A Quote by Christopher McDougall

Know why people run marathons? …Because running is rooted in our collective imagination, and our imagination is rooted in running. Language, art, science; space shuttles, Starry Night, intravascular surgery; they all had their roots in our ability to run. Running was the superpower that made us human — which means its a superpower all humans posses.
Running! If there's any activity happier, more exhilarating, more nourishing to the imagination, I can't think what it might be. In running the mind flies with the body; the mysterious efflorescence of language seems to pulse in the brain, in rhythm with our feet and the swinging of our arms.
Why run? I run because I am an animal. I run because it is part of my genetic wiring. I run because millions of years of evolution have left me programmed to run. And finally, I run because there’s no better way to see the sun rise and set... What the years have shown me is that running clarifies the thinking process as well as purifies the body. I think best - most broadly and most fully - when I am running.
There's something so universal about that sensation, the way running unites our two most primal impulses: fear and pleasure. We run when we're scared, we run when we're ecstatic, we run away from our problems and run around for a good time.
Our grandfathers had to run, run, run. My generation's out of breath. We ain't running no more.
Humans consist of body, mind and imagination. Our bodies are faulty, our minds untrustworthy, but our imagination has made us remarkable.
One man has discovered that by running there is no need to meditate, just by running meditation happens. He must be absolutely body oriented. Nobody has ever thought that by running meditation is possible - but I know, I used to love running myself. It happens. If you go on running, if you run fast, thinking stops, because thinking cannot possibly continue when you are running very fast. For thinking an easy chair is needed, that's why we call thinkers armchair philosophers; they sit and relax in a chair, the body completely relaxed, then the whole energy moves into the mind.
Sometimes you stumble when you push yourself harder and you're trying to run faster or whatever. We forgive ourselves, pick ourselves up, and keep running. We don't cry and stop running because we skinned our knee.
No, no, I never despair, because George Bush is not running the universe. He may be running the United States, he may be running the military, he may be running even the world, but he is not running the universe, he is not running the human heart.
If you get to the point in your career where you're running with a gun - I've yet to run with a gun. I've stood still with a gun, and I've walked with a gun, but I've never run with a gun. Running with a gun, to me, that's when you know you've really made it.
I've been running my whole life. Running into bars, running around the world. But when you have a child, you can't run. That was a revelation.
When you love to run and you train hard enough to really feel it, running is all about freedom. Also, I find that sharing the value of our sport is very important. When I think back on my life, it isn't the winning that I remember so much, it's the people who I met through running.
Man feels the urge to run up against the limits of language. Think for example of the astonishment that anything at all exists. This astonishment cannot be expressed in the form of a question, and there is also no answer whatsoever. Anything we might say is a priori bound to be nonsense. Nevertheless we do run up against the limits of language. Kierkegaard too saw that there is this running up against something, and he referred to it in a fairly similar way (as running up against paradox). This running up against the limits of language is ethics.
There are some days on which we have smart running sessions, which I like. A smart run is to practice running between wickets, so we run the length of the pitch. But runs that are 35-40 minutes long, I find tough.
It is a long time now since I started running but I still remember running up and down hills and running to school as a kid. When I was young I would run for fun and I didn't know back then that this would be my career.
We're [humans] running great risks of doing things that will not be good for us. The cost can be very high indeed if we reach the point where we can't adapt to our own increasingly rapid adaptations. We run the risk of early extinction. So this certainly isn't a triumphalist story, but it is trying to get at what, in the very long run, leads to the amazing creatures that we are.
Voices surround us, always telling us to move faster. It may be our boss, our pastor, our parents, our wives, our husbands, our politicians, or, sadly, even ourselves. So we comply. We increase the speed. We live life in the fast lane because we have no slow lanes anymore. Every lane is fast, and the only comfort our culture can offer is more lanes and increased speed limits. The result? Too many of us are running as fast as we can, and an alarming number of us are running much faster than we can sustain.
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