Top 100 Arnold Palmer Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “I can sum it up like this: Thank God for the game of golf.”

— Arnold Palmer

52. “It is such a disappointment in American political reaction and actions. When some of our politicians are flying around the country in private airplanes all the time, using public services as their mode of private transportation, and then criticizing us who are in business.”

— Arnold Palmer

53. “I can’t afford the luxury of music while I’m flying an airplane. I have to pay attention to what I’m doing.”

— Arnold Palmer

54. “I was born in 1929, that was the depression, so the golf course was manned by my father and two guys, they worked for my dad and they took me with them everywhere they went. And it was fun.”

— Arnold Palmer

55. “When you get into competition and get under pressure, and get over that ball and are looking at it, and know you have to hit it, it is having that system to depend on to get that ball to where you want it to be.”

— Arnold Palmer

56. “I didn’t get playing professional golf until I was 25 years old. And I always said that if I could make it work, I would play as long as I could walk.”

— Arnold Palmer

57. “I like the Miami because I could play golf all winter.”

— Arnold Palmer

58. “The fans, I loved them. My mother would be in the gallery, I would look right at my mother and not remember.”

— Arnold Palmer

59. “I never felt that I didn’t have a chance to win.”

— Arnold Palmer

60. “Trouble is bad to get into but fun to get out of. If you’re in trouble, eighty percent of the time there’s a way out. If you can see the ball, you can probably hit it; and if you can hit it, you can move it; and if you can move it, you might be able to knock it in the hole. At least it’s fun to try.”

— Arnold Palmer

61. “I suppose I could think of a lot of things to say about the fact that I still play. But I don’t really need to. I can tell you this, that I enjoy it. I still enjoy it. I like to get out in the air and I like to walk and I like to do the things that are involved in playing golf.”

— Arnold Palmer

62. “If you’re stupid enough to whiff, you should be smart enough to forget it.”

— Arnold Palmer

63. “Frankly, I’m not much for funerals unless it’s absolutely an obligation. I don’t feel it serves much of a purpose to go and see my friends just lying there, dead. I try to pay my respects to my friends when they’re alive.”

— Arnold Palmer

64. “I received many years of good advice from my father – how to live, how to play, how to be a gentleman.”

— Arnold Palmer

65. “I played high school golf, I played amateur golf and I started getting officers. I was playing pretty good, won amateur tournaments as a junior, and the whole thing.”

— Arnold Palmer

66. “A lot of people are afraid of winning. I was afraid I might not win.”

— Arnold Palmer

67. “Every day I play golf, that’s my goal. To break 70 the other way. To shoot 70 or better.”

— Arnold Palmer

68. “On the Old Course at St. Andrews: This is the origin of the game, golf in its purest form, and it’s still played that way on a course seemingly untouched by time. Every time I play here, it reminds me that this is still a game.”

— Arnold Palmer

69. “If Tiger Woods slamming his club into the ground is the biggest worry wehave, our sport isinprettygood shape.”

— Arnold Palmer

70. “Sam Snead will fly anywhere in my plane with me. Sam’s not as worried about the danger as he is about saving money.”

— Arnold Palmer

71. “I never felt I could be a complete professional without having won the British Open. It was something you had to do to complete your career.”

— Arnold Palmer

72. “An athlete must have a certain cockiness to succeed and win, but an athlete must also care about the game he or she plays.”

— Arnold Palmer

73. “I try to deign golf courses that are individual in character and individual in their own standing.”

— Arnold Palmer

74. “I think today’s athletes generally are spoiled by what’s happened to salaries, but I also think that golfers have maintained the best demeanor of any sport.”

— Arnold Palmer

75. “I never rooted against an opponent, but I never rooted for him either.”

— Arnold Palmer

76. “In my early days of flying, if you flew on instruments, you were inevitably going to fly in thunderstorms. That was just a part of the business of flying.”

— Arnold Palmer

77. “I would not have been able to accomplish a lot of what I did professionally had I not learned to fly myself and owned an airplane. For example, I was able to fly to an exhibition for the day and be back home in time for dinner. I never would have been able to do that flying commercially.”

— Arnold Palmer

78. “Golf never ceases to be a challenge, even when it really is just you and the ball out there and nobody else.”

— Arnold Palmer

79. “I never met a winner who had a work ethic. Not somebody who says I have so much talent that naturally I won.”

— Arnold Palmer

80. “Everyone I built a course for thinks they have the best golf course in the world and I’m very pleased and proud of that.”

— Arnold Palmer

81. “When I was growing up, they had just found radio.”

— Arnold Palmer

82. “A lot of tournaments that I can remember I made a few bad shots and I was afraid I would lose the tournament and it seemed to work, the putts seemed to go in. Just the Desire.”

— Arnold Palmer

83. “Even before you step up to the ball, have a full battle plan for the hole worked out.”

— Arnold Palmer

84. “I think I’ve heard somebody say that I was a well-dressed golfer. I guess that has something to do with the fact that a lot of people who play golf don’t dress very well.”

— Arnold Palmer

85. “I was playing golf in Palm Springs and after a round I asked the waitress in a restaurant to bring me a glass of iced tea and lemonade. A lady sitting nearby heard me and asked the waitress to bring her a “Palmer,” too. The name caught on and the beverage quickly spread around the country.”

— Arnold Palmer

86. “I have a psychological feeling about things – and if I have something that I need to accomplish and I accomplish it, I let down after that, and that happened to me in golf.”

— Arnold Palmer

87. “As long as I can stay competitive and have fun doing what I’m doing, I guess I’ll keep doing it.”

— Arnold Palmer

88. “If the athlete is fair with the press, he deserves fairness back.”

— Arnold Palmer

89. “I think the guys are more conscious of the fact that being in good physical condition under the conditions that they play will make them better players.”

— Arnold Palmer

90. “I would like to have won more golf tournaments. But I wouldn’t sacrifice my life. I’ve enjoyed it. I’d love to do it again the same way.”

— Arnold Palmer

91. “Winning is a drive, it’s a thing that you feel like when I go to bed at night I go to sleep.”

— Arnold Palmer

92. “I would never felt good if I hadn’t experienced losing, because losing is part of your life. And it something that if I could teach people to understand that I think it could help them a lot.”

— Arnold Palmer

93. “I’m not much for sitting around and thinking about the past or talking about the past. What does that accomplish?”

— Arnold Palmer

94. “I have won the Australian, I won the British, all PGA championships, but I haven’t won the PGA championship.”

— Arnold Palmer

95. “Had I not become a professional golfer, I think I would have pursued some type of career in aviation.”

— Arnold Palmer

96. “I enjoy the press. I understand their business.”

— Arnold Palmer

97. “For years I did take my time, but that was because I hated waiting to hit shots – I adopted a pace where I didn’t have to stand by my ball and wait.”

— Arnold Palmer

98. “I talk to golfers, I talk to my grand kids about their game, and tell them to develop a system, Now, when they’re young. And if they develop that system, it will be the crutch they need to be good. To know that system and make it work for you, know what it is and make it work.”

— Arnold Palmer

99. “All the things that I have derived either directly or indirectly through the game of golf are things I owe a great deal to the game and to the people who support the game.”

— Arnold Palmer

100. “I feel more strongly than ever about this. I would like the professional game freed of golf carts. Golf is a physical game. If we are playing competitive professional golf, we should walk. When I can’t walk 18 holes, I’ll pack it in.”

— Arnold Palmer