Top 35 Michael Johnson Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The only one who can beat me is me.”

— Michael Johnson

Featured in: Running Quotes

2. “A good traveller is one who knows how to travel with the mind.”

— Michael Johnson

3. “A good mentor offers directions and driving tips from the back seat. You still have to drive the car.”

— Michael Johnson

4. “As strong as my legs are, it is my mind that has made me a champion.”

— Michael Johnson

Featured in: Strong Quotes

5. “Life is often compared to a marathon, but I think it is more like being a sprinter; long stretches of hard work punctuated by brief moments in which we are given the opportunity to perform at our best.”

— Michael Johnson

6. “That first peak is the best place to pause and look back, to see if you took the easiest route, to learn the lessons from the first climb. And it is the best place to examine the terrain ahead, to change your plans and goals, to take a deep breath and begin climbing again.”

— Michael Johnson

7. “The basis of self-discipline: Don’t allow the edges to blur.”

— Michael Johnson

8. “Protect your good image from the eyes of negative viewers, who may look at your good appearance with an ugly fiendish eye, and ruin your positive qualities with their chemical infested tongues.”

— Michael Johnson

9. “The mind is absolutely instrumental in achieving results, even for athletes. Sports psychology is a very small part, but it’s extremely important when you’re winning and losing races by hundredths and even thousandths of a second.”

— Michael Johnson

10. “It is important that you strive for humility, but not humiliation, for a cool, level-headed confidence, not a stiff, delusional arrogance.”

— Michael Johnson

11. “You can’t control what the other athlete is going to do; you can’t control anything except for your competition and how you execute the race or how you execute the task.”

— Michael Johnson

12. “I work hard to improve myself as a person – as a father, as a husband, as a manager. I’m always on that mission.”

— Michael Johnson

13. “Your problems pale in comparison with those of the millions of people in the world who do not have enough to eat.”

— Michael Johnson

14. “Along with trustworthiness, consistency is the thing to look for when you surround yourself with people who can help you on your quest.”

— Michael Johnson

15. “Be who you are in every situation.”

— Michael Johnson

16. “Don’t shoot for something unattainable – completely outside of your nature or opportunity.”

— Michael Johnson

17. “How could you look more stupid than to be the guy accepting a bronze medal in gold shoes?”

— Michael Johnson

18. “When you’re gone I can go running though the house screaming and no one will ever hear me.”

— Michael Johnson

19. “A bird, music and food -desert island items.”

— Michael Johnson

20. “You learn as much from those who have failed as from those who have succeeded.”

— Michael Johnson

21. “I always wanted to be a sprinter.”

— Michael Johnson

22. “One of the main techniques I used was focusing on the goal and visualising myself competing in the race before the race started.”

— Michael Johnson

23. “I’ve had to learn that not everybody does things my way. But I do expect the absolute best of everyone around me, and I’m disappointed when people don’t expect that of themselves.”

— Michael Johnson

24. “The only thing you can never change is your values.”

— Michael Johnson

25. “Opting for gold shoes could have been considered downright cocky, but I was confident and never doubted my ability to deliver gold medals to match my shimmering footwear.”

— Michael Johnson

26. “There’s a complete difference between training for a specific event and goal and just training.”

— Michael Johnson

27. “You owe it to yourself to find your own unorthodox way of succeeding, or sometimes, just surviving.”

— Michael Johnson

28. “Rivalries don’t necessarily mean races being close at major championships. I had a rivalry with Butch Reynolds for many years. I won all the races, but Butch was the world record holder before I came into the sport, he was extremely talented and he was the only other man running 43 seconds.”

— Michael Johnson

29. “They think because I’m small, they can do what they want to do to me. But I’m not weak. If I lower my shoulder and they lower they’re shoulder, they’re going to go down.”

— Michael Johnson

30. “All my life I believed I became an athlete through my own determination, but it’s impossible to think that being descended from slaves hasn’t left an imprint through the generations.”

— Michael Johnson

31. “As an athlete, I’d average four hours a day. It doesn’t sound like a lot when some people say they’re training for 10 hours, but theirs includes lunch, massage and breaks. My four hours was packed with work.”

— Michael Johnson

32. “I believe that it is better to learn from the diverse people around us than to try in vain to emulate them, better to be a teacher than a role model. As strong as my legs are, it is my mind that has made me a champion.”

— Michael Johnson

Featured in: Strong Quotes

33. “I don’t always do a lot of predicting, but, when I get a really strong feeling about something, I will tell people.”

— Michael Johnson

Featured in: Strong Quotes

34. “I had already been into my professional career for six years and had not won an individual gold medal at the Olympics. There was a tremendous amount of pressure going into 1996 to get it done.”

— Michael Johnson

35. “As an athlete, I was never really comfortable with being a celebrity.”

— Michael Johnson

36. “Examine the opportunities, the challenges you’ve given yourself.”

— Michael Johnson

37. “You can make goals for family, relationships, anything.”

— Michael Johnson

38. “Difficult as it was to hear, slavery has benefited descendants like me – I believe there is a superior athletic gene in us.”

— Michael Johnson