More Quotes by Wilma Rudolph
I know black women in Tennessee who have worked all their lives, from the time they were twelve years old to the day they died. These women don't listen to the women's liberation rhetoric because they know that it's nothing but a bunch of white women who had certain life-styles and who want to change those life-styles.
Winning is great, sure, but if you are really going to do something in life, the secret is learning how to lose. Nobody goes undefeated all the time. If you can pick up after a crushing defeat, and go on to win again, you are going to be a champion someday.
By the time I was 12 I was challenging every boy in our neighborhood at running, jumping, everything.
Sometimes it takes years to really grasp what has happened to your life.
My mother taught me very early to believe I could achieve any accomplishment I wanted to. The first was to walk without braces.
Believe me, the reward is not so great without the struggle.
My doctor told me I would never walk again. My mother told me I would. I believed my mother.
The triumph can't be had without the struggle. And I know what struggle is. I have spent a lifetime trying to share what it has meant to be a woman first in the world of sports so that other young women have a chance to reach their dreams.
The feeling of accomplishment welled up inside of me, three Olympic gold medals. I knew that was something nobody could ever take away from me, ever.
I ran and ran and ran every day, and I acquired this sense of determination, this sense of spirit that I would never, never give up, no matter what else happened.
