Top 40 Roger Bannister Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Just because they say it’s impossible doesn’t mean you can’t do it.”

— Roger Bannister

2. “Sport, like all of life, is about taking your chances.”

— Roger Bannister

Featured in: Running Quotes

3. “Every morning in Africa a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must move faster than the lion or it will not survive. Every morning a lion wakes up and it knows it must move faster than the slowest gazelle or it will starve. It doesn’t matter if you are the lion or the gazelle, when the sun comes up, you better be moving.”

— Roger Bannister

4. “It is the brain, not the heart or lungs, that is the critical organ.”

— Roger Bannister

5. “Doctors and scientists said breaking the four-minute mile was impossible, that one would die in the attempt. Thus, when I got up from the track after collapsing at the finish line, I figured I was dead.”

— Roger Bannister

6. “We run, not because we think it is doing us good, but because we enjoy it and cannot help ourselves.”

— Roger Bannister

Featured in: Running Quotes

7. “The human spirit is indomitable. No one can ever say you must not run faster than this or jump higher than that. There will never be a time when the human spirit will not be able to better existing records.”

— Roger Bannister

8. “My concentration was really on getting to university and becoming a doctor. My parents let me know that school marks were important. Achievement was something which came by hard work.”

— Roger Bannister

9. “Sport is not about being wrapped up in cotton wool. Sport as about adapting to the unexpected and being able to modify plans at the last minute. Sport, like all life, is about taking risks.”

— Roger Bannister

10. “The man who can drive himself further once the effort gets painful is the man who will win.”

— Roger Bannister

11. “Whether we athletes liked it or not, the 4-minute mile had become rather like an Everest: a challenge to the human spirit, it was a barrier that seemed to defy all attempts to break it, an irksome reminder that men’s striving might be in vain.”

— Roger Bannister

12. “It’s amazing that more people have climbed Mount Everest than have broken the 4-minute mile.”

— Roger Bannister

13. “My introduction to track racing was through the background of cross country running, which is not a sport perhaps as popular in America as it is in England.”

— Roger Bannister

14. “Without the concentration of the mind and the will, performance would not result.”

— Roger Bannister

15. “No longer conscious of my movement, I discovered a new unity with nature. I had found a new source of power and beauty, a source I never dreamt existed.”

— Roger Bannister

16. “The essence of sports is that while you’re doing it, nothing else matters, but after you stop, there is a place, generally not very important, where you would put it.”

— Roger Bannister

17. “It is a paradox to say the human body has no ‘limit.’ There must be a limit to the speed at which men can run. I feel this may be around 3:30 for the mile. However, another paradox remains – if an athlete manages to run 3:30, another runner could be found to marginally improve on that time.”

— Roger Bannister

18. “I couldn’t touch my toes with straight legs, but I could break 4 minutes for the mile.”

— Roger Bannister

19. “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

20. “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

21. “Beating John Landy was my defining race.”

— Roger Bannister

22. “The mile has all the elements of a drama.”

— Roger Bannister

Featured in: Running Quotes

23. “If I faltered, there would be no arms to hold me and the world would be a cold and forbidding place.”

— Roger Bannister

24. “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

25. “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

26. “I trained for less than three-quarters of an hour, maybe five days a week – I didn’t have time to do more. But it was all about quality, not quantity – so I didn’t waste time jogging, ever.”

— Roger Bannister

27. “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

28. “You get very tired, and there was a certain amount of pain and you slow up. Your legs are so tired that you are in fact slowing. If you don’t keep running, keep your blood circulating, the muscles stop pumping the blood back and you get dizzy.”

— Roger Bannister

29. “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

30. “Our concept of a family holiday was going to a guest house in the Lake district or Wales where walking was part of the holiday.”

— Roger Bannister

31. “I found longer races boring. I found the mile just perfect.”

— Roger Bannister

32. “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

33. “If a man coaches himself, then he has only himself to blame when he is beaten.”

— Roger Bannister

34. “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

35. “I was playing rugby and the other games English school children do, and there was an event in which races were run, and I won these by a considerable margin.”

— Roger Bannister

36. “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

37. “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

38. “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

39. “May is a very early time in the year and the weather is usually bad. You cannot run a fast mile race if there is a strong wind, because it makes your running uneven.”

— Roger Bannister

Featured in: Strong Quotes

40. “Your spikes, which were really quite long then, would catch the material of the track and your shoe would get heavier. I was simply filing them down and rubbing some graphite on the spikes. I thought I would run more effectively.”

— Roger Bannister

41. “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

42. “I’ve always been very impatient. At age 10 I frankly found life boring, and I can remember age 9 having the awful thought, as it seems now looking back on it, A war! That should liven things up a bit!”

— Roger Bannister

43. “It had always been a British preoccupation to hold this mile record.”

— Roger Bannister

44. “It seems quite impossible to walk in America.”

— Roger Bannister

45. “The man who goes on, even when it’s the hardest to be the winner.”

— Roger Bannister

46. “Every time I ran the mile I was aware of my own weakness, there was some opponent who could give me a hell of a fight, so I never went into a race with a sense of invincibility. I always had that feeling of fragility and nerves which made me run faster.”

— Roger Bannister

47. “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

48. “I was involved in music, acting, and some running, but my firm wish was to become a doctor. That was the formative age when I had decided on the pattern of my career.”

— Roger Bannister