Quotations About Sports III

Sports are too much with us. Late and soon, sitting and watching - mostly watching on television - we lay waste our powers of identification and enthusiasm and, in time, attention as more and more closing rallies and crucial putts and late field goals and final playoffs and sudden deaths and world records and world championships unreel themselves ceaselessly before our half-lidded eyes. ~Roger Angell


When cerebral processes enter into sports, you start screwing up. It's like the Constitution, which says separate church and state. You have to separate mind and body. ~Bill Lee


These are my new shoes. They're good shoes. They won't make you rich like me, they won't make you rebound like me, they definitely won't make you handsome like me. They'll only make you have shoes like me. That's it. ~From a Charles Barkley commercial for basketball shoes, 1993



Finish last in your league and they call you Idiot. Finish last in medical school and they call you Doctor. ~Abe Lemons



Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words, it is war minus the shooting... there are quite enough real causes of trouble already, and we need not add to them by encouraging young men to kick each other on the shins amid the roars of infuriated spectators. ~George Orwell


We can't win at home and we can't win on the road. My problem as general manager is I can't think of another place to play. ~Pat Williams


I always turn to the sports section first. The sports page records people's accomplishments; the front page has nothing but man's failures. ~Earl Warren


If only Hitler and Mussolini could have a good game of bowls once a week at Geneva, I feel that Europe would not be as troubled as it is. ~R.G. Briscow


The difference between the old ballplayer and the new ballplayer is the jersey. The old ballplayer cared about the name on the front. The new ballplayer cares about the name on the back. ~Steve Garvey


If the Bible has taught us nothing else, and it hasn't, it's that girls should stick to girls' sports, such as hot oil wrestling, foxy boxing, and such and such. ~Homer Simpson

If a tie is like kissing your sister, losing is like kissing your grandmother with her teeth out. ~George Brett, 1986


Thus so wretched is man that he would weary even without any cause for weariness... and so frivolous is he that, though full of a thousand reasons for weariness, the least thing, such as playing billiards or hitting a ball, is sufficient enough to amuse him. ~Blaise Pascal


I don't believe professional athletes should be role models. I believe parents should be role models.... It's not like it was when I was growing up. My mom and my grandmother told me how it was going to be. If I didn't like it, they said, "Don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out." Parents have to take better control. ~Charles Barkley


I think my favorite sport in the Olympics is the one in which you make your way through the snow, you stop, you shoot a gun, and then you continue on. In most of the world, it is known as the biathlon, except in New York City, where it is known as winter. ~Michael Ventre

We didn't lose the game; we just ran out of time. ~Vince Lombardi


When we played, World Series checks meant something. Now all they do is screw up your taxes. ~Don Drysdale, 1978


With the money I'm making, I should be playing two positions. ~Pete Rose, 1977


Men forget everything; women remember everything. That's why men need instant replays in sports. They've already forgotten what happened. ~Rita Rudner


Andre Dawson has a bruised knee and is listed as day-to-day. Aren't we all? ~Vin Scully


To me, boxing is like a ballet, except there's no music, no choreography, and the dancers hit each other. ~Jack Handey