Athletes these days are too robotic. People like to see performances filled with emotion. In my career I tried to be amusing, to differentiate myself from the other champions.

Sport fosters many things that are good; teamwork and leadership.

The only limitations are mental. The guy who thinks positively will win.

I'm competitive - that's what defines me - and I love it.

I don't even have my own computer.

Sometimes you have to resist working on your strengths in favour of your weaknesses. The decathlon requires a wide range of skills.

If you don't want to grow old, then slow down the slowing down process.

I have the mentality of a winner. I first went to the Olympic Games when I was 17, three weeks after my O-levels, and I remember sitting in a dining-hall filled with the world's best athletes.

Being a decathlete is like having ten girlfriends. You have to love them all, and you can't afford losing one.

Having the ambition of becoming Olympic champion is a whole different ambition from wanting to be the greatest.

Los Angeles was great fun because it was the polar opposite of Moscow in 1980. It was sunny and bright, lots of colours around, whereas Moscow was dark and oppressive.

Sometimes I lie awake at night and I ask, "Why me?", then a voice answers "Nothing personal, your name just happened to come up.

We did not decide to be born hence

Man is the master of Woman" - this statement may have been a glorious fact of primitive life in the wild, but it is nothing but an obnoxious stain on psyche of the thinking humanity.

The Book Highlights and Attacks areas of Inefficiency and Hypocrisy in Government Offices. It injects the much-need Enema into its Highly Constipated System.

A person is never happy except at the price of some ignorance.

Diabetes affects my family. One of my kids is affected by it.

No one really knows me. People think they know me.

Don't think OF the market. Think AS the market.

If men were in charge of carrying and birthing our babies, we'd have a lot fewer people on Earth, because we'd only do it once- I can promise you that!