Top 208 Quotes & Sayings by Lance Armstrong - Page 4

I would love to be in a place, and I may never get there, where I can help people. It's something that I never really cared to advertise. It got advertised. I still do it on one-on-one level almost daily.

My ruthless desire to win at all costs served me well on the bike but the level it went to, for whatever reason, is a flaw. That desire, that attitude, that arrogance.

The ban is completely out of my hands. And I think in most people's minds, even if it's unrealistic to them, it's one that I left myself with no choice on.

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

We all want to be forgiven. There's a lot of really, really bad people who want to be forgiven but will never be forgiven, and I might be in that camp.

My actions and reactions, and the way I treated certain scenarios, were way out of line, so I deserved some punishment.

It was great to fight in training, great to fight in the race, but you don't need to fight in a press conference, or an interview, or a personal interaction.

I'm not trying to justify myself, or say I'm not sorry, or not contrite.

It's frustrating in the sense that I still think I could be competing at some sport at a fairly high level, which nobody cares about. Nobody wants to hear me say that.

I don't need a field of a thousand people. Anybody can tell you that whoever needs help, I'm happy to help.

I spent a long time trying to build up an organisation [the Lance Armstrong Foundation that changed its name to Livestrong after his confession] to help a lot of people.

Everything in my life is in perspective. OK, perspective ebbs and flows. I've had bad days, but they weren't in the last years. A bad day is 2 October 1996: 'We've got bad news for you, you've got advanced testicular cancer and you've got a coin's toss chance of survival.' That's a bad day.

It's tougher for me. But I don't think that's imperative to me starting a new movement, or revive an old movement, to help people.

The ban doesn't have anything to do with Livestrong or my ability to work in [the cancer] community. Perhaps it speeds it up. I don't know the examples in Great Britain of athletes who have fallen. I know the examples in the United States - the Tiger Woods, the Michael Vicks, even the Bill Clintons - people who are still out there able to work.

If you go to Wikipedia and you look at the Tour de France, there's this huge block in World War One with no winners, and there's another block in World War Two. And then it seems like there's another world war.

I wanted to win the Tour de France. And when I won it once, I wanted to do it again, and again, and again, it just kept going. So there wasn't another competitive environment.

What matters is ultimately what collectively those people on the street - whether that's the cycling community, the cancer community - it matters what they think.

There was certainly a dishonesty there that I think is totally regrettable and inexcusable. The ringleading, the bullying: not totally true.

I got the three things I wanted. I did my job, I worked hard in the process, and I cherish the memories, and they're mine.

I guess if I looked at it from an athletic standpoint, I don't really need to win another Tour. Seven Tours for me was a dream, six broke the record, so that eight doesn't really mean much.

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

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.

That was my decision, so I have to be responsible for that. It was one of the biggest mistakes of my life and I don't have a good reason for why I wanted to come back, I don't have a good reason for doing it all.

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

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.

I look forward to a time when lawyers aren't in the top three calls every day, and all you care about is how your kids are doing in school or what the weather's like and the great day you had with your family.

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.

At this point of my life, I'm not out to protect anybody. I'm out to protect seven people, and they all have the last name Armstrong.