Author details
All Roger Bannister Quotes
I think that is a universal adolescent feeling, trying to find your place. The adolescent who is perfectly adjusted to his environment, I've yet to meet.
Roger Bannister
60% of people like this quote
Life was very simple. My parents had come from the North of England, which is a fairly rugged, bleak, hard-working part of England, and so there was not the expectation of luxury.
Roger Bannister
59% of people like this quote
I couldn't disappoint people. I did not want to fail and exhaust myself, because I was the kind of runner who trained so little that I couldn't race again within another 10 days.
Roger Bannister
58% of people like this quote
Mothers, unless they were very poor, didn't work. Both of my parents had to leave education. My mother had to work in a cotton mill until 18 or 19, when she took some training in domestic science.
Roger Bannister
57% of people like this quote
I raced supremely well. I felt I was as well fitted to do it as I had ever been, and as perhaps I might ever be. I went climbing three weeks before, because I was feeling fed up with running.
Roger Bannister
56% of people like this quote
When I was about to break a world record and become well known, my mother used to say that for her the important thing was for me to become a doctor - a career which had not been possible in her generation and in her society. Sport was something to be set aside.
Roger Bannister
56% of people like this quote
The Athletic Association competed against the University. So there was an event. You cannot break world records unless it is an established event, and you have three timekeepers, and the whole thing is organized.
Roger Bannister
55% of people like this quote
I was always a great bundle of energy. As a child, instead of walking, I would run. And so running, which is a pain to a lot of people, was always a pleasure to me because it was so easy.
Roger Bannister
55% of people like this quote
My family actually lived in the same village for about 400 years. They had great stability until the last century. People lived and intermarried in small villages.
Roger Bannister
55% of people like this quote
Our house was bombed, and the roof fell in. We were sitting under the stairs of the basement, and we were quite safe, but it brought home the realization. In two nights 400 people were killed in small town.
Roger Bannister
53% of people like this quote
The reason sport is attractive to many of the general public is that it's filled with reversals. What you think may happen doesn't happen. A champion is beaten, an unknown becomes a champion.
Roger Bannister
53% of people like this quote
I lived on the top of one hill and the school was at the top of another hill. Nobody ever went to school by car-we didn't have any cars during the war. So that to and from school was itself a training.
Roger Bannister
53% of people like this quote
My athleticism was really the core to social acceptance, because in those days the overwhelming number of students came from more of a public school background than I did.
Roger Bannister
52% of people like this quote
It's a question of spreading the available energy, aerobic and anaerobic, evenly over four minutes. If you run one part too fast, you pay a price. If you run another part more slowly your overall time is slower.
Roger Bannister
52% of people like this quote
I came from such a simple origin, without any great privilege, and I would say I also wanted to make a mark. It wasn't until I was about 15 that I appeared in a race.
Roger Bannister
52% of people like this quote
Related authors