Top 44 Quotes & Sayings by Wilma Rudolph

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American athlete Wilma Rudolph.

Last updated on December 22, 2024.

Wilma Glodean Rudolph was an American sprinter, who became a world-record-holding Olympic champion and international sports icon in track and field following her successes in the 1956 and 1960 Olympic Games. Rudolph competed in the 200-meter dash and won a bronze medal in the 4 × 100-meter relay at the 1956 Summer Olympics at Melbourne, Australia. She also won three gold medals, in the 100- and 200-meter individual events and the 4 x 100-meter relay at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, Italy. Rudolph was acclaimed the fastest woman in the world in the 1960s and became the first American woman to win three gold medals in a single Olympic Games.

American - Athlete | June 23, 1940 - November 12, 1994

Source: Wikipedia

You become world famous, and you sit with kings and queens, and then your first job is just a job. You can't go back to living the way you did before because you've been taken out of one setting and shown the other. That becomes a struggle and makes you struggle.

Wilma Rudolph

In college, I was an education major and qualified for several jobs. But the fame that came with the Olympic medals was too threatening to many people.

Wilma Rudolph

Later on in life, I discovered that in order for me to be successful, I had to have a challenge. I can't do a nine to five job.

Wilma Rudolph

They would say, 'If you run around too much as a girl, you'll never be able to have children.' The running was supposed to be too much strain for your body, and your body would never be the same again.

Wilma Rudolph

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.

Wilma Rudolph

When the sun is shining I can do anything; no mountain is too high, no trouble too difficult to overcome.

Wilma Rudolph

Sometimes it takes years to really grasp what has happened to your life.

Wilma Rudolph

I loved the feeling of freedom in running, the fresh air, the feeling that the only person I'm competing with is me.

Wilma Rudolph

Down South, there was the old 'ladies-don't-do-such-things' way of thinking. You couldn't be a lady and a good athlete at the same time.

Wilma Rudolph

I believe in me more than anything in this world.

Wilma Rudolph

No matter what accomplishments you make, somebody helps you.

Wilma Rudolph

After the scarlet fever and the whooping cough, I remember I started to get mad about it all... I went through the stage of asking myself, 'Wilma, what is this existence all about? Is it about being sick all the time? It can't be.' So I started getting angry about things, fighting back in a new way with a vengeance.

Wilma Rudolph

It doesn't matter what you're trying to accomplish. It's all a matter of discipline. I was determined to discover what life held for me beyond the inner-city streets.

Wilma Rudolph

But when you come from a large, wonderful family, there's always a way to achieve your goals.

Wilma Rudolph

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.

Wilma Rudolph

I was six years old before I realized that there was something wrong with me... But I did have this crooked left leg, and my left foot was turned inward.

Wilma Rudolph

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.

Wilma Rudolph

There were good jobs, but they were never what I wanted to do. Somehow, people always thought of Wilma Rudolph as a threat.

Wilma Rudolph

The triumph can't be had without the struggle.

Wilma Rudolph

Never underestimate the power of dreams and the influence of the human spirit. We are all the same in this notion: The potential for greatness lives within each of us.

Wilma Rudolph

When I ran, I felt like a butterfly that was free.

Wilma Rudolph

My doctor told me I would never walk again. My mother told me I would. I believed my mother.

Wilma Rudolph

I don't know why I run so fast. I just run.

Wilma Rudolph

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.

Wilma Rudolph

No one has a life where everything that happened was good. I think the thing that made life good for me is that I never looked back. I've always been positive, no matter what happened.

Wilma Rudolph

Black women . . . work because their husbands can't make enough money at their jobs to keep everything going. . . . They don't go to work to find fulfillment, or adventure, or glamour and romance, like so many white women think they are doing. Black women work out of necessity.

Wilma Rudolph

No matter what great things you accomplish, somebody helps you.

Wilma Rudolph

What do you do after you are world-famous and nineteen or twenty and you have sat with prime ministers, kings and queens, the Pope? Do you go back home and take a job? What do you do to keep your sanity? You come back to the real world.

Wilma Rudolph

I knew that whatever I set my mind to do. I could do.

Wilma Rudolph

Winning is great, sure, but if you are really going to do something in life, the secret is learning how to lose.

Wilma Rudolph

I would be disappointed if I were remembered as a runner because I feelthat my contribution to the youth of America has far exceeded the woman who was the Olympic champion.

Wilma Rudolph

'I can't' are two words that have never been in my vocabulary. I believe in me more than anything in this world.

Wilma Rudolph

By the time I was 12 I was challenging every boy in our neighborhood at running, jumping, everything.

Wilma Rudolph

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.

Wilma Rudolph

My mother taught me very early to believe I could achieve any accomplishment I wanted to. The first was to walk without braces.

Wilma Rudolph

I tell them that the most important aspect is to be yourself and have confidence in yourself.

Wilma Rudolph

When I was going through my transition of being famous, I tried to ask God, why was I here? What was my purpose? Surely, it wasn't just to win three gold medals. There has to be more to this life than that.

Wilma Rudolph

I had a series of childhood illnesses... scarlet fever.... pneumonia.... Polio. I walked with braces until I was at least nine years old. My life wasn't like the average person who grew up and decided to enter the world of sports.

Wilma Rudolph

The potential for greatness lives within us all.

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.

Wilma Rudolph