Lance Armstrong Quotes

Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever.

Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever.

Anything is possible. You can be told that you have a 90-percent chance or a 50-percent chance or a 1-percent chance, but you have to believe, and you have to fight.

I didn't invent the culture, but I didn't try to stop the culture.

I take nothing for granted. I now have only good days, or great days.

My cocktail, so to speak, was only EPO, but not a lot, transfusions and testosterone.

If children have the ability to ignore all odds and percentages, then maybe we can all learn from them. When you think about it, what other choice is there but to hope? We have two options, medically and emotionally: give up, or fight like hell.

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

Portland, Oregon won't build a mile of road without a mile of bike path. You can commute there, even with that weather, all the time.

If you worried about falling off the bike, you'd never get on.

I figure the faster I pedal, the faster I can retire.

Cycling is so hard, the suffering is so intense, that it’s absolutely cleansing. The pain is so deep and strong that a curtain descends over your brain….Once; someone asked me what pleasure I took in riding for so long. ‘PLEASURE???? I said.’ ‘I don’t understand the question.’ I didn’t do it for the pleasure; I did it for the pain.

Anything is possible, but you have to believe and you have to fight.

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.

Winning is about heart, not just legs. It's got to be in the right place.

If you ever get a second chance in life for something, you've got to go all the way.

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.

Pain is temporary. Eventually it will subside. If I quit, however, the surrender stays with me.

Make an obstacle an opportunity, make a negative a positive.

The last thing I'll say for the people that don't believe in cycling, the cynics and the sceptics, I'm sorry for you. I'm sorry you can't dream big and I'm sorry you don't believe in miracles.

I have never had a single positive doping test, and I do not take performance-enhancing drugs.

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.

There comes a point in every man's life when he has to say: 'Enough is enough.'

Chasing records doesn't keep me on my bike. Happiness does.

For most of my life I had operated under a simple schematic of winning and losing, but cancer was teaching me a tolerance for ambiguities.

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.

I tried to control the narrative.

The biggest losers are those who care only about winning.

Cancer doesn’t care if you’re Republican or Democrat.

What makes a great endurance athlete is the ability to absorb potenial embarrassment, and to suffer without complaint. I was discovering that if it was a matter of gritting my teeth, not caring how it looked, and outlasting everybody else, I won. It didn't seem to matter what sport it was-in a straight-ahead, long-distant race, I could beat anybody. If it was a suffer-fest, I was good at it.

Knowledge is power, community is strength and positive attitude is everything

A boo is a lot louder than a cheer.

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.

I raced because I was paid to do a job and I felt like I had to do the job. Number two: I raced because I loved the process, I loved training, getting ready for the race, I loved all of that. And number three I raced for my memories. Regardless of what somebody wants to give or take away, you can't take my memories.

The truth is, if you asked me to choose between winning the Tour de France and cancer, I would choose cancer. Odd as it sounds, I would rather have the title of cancer survivor than winner of the Tour, because of what it has done for me as a human being, a man, a husband, a son, and a father.

What makes a great endurance athlete is the ability to absorb potential embarrassment, and to suffer without complaint.

Two things scare me. The first is getting hurt. But that's not nearly as scary as the second, which is losing.

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.

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.

Truth is, a triathlete won the Tour de France seven times.

[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.

I am just coming into my best years. This year I did new things; stretching and abdominal work.

We have two options, medically and emotionally: give up or fight like hell.

If we don't somehow stem the tide of childhood obesity, we're going to have a huge problem.

Twenty-plus-year career, 500 drug controls worldwide, in and out of competition. Never a failed test. I rest my case.

I am flawed, deeply flawed. I didn't invent the [doping] culture but I didn't try to stop the culture and that's my mistake, and that's what I have to be sorry for.

You know, once I was thinking of quitting when I was diagnosed with brain, lung and testicular cancer all at the same time. But with the love and support of my friends and family, I got back on the bike and won the Tour de France five times in a row. But I'm sure you have a good reason to quit.

What is stronger, fear or hope?

Lance Armstrong is not the biggest fraud in the history of world sport. US Postal was not the most sophisticated doping programme.

Nobody is going to feel sorry for me if I've lost a dollar or $100m.