Roger Bannister Quotes

The man who can drive himself further once the effort gets painful is the man who will win.

My athleticism was really the core to social acceptance, because in those days the overwhelming number of students came from more of a public school background than I did.

Just because they say it's impossible doesn't mean you can't do it.

My concentration was really on getting to university and becoming a doctor. My parents let me know that school marks were important. Achievement was something which came by hard work.

Our concept of a family holiday was going to a guest house in the Lake district or Wales, where walking was part of the holiday.

Sport is not about being wrapped up in cotton wool. Sport as about adapting to the unexpected and being able to modify plans at the last minute. Sport, like all life, is about taking risks.

We run, not because we think it is doing us good, but because we enjoy it and cannot help ourselves

To move into the lead means making an act requiring fierceness and confidence. But fear must play some part...no relaxation is possible, and all discretion is thrown into the wind.

Sport, like all of life, is about taking your chances.

No longer conscious of my movement, I discovered a new unity with nature. I had found a new source of power and beauty, a source I never dreamt existed.

It is the brain, not the heart or lungs, that is the critical organ.

The reason sport is attractive to many of the general public is that it's filled with reversals. What you think may happen doesn't happen. A champion is beaten, an unknown becomes a champion.

The essence of sports is that while you're doing it, nothing else matters, but after you stop, there is a place, generally not very important, where you would put it.

I trained for less than three-quarters of an hour, maybe five days a week - I didn't have time to do more. But it was all about quality, not quantity - so I didn't waste time jogging, ever.

If there was the opportunity to climb a mountain, or to go ballooning, or some adventurous activity, I would always be keen to do it. I loved the countryside.

I couldn't touch my toes with straight legs, but I could break 4 minutes for the mile.

Without the concentration of the mind and the will, performance would not result.

It's amazing that more people have climbed Mount Everest than have broken the 4-minute mile.

The man who goes on, even when it's the hardest to be the winner.

If a man coaches himself, then he has only himself to blame when he is beaten.

Mothers, unless they were very poor, didn't work. Both of my parents had to leave education. My mother had to work in a cotton mill until 18 or 19, when she took some training in domestic science.

The mile has all the elements of a drama.

Athletics is a luxury.

I raced supremely well. I felt I was as well fitted to do it as I had ever been, and as perhaps I might ever be. I went climbing three weeks before, because I was feeling fed up with running.

I enjoy singing, and the instruments which truly move me are the horn, the trumpet and the cello.

It had always been a British preoccupation to hold this mile record.

I was playing rugby and the other games English school children do, and there was an event which was planned in which races were run, and I simply just won these by a considerable margin

I couldn't disappoint people. I did not want to fail and exhaust myself, because I was the kind of runner who trained so little that I couldn't race again within another 10 days.

My introduction to track racing was through the background of cross country running, which is not a sport perhaps as popular in America as it is in England.

My family actually lived in the same village for about 400 years. They had great stability until the last century. People lived and intermarried in small villages.

I was always a great bundle of energy. As a child, instead of walking, I would run. And so running, which is a pain to a lot of people, was always a pleasure to me because it was so easy.

If I faltered, there would be no arms to hold me and the world would be a cold and forbidding place.

I think that is a universal adolescent feeling, trying to find your place. The adolescent who is perfectly adjusted to his environment, I've yet to meet.

I was involved in music, acting, and some running, but my firm wish was to become a doctor. That was the formative age when I had decided on the pattern of my career.

I found longer races boring. I found the mile just perfect.

Life was very simple. My parents had come from the North of England, which is a fairly rugged, bleak, hard-working part of England, and so there was not the expectation of luxury.

May is a very early time in the year and the weather is usually bad. You cannot run a fast mile race if there is a strong wind, because it makes your running uneven.

Beating John Landy was my defining race.

It seems quite impossible to walk in America.

I came from such a simple origin, without any great privilege, and I would say I also wanted to make a mark. It wasn't until I was about 15 that I appeared in a race.

However ordinary each of us may seem, we are all in some way special, and can do things that are extraordinary, perhaps until then…even thought impossible.

It is the brain, not the heart or lungs, that is the critical organ