Top 50 Ayrton Senna Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “I am not designed to come second or third. I am designed to win.”

— Ayrton Senna

Featured in: Winning Quotes

2. “I have no idols. I admire work, dedication and competence.”

— Ayrton Senna

3. “If you no longer go for a gap that exists, you are no longer a racing driver.”

— Ayrton Senna

4. “Being second is to be the first of the ones who lose.”

— Ayrton Senna

5. “Nothing can separate me from the love of God.”

— Ayrton Senna

6. “And so you touch this limit, something happens and you suddenly can go a little bit further. With your mind power, your determination, your instinct, and the experience as well, you can fly very high.”

— Ayrton Senna

7. “If you have God on your side, everything becomes clear.”

— Ayrton Senna

8. “Fear is exciting for me.”

— Ayrton Senna

9. “If a person has no dreams, they no longer have any reason to live. Dreaming is necessary, although in the dream reality should be glimpsed. For me this is a principle of life.”

— Ayrton Senna

10. “The past is just data. I only see the future.”

— Ayrton Senna

11. “I believe that we start to see our true personalities when we go through the most difficult moments. This is when we get stronger.”

— Ayrton Senna

12. “Once you are in it you are in it, you have to go all the way to the end because you commit yourself to such a level where there is no compromise. You give everything you have absolutely everything. Sometimes you find even more because you require more if you want to stay ahead and you want to win.”

— Ayrton Senna

13. “We are made of emotions. We are all looking for emotions, basically. It’s only a question of finding the way to experience them.”

— Ayrton Senna

14. “Because in a split second, it’s gone.”

— Ayrton Senna

15. “You commit yourself to such a level where there is no compromise. You give everything you have, everything, absolutely everything.”

— Ayrton Senna

16. “I continuously go further and further learning about my own limitations, my body limitation, psychological limitations. It’s a way of life for me.”

— Ayrton Senna

17. “Winning is the most important. Everything is consequence of that.”

— Ayrton Senna

18. “I want to live fully, very intensely. I would never want to live partially, suffering from illness or injury. If I ever happen to have an accident that eventually costs my life, I hope it happens in one instant.”

— Ayrton Senna

19. “I cannot live on an island of prosperity when I’m surrounded by a sea of misery.”

— Ayrton Senna

Featured in: Quotes About the Sea

20. “With regard to performance, commitment, effort, dedication, there is no middle ground. Or you do something very well or not at all.”

— Ayrton Senna

21. “I don’t know driving in another way which isn’t risky. Each one has to improve himself. Each driver has its limit. My limit is a little bit further than other’s.”

— Ayrton Senna

22. “You either commit yourself as a professional racing driver that’s designed to win races or you come second or you come third or fifth and am not design to come third, fourth or fifth, I? race to win.”

— Ayrton Senna

Featured in: Design Quotes

23. “The main thing is to be yourself. Many times its through a mistake that you learn. And the main thing is to make sure you learn through your mistakes and get better.”

— Ayrton Senna

24. “When you’re not happy, you need to be strong to change, resisting the temptation of turning back. The weak goes nowhere.”

— Ayrton Senna

25. “You must take the compromise to win, or else nothing. That means: you race or you do not.”

— Ayrton Senna

26. “By being a racing driver means you are racing with other people. And if you no longer go for a gap that exists, you are no longer a racing driver because we are competing – competing to win.”

— Ayrton Senna

27. “When you are fitted in a racing car and you race to win, second or third place is not enough.”

— Ayrton Senna

28. “Money is a strange business. People who haven’t got it aim it strongly. People who have are full of troubles.”

— Ayrton Senna

29. “I started racing go-karts. And I love karts. It’s the most breath taking sport in the world. More than F1, indeed, I used to like it most.”

— Ayrton Senna

30. “Just because I believe in God, just because I have faith in God, it doesn’t mean that I’m immune. It doesn’t mean that I’m immortal.”

— Ayrton Senna

31. “And suddenly I realised that I was no longer driving the car consciously. I was driving it by a kind of instinct, only I was in a different dimension.”

— Ayrton Senna

32. “These things bring you to reality as to how fragile you are; at the same moment you are doing something that nobody else is able to do. The same moment that you are seen as the best, the fastest and somebody that cannot be touched, you are enormously fragile.”

— Ayrton Senna

33. “Racing, competing, it’s in my blood. It’s part of me, it’s part of my life; I have been doing it all my life and it stands out above everything else.”

— Ayrton Senna

34. “I believe if you are doing something like competing, like motor racing, you either do well or forget it.”

— Ayrton Senna

35. “You will never know the feeling of a driver when winning a race. The helmet hides feelings that cannot be understood.”

— Ayrton Senna

36. “Women – always in trouble with them, but can’t live without them.”

— Ayrton Senna

37. “On a given day, a given circumstance, you think you have a limit.”

— Ayrton Senna

38. “It was like I was in a tunnel. Not only the tunnel under the hotel but the whole circuit was a tunnel. I was just going and going, more and more and more and more. I was way over the limit but still able to find even more.”

— Ayrton Senna

39. “When a man holds you round the throat, I don’t think he has come to apologise.”

— Ayrton Senna

40. “In many ways we are a dream for people, not a reality. That counts in your mind. It shows how much you can touch people, and as much as you can try to give those people somehow it is nothing compared to what they live in their own mind, in their dreams, for you.”

— Ayrton Senna

41. “The danger sensation is exciting. The challenge is to find new dangers.”

— Ayrton Senna

42. “My biggest error? Something that is to happen yet.”

— Ayrton Senna

43. “If you think I’m fast, just wait until you see my nephew Bruno.”

— Ayrton Senna

44. “Wealthy men can’t live in an island that is encircled by poverty. We all breathe the same air. We must give a chance to everyone, at least a basic chance.”

— Ayrton Senna

45. “I was already on pole, then by half a second and then one second and I just kept going. Suddenly I was nearly two seconds faster than anybody else, including my team mate with the same car.”

— Ayrton Senna

46. “Of course there are moments that you wonder how long you should be doing it because there are other aspects which are not nice, of this lifestyle. But I just love winning.”

— Ayrton Senna

47. “There are no small accidents on this circuit.”

— Ayrton Senna

48. “Then suddenly something just kicked me. I kind of woke up and realised that I was in a different atmosphere than you normally are. My immediate reaction was to back off, slow down.”

— Ayrton Senna

49. “It’s important that the drivers stay together, because in difficult moments we have each other. If we are not together the financial and political interests of the organisers and constructors come to the fore.”

— Ayrton Senna

50. “It’s going to be a season with lots of accidents, and I’ll risk saying that we’ll be lucky if something really serious doesn’t happen.”

— Ayrton Senna