Florence Griffith Joyner quotes: Flo-Jo’s finest words.
“Nothing is going to be handed to you – you have to make things happen.”
“Your dreams deserve a try… the sky’s the limit!”
“Hold on to your dreams and never, ever give up.”
“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.”
“The main reason I wanted to be successful was to get out of the ghetto. My parents helped direct my path.”
“I know what I have to do, and I’m going to do whatever it takes. If I do it, I’ll come out a winner, and it doesn’t matter what anyone else does.”
“People don’t pay much attention to you when you are second best. I wanted to see what it felt like to be number one.”
“Parents need to be role models for children and instill in them the fact that exercise and healthy eating should be lifelong habits.”
“I love working with kids, talking with them and listening to them. I always encourage kids to reach beyond their dreams. Don’t try to be like me. Be better than me.”
“When anyone tells me I can’t do anything… I’m just not listening any more.”
“I like being unconventional. Conventional is not for me. I like things that are uniquely Flo. I like being different.”
“I believe in the impossible because no one else does.”
“You were born to run. Maybe not that fast, maybe not that far, maybe not as efficiently as others. But to get up and move, to fire up that entire energy-producing, oxygen-delivering, bone-strengthening process we call running.”
“I have been running since I was seven. I was trying to restructure the way my body was made instead of trying to master the way I ran. I would get so frustrated with my starts in practices that I would just cry. When I ran, I wouldn’t even try to get out of the blocks, I would just run.”
“A muscle is like a car. If you want it to run well early in the morning, you have to warm it up.”
“People want to think that staying in shape costs a lot of money. They couldn’t be more wrong. It doesn’t cost anything to walk. And it’s probably a lot cheaper to go to the corner store and buy vegetables than take a family out for fast food.”
“I’m the world’s fastest woman along with my sister-in-law, Jackie Joyner-Kersee. We sprinkled some serious black girl magic in track and field during the ’80s.”
“Dress good to look good. Look good to feel good. And feel good to run fast!”
“I used to be teased for the way I wore my hair at school. I used to do things like wear a different-colored sock on each leg.”
“I had been designing my own track uniforms since high school. After I retired from sports I continued to pursue fashion, launching my own line and designing the uniforms of the Indiana Pacers.”
“I excelled in the fields of fashion design, acting, writing, sportscasting as well as being a wife and mother. One of my most impressive achievements was my appointment as co-chair of the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports.”
“I never forgot where I came from. I devoted time and resources to helping children – especially those growing up in our most devastated neighborhoods – make the most of their own talents.”
“That’s what I’d like to do on the President’s Council. Make sports and athletics available to every youth in America, not just one day a week like it was for me, but every day.”
“I don’t look at myself as being famous. I look at myself as an athlete. If the money is there, I’d be happy, but I have to be happy within myself first.”
“To do justice to a lifelong dream of being a writer, I must give it the intense concentration and focus I gave to track. To do both with excellence is not possible. It is with a sense of sadness and joyous anticipation that I leave track and move on.”
“I pray hard, work hard, and leave the rest to God.”
