Top 60 Shawn Johnson Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Stay strong. Stand up. Have a voice.”

— Shawn Johnson

Featured in: Strong Quotes, Believe in Yourself Quotes, Positive Quotes for Women, Strong Women Quotes

2. “As long as you’ve done your best, making mistakes doesn’t matter. You and I are human; we will mess up. What counts is learning from your mistakes and getting back up when life has knocked you down.”

— Shawn Johnson

3. “Don’t force anything. Find what you love and stick with it.”

— Shawn Johnson

4. “Injury taught me I need to learn how to face challenges.”

— Shawn Johnson

5. “I always have someone to look up to, and I think it helps me with motivating myself.”

— Shawn Johnson

6. “I’m trying to stay as calm as possible and focus one day at a time, but when reality sets in, I feel everything: anxiety, excitement, nerves, pressure and joy.”

— Shawn Johnson

7. “My other life keeps me calm and grounded and normal.”

— Shawn Johnson

8. “I have a healthy lifestyle, but there’s nothing you can really do to prevent from rolling an ankle or something like that.”

— Shawn Johnson

9. “I started taking gymnastic classes when I was 3 years old.”

— Shawn Johnson

10. “If you lose the nerves, you lose the sport.”

— Shawn Johnson

11. “I set my phone with motivational quotes to go off on random days and times. Like, ‘You’re stronger than you think you are.’ I’ll forget about it, then one will pop up and it’ll give me a little boost.”

— Shawn Johnson

12. “I don’t think I’ve ever not gotten nervous. When you work so hard for one special day or routine, you want to perform it better than you ever have. We always say at our gym, If you lose the nerves, you lose the sport.”

— Shawn Johnson

13. “Gymnastics taught me everything – life lessons, responsibility and discipline and respect.”

— Shawn Johnson

14. “Gymnastics has made me strong. I feel like it broke me down to my lowest point, but at the same time, it has given me the greatest strength anyone could ask for.”

— Shawn Johnson

Featured in: Strong Quotes

15. “Image isn’t everything, It’s what comes from your heart, and what you learn and what you say and how you act that means more than anything.”

— Shawn Johnson

16. “When I was younger, my coach, Liang Chow, made all the decisions. I would go to the gym for practice, do exactly what Chow told me to do, go home, come back and start all over again. If Chow told me to do 50 squat jumps, I did 50 squat jumps.”

— Shawn Johnson

17. “I started from zero and went back to the basics in gymnastics.”

— Shawn Johnson

18. “Embrace your crazy.”

— Shawn Johnson

19. “Gymnastics is not only a good thing to live by, but it is important to understand how it does help you in life.”

— Shawn Johnson

20. “I fell in love with running, and I finally have time to do it now.”

— Shawn Johnson

21. “To have any doubt in your body is the biggest weakness an athlete can have.”

— Shawn Johnson

22. “Everything for me started with my love of the sport. In society we’re losing the fun with kids and pushing success on them too hard. Success comes from fun.”

— Shawn Johnson

Featured in: Fun Quotes

23. “I love lean meats like chicken, turkey. I’m obsessed with sushi and fish in general. I eat a lot of veggies and hummus.”

— Shawn Johnson

24. “To have any doubt in your body is the biggest weakness an athlete can have. There are times when I physically can’t get myself to go for a skill because I’m thinking, ‘My knee hurts really bad.’”

— Shawn Johnson

25. “I get less and less sleep these days, so when I have any down time all I want to do is sleep!”

— Shawn Johnson

26. “In some ways the ACL tear was a blessing. I had hesitated to return to elite gymnastics after the 2008 Olympics. I told myself I had already accomplished so much, and the road was just going to get harder if I continued.”

— Shawn Johnson

27. “I’m doing four hours of gymnastics training a day, six days a week and then an extra two to three hours in a fitness center as well.”

— Shawn Johnson

28. “Retiring was scary and it was tough to give up gymnastics, but so many great opportunities have come from it that I never expected.”

— Shawn Johnson

29. “Something my mom taught me when I was little is that everything happens for a reason.”

— Shawn Johnson

30. “Everything is about your movements and precision and timing, which is what gymnastics is about.”

— Shawn Johnson

31. “I always feel like I’m the young one, I’m the small one.”

— Shawn Johnson

32. “I live for Pilates reformer class. I go at least three times a week. It’s a great way to lengthen your muscles, stretch, and kind of relax your mind.”

— Shawn Johnson

33. “I was at the Olympic Games winning medals and I still doubted my image. I doubted what I looked like. That’s sad.”

— Shawn Johnson

34. “I had surgery to repair the ACL in February 2010 and was back in the gym by June, but rushed things too quickly and ended up re-tearing my MCL in September.”

— Shawn Johnson

35. “A comeback in gymnastics is almost impossible in itself.”

— Shawn Johnson

36. “I had a constant fear, a constant little doubt in my mind: ‘OK, I’m getting ready to do my standing back full on beam and I might re-tear my ACL.’”

— Shawn Johnson

37. “I have a chaperone everywhere I go – my mom.”

— Shawn Johnson

38. “People put too much emphasis on looks.”

— Shawn Johnson

39. “My coach, Liang Chow, had one rule while I was training for the 2008 Olympics: no skiing. I could do anything I wanted outside the gym, he said, except ski.”

— Shawn Johnson

40. “After 13 years of hard landings in gymnastics, one ski run had delivered the biggest injury of my career.”

— Shawn Johnson

41. “With literature, sometimes a book is presented in the media as being say, a Muslim story or an African story, when essentially it’s a universal story which we can all relate to it, no matter what race or social background we come from.”

— Shawn Johnson

42. “I don’t call them sacrifices. I call them exchanges.”

— Shawn Johnson

43. “When I was 3 my parents put me in gymnastics because I was a bundle of energy and they just didn’t know what to do with me! They put me in a Tots class and I just fell in love with it.”

— Shawn Johnson

44. “Staying healthy and consistent is paramount.”

— Shawn Johnson

45. “Well-I don’t know if anyone would really ask me to prom.”

— Shawn Johnson

46. “I still can’t believe I’m an Olympic athlete.”

— Shawn Johnson

47. “I’ve never had a teammate competing with me my whole life.”

— Shawn Johnson

48. “To finish off this whole Olympics by finally getting the gold medal, it’s the best feeling in the world.”

— Shawn Johnson

49. “I missed being considered an athlete and having that competitive drive, and missed having something to work for every day. I’d taken two and a half years away from the sport and was out of shape. I wanted to get back to where I was in 2008.”

— Shawn Johnson

50. “Gymnastics is so complex.”

— Shawn Johnson