I think the biggest thing was that I was putting pressure on myself leading up to Beijing. Now I am learning how to take that pressure off and seeing this as an incredible opportunity, but not like, 'I absolutely have to medal.'

The argument of Alcidamas: Everyone honours the wise. Thus the Parians have honoured Archilochus, in spite of his bitter tongue; the Chians Homer, though he was not their countryman; the Mytilenaeans Sappho, though she was a woman; the Lacedaemonians actually made Chilon a member of their senate, though they are the least literary of men; the inhabitants of Lampsacus gave public burial to Anaxagoras, though he was an alien, and honour him even to this day.

Aristotle

Even now, he is every blue blazer getting into cab, every runner along the river,every motorcycle coming and going.

Melissa Bank

The best time to start thinking about your retirement is before the boss does.

Source Unknown

I played a lot of sports when I was a kid so I get in that ballgame mindset of being really, really respectful, but at same time saying to yourself, 'Don't back down a single inch, hang with these guys if you can.' If they throw it high and tight you have to stand in there, you can't take yourself out of that moment.

Michael Keaton

There is no coming to consciousness without pain.

Carl Gustav Jung

Cheerleading gave me a love of sports, which I brought to the Senate. I can talk to the good ol' boys about college sports because I follow it like they do.

Kay Bailey Hutchison

there would be no powerful will binding hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow creatureAnd yet she had loved him- sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being.

Kate Chopin

The common good of a collective -- a race, a class, a state -- was the claim and justification of every tyranny ever established over men. Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive. Has any act of selfishness ever equaled the carnage perpetrated by disciples of altruism? Does the fault lie in men's hypocrisy or in the nature of the principle? The most dreadful butchers were the most sincere. The believed in the perfect society reached through the guillotine and the firing squad. Nobody questioned their right to murder since they were murdering for an altruistic purpose. It was accepted that man must be sacrificed for other men. Actors change, but the course of the tragedy remains the same. A humanitarian who starts with the declarations of love for mankind and ends with a sea of blood. It goes on and will go on so long as men believe that an action is good if it is unselfish. That permits the altruist to act and forces his victims to bear it. The leaders of collectivist movements ask nothing of themselves. But observe the results.

Ayn Rand

She is not truly beautiful but something about her draws the eye.

George R.R. Martin

The truth is that I oppose the Iraq war, just as I opposed the Vietnam War, because these two conflicts have weakened the U.S. and diminished our standing in the world and our national security.

George McGovern

All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.

Johann von Goethe

Dream big and dare to fail.

Norman D. Vaughan