumping is frivelous. The games were once your fellow Olympians answer to war â€“Â competition, not conquest. Now, they must be your answer.
-- Bill Bowerman

#Running #War #Athlete
A teacher is never too smart to learn from his pupils.
-- Bill Bowerman

#Teacher #Smart #Pupils
To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete* in the world.
-- Bill Bowerman

#Inspiration #Athlete #Innovation
It's easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission.
-- Bill Bowerman

#Easier #Permission
There is no bad weather, just soft runners.
-- Bill Bowerman

#Running #Weather #Runners
Don't give anything away. Never make it easy for the guys you are trying to beat.
-- Bill Bowerman

#Giving #Guy #Trying
I still bother with runners I call hamburgers. They're never going to run any record times. But they can fulfill their own potential.
-- Bill Bowerman

#Sports #Running #Records
Now to explore the limits of the one competitor above everyone else you've always loved to face: Steve Prefontaine.
-- Bill Bowerman

#Limits #Faces #Competitors

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