Famous Lance Words

This is my body, and I can do whatever I want to it. I can push it. Study it. Tweak it. Listen to it. Everybody wants to know what I'm on. What am I on? I'm on my bike busting my ass six hours a day. What are you on?  As quoted in "Lance Armstrong Ruined My Gym" by Neal Pollack, in Slate (1 July 2005) 

Anyone who imagines they can work alone winds up surrounded by nothing but rivals, without companions. The fact is, no one ascends alone. Lance Armstrong (It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life)

 Finally, the last thing I’ll say to the people who don’t believe in cycling, the cynics and the sceptics: I'm sorry for you. I’m sorry that you can’t dream big. I'm sorry you don't believe in miracles. But this is one hell of a race. This is a great sporting event and you should stand around and believe it. You should believe in these athletes, and you should believe in these people. I'll be a fan of the Tour de France for as long as I live. And there are no secrets — this is a hard sporting event and hard work wins it. So Vive le Tour forever!  Farewell speech at the Champs-Élysées podium, after winning his seventh Tour de France, quoted in "Paris salutes its American hero" by Caroline Wyatt in BBC News (24 July 2005)

I wished hard, but I didn't pray. I had developed a certain distrust of organized religion growing up, but I felt I had the capacity to be a spiritual person, and to hold some fervent beliefs. Quite simply, I believed I had a responsiblity to be a good person, and that meant fair, honest, hardworking, and honorable. If I did that, if I was good to my family, true to my friends, if I gave back to my community or to some cause, if I wasn't a liar, a cheat, or a thief, then I believed that should be enough. At the end of the day, if there was indeed some Body or presence standing there to judge me, I hoped I would be judged on whether I had lived a true life, not on whether I believed in a certain book, or whether I'd been baptized. - from It's Not About The Bike (2000)

For most of my life I had operated under a simple schematic of winning and losing, but cancer was teaching me a tolerance for ambiguities. Lance Armstrong (It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life)

All their players tested positive... for being assholes. (Referring to the French 2006 FIFA World Cup team during his speech at the ESPY Awards, as quoted in "Armstrong accuses France World Cup team of being 'assholes'") in The Guardian (16 July 2006)