Top 100 Jack LaLanne Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “I see a sea of millions of people going down with their own negative thoughts, going down for the third time in this big sea of iniquity and negativity.”

— Jack LaLanne

52. “There are so many health food nuts out there that eat nothing but natural foods but they don’t exercise and they look terrible.”

— Jack LaLanne

53. “By exercise. I’ll tell you one thing, you don’t always have to be on the go. I sit around a lot, I read a lot, and I do watch television. But I also work out for two hours every day of my life, even when I’m on the road.”

— Jack LaLanne

54. “It’s survival of the fittest. You can’t have everything perfect, that’s impossible, but the fit survive. The fit can handle the impurities in the air and in the water, but the poor people who are sick, it really affects them more.”

— Jack LaLanne

55. “You put junk in, junk comes out. You put good in, good comes out.”

— Jack LaLanne

56. “You should do it against the clock. Say you are going to do 30 laps in 15 minutes. Then you try to do it each day a little faster. That is putting demands on the body, and that is how you build up. You keep up your energy instead of going downhill.”

— Jack LaLanne

57. “The essence of decay is inactivity.”

— Jack LaLanne

58. “I’m a believer in routine. I like to see people work out at the same time each day.”

— Jack LaLanne

59. “Focus on your problem zones, your strength, your energy, your flexibility and all the rest. Maybe your chest is flabby or your hips or waist need toning. Also, you should change your program every thirty days. That’s the key.”

— Jack LaLanne

60. “Living is like training for an athletic event. You have to have goals and challenges; you need to exercise and eat right.”

— Jack LaLanne

61. “Stay in shape. And remember, daily exercise is a must. Plan for it, and do it. The rewards will be well worth it.”

— Jack LaLanne

62. “My top priority in life is my workout. Regardless of what happens, I hit that gym. Even when I was in the hospital twice with serious knee operations: Right after I came out of anesthesia, there was a chin bar over my head and dumbbells. I worked out immediately.”

— Jack LaLanne

63. “What the hell do doctors know about exercise? Most of them know zero. You gotta push elderly people to failure like anybody else. Then the body responds.”

— Jack LaLanne

64. “Life is great when your in shape!”

— Jack LaLanne

65. “Sometimes people – especially people over 40 – underestimate what they really are capable of. They believe they’re not capable of doing something great. I tell people who are over 40, “I don’t want your best. I want better than that. I want better than what you perceive your best is.””

— Jack LaLanne

66. “Go on, have a glass of wine with dinner. What is wine, anyway? Pure grapes. A glass of wine is much better for you than a Coke.”

— Jack LaLanne

67. “We don’t know all the answers. If we knew all the answers we’d be bored, wouldn’t we? We keep looking, searching, trying to get more knowledge.”

— Jack LaLanne

68. “Most people, when they reach a certain age, let down and talk about what they used to do. Well, who gives a damn about what you used to do? It’s what you’re doing now.”

— Jack LaLanne

69. “I say stick with Mother Nature as much as possible.”

— Jack LaLanne

70. “I can’t die. It would ruin my image.”

— Jack LaLanne

71. “If you’re tired and pooped out all the time, do you have love and compassion in your heart for your fellow man? You don’t even like yourself!”

— Jack LaLanne

72. “You need to make good health a hobby.”

— Jack LaLanne

73. “I want to move well and comfortably, and enjoy the world around me.”

— Jack LaLanne

74. “All athletes would be better if they eat better. Junk in equals Junk out.”

— Jack LaLanne

75. “Exercise is king. Nutrition is queen. Together, you’ve got a kingdom. If you have a Corvette, you don’t put water in the tank. The human machine deserves the same treatment.”

— Jack LaLanne

76. “Virtually everything we do in life is a matter of habit. Habits make us who we are. Why not change your habits to better your life?”

— Jack LaLanne

77. “You can’t get rid of it with exercise alone. You can do the most vigorous exercise and only burn up 300 calories in an hour. If you’ve got fat on your body, the exercise firms and tones the muscles. But when you use that tape measure, what makes it bigger? It’s the fat!”

— Jack LaLanne

78. “You only live once, why be miserable? Fat people are miserable – you are carrying 50 lbs on your shoulders all day, you get a disease called “pooped-out itis”. Don’t tell me that they are happy with the way they look and feel. I have to be honest, that is all I have.”

— Jack LaLanne

79. “People will set a New Year’s resolution: “I’m gonna get in shape this year.” But they don’t set a parameter for how they’re gonna measure it. Or if they do measure it, they wait until the first day of the next year. You’d never run a business that way. Document your progress.”

— Jack LaLanne

80. “You can exercise vigorously and eat junk and get by. But you can’t eat perfectly and not exercise. Look at many athletes today; they are human garbage cans. They eat anything, but they exercise so hard they burn it up. But why not exercise and put the right fuel in too?”

— Jack LaLanne

81. “Look at the average American diet: ice cream, butter, cheese, whole milk, all this fat. People don’t realize how much of this stuff you get by the end of the day. High blood pressure is from all this high-fat eating.”

— Jack LaLanne

82. “My wife is my protector. Without her, I’m nothing. She wants to please me, and I want to please her. We’ve been together over 53 years.”

— Jack LaLanne

83. “I’d rather see you drink a glass of wine than a glass of milk. So many people drink Coca-Cola and all these soft drinks with sugar. Some of these drinks have 8 or 9 teaspoons of sugar in them What’s the good of living if you can’t have the things that give a little enjoyment?”

— Jack LaLanne

84. “If you take steroids, you have to pay the price. They can kill you; there are no shortcuts. It’s like going to bed with a rattlesnake, it’s got to get you.”

— Jack LaLanne

85. “You don’t have to call it God or Jesus. That’s religious humbug to a lot of people, but you’ve gotta believe that nature and spiritual things surround us. That is what put us here! I thank the universe for that every day of my life.”

— Jack LaLanne

86. “You got to do what’s happening today in the world. You got to keep up with time. Keep up to date, keep modern – keep up on your toes!”

— Jack LaLanne

87. “Be young. Keep yourself young by having a good, sporty car like a Corvette. It keeps you on your toes. It keeps you young. It keeps you thinking young. It keeps you thinking modern and good things. Corvette is a modern, modern automobile.”

— Jack LaLanne

88. “Please help my arthritis. Please help me bring up my strength, make me young again.”

— Jack LaLanne

89. “If you lose a couple of inches off your stomach, your business down there will look a lot longer.”

— Jack LaLanne

90. “I only eat fish – no chicken, no turkey, just fish. I get all my protein from fish and egg whites.”

— Jack LaLanne

91. “The secret to a long and healthy marriage is to work at it and don’t try and change each other.”

— Jack LaLanne

92. “The crusade is never off my mind – the exercise I do, the food I eat, the thought I think – all this and how I can help make my profession better-respected. To me, this one thing – physical culture and nutrition – is the salvation of America.”

— Jack LaLanne

93. “You can take them in a wheelchair and put them in a pool, so they can move their arms and legs. In a pool disabled people can do things that they can’t normally do otherwise.”

— Jack LaLanne

94. “If you’ve got a big gut and you start doing sit-ups, you are going to get bigger because you build up the muscle. You’ve got to get rid of that fat! How do you get rid of fat? By changing your diet.”

— Jack LaLanne

95. “Maybe 50 or 60 percent of all divorces are predicated on someone’s being physically unfit. Who wants to live with negativism? Love goes out the window.”

— Jack LaLanne

96. “That is the beautiful part about weights: even if you are 100 year old, you can lift something. Maybe it’s only a half a pound or a pound or two pounds. It will still do something.”

— Jack LaLanne

97. “Have you seen some of the crap they’re selling as exercise equipment now? How about that Suzanne Somers? She should have been thrown in jail for selling the piece-of-crap Thigh Master. It just develops a little muscle on the inner thigh. What good is that?”

— Jack LaLanne

98. “I was the worst, most sickly kid of all – 30 pounds underweight. The girls used to beat me up. Actually I was a mean kid, early on because I had no self-esteem.”

— Jack LaLanne

99. “The tape measure doesn’t lie. Get that tape measure out and put it on your hips and your waist. Keep checking it. And keep exercising and cutting those calories down until that tape measure gets close to where you were in your prime.”

— Jack LaLanne

100. “They thought that athletes that worked out with my system wouldn’t be able to throw a ball because they’d be too muscle bound. Those are the misconceptions I had to go through for about 40 years.”

— Jack LaLanne