Lance Armstrong Quotes

You can teach someone how to control their strength, but you can't teach them to be strong.

On a friendship with former president George W. Bush: He's a personal friend, but we've all got the right not to agree with our friends.

People refer to 'the good ol' days', but I don't know what they're talking about. As someone who's battled cancer, if I lived more than 20 years ago, I'd be a dead man.

If a script writer had come up with a story resembling what you have just achieved, even the Hollywood studios would have refused.

The way you live your life, the perspective you select, is a choice you make every single day when you wake up. It's yours to decide.

It's funny, because I have periods where I just kind of go dark. I don't tweet, I don't talk, I don't interview, and then I have times where I do.

It's a great feeling when someone like Bernard Hinault comes up to you on the podium to say 'Welcome to the club

It's tough to be a 15- or 16-year-old athlete competing around the country. There's tension, there's media. I had no idea what I was getting into.

But, listen, Eddie Merkyx would have won six Tours if he hadn't been punched.

It's nice to win. I'll never win again. I may have to take up golf - take on Tiger.

If I can't face my accusers, that's a joke. We did that in medieval times.

How many times do I have to say it? … Well, it can't be any clearer than 'I've never taken drugs.'

I have been dealing with claims that I cheated and had an unfair advantage in winning my seven Tours since 1999.

What ever your 100% looks like, give it.

During our lives...we experience so many setbacks, and fight such a hand-to-hand battle with failure, head down in the rain, just trying to stay upright and to have a little hope.

My career is going to be played out year by year. Will I be here in 2004? I don't know. The record won't keep me here. Happiness will.

To all the cynics, I'm sorry for you. I'm sorry you can't believe in miracles. This is a great sporting event and hard work wins it.

I didn't just jump back on the bike and win. There were a lot of ups and downs, good results and bad results, but this time I didn't let the lows get to me.

I joined the swim team when I was 12, and I was the worst kid in the pool - I was put with a group of 7-year-olds.

Hope that is the only antidote to fear.

I still don't get golf.

I have never doped. I can say it again, but I've said it for seven years.

So if there is a purpose to the suffering that is cancer, I think it must be this: it's meant to improve us.

The question was, which would the chemo kill first: the cancer or me?

Losing and dying: it's the same thing.

I've given gifts in the Tour de France and it's come back to bit me. So no gifts.

A bicycle is the long-sought means of transportation for all of us who have runaway hearts.

You know what they say, the high trees get the wind.

Regardless of one victory, two victories, four victories, there's never been a victory by a cancer survivor. That's a fact that hopefully I'll be remembered for.

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.

When you know your not going to die, you have to ask yourself... What's the highest and best use for myself.

There was more happiness in the process, in the build, in the preparation. The winning was almost phoned in.

I'm sorry you don't believe in miracles.

I will spend the rest of my life trying to earn back trust and apologize to people.

The idea that anybody was forced, or pressured, or encouraged, is not true.

Nobody needs to cry for me. I'm going to be great.

How do you fight an invisible opponent like suspicion?

Athletes don't have much use for poking around in their childhoods, because, introspection doesn't get you anywhere in a race.

A bike ride. Yes, that's it! A simple bike ride. It's what I love to do and most days I can't believe they pay me to do it. A day is not the same without it.

I love this race from the very depths of my heart. It gives me motivation and it transcendsme like nothing else in the world.

Made plenty of mistakes along the way - all of which I am truly sorry.

I'm not willing to put a percentage on the chances but I will no longer rule it out.

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'.

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.

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.

I know what happened to cycling from 1999 to 2005. I saw its growth, I saw its expansion.

I know what happened to my foundation, from raising no money to raising $500m, serving three million people. Do we want to take that away? I don't think anybody says yes.

Hey. Pain can last a moment, it can last a day, it can last a week, it can last a long..long time, but it can't last forever and the only thing that can last forever is if you quit.

Forever is a big word. I'm not going anywhere.

Before my diagnosis [cancer] I was a competitor but not a fierce competitor. When I was diagnosed, that turned me into a fighter.