You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.
— William Faulkner
Colossal Motivational Swimming quotations

Don't wait for your ship to come in, swim out and meet the bloody thing.
Have fun, because that's what life is all about.

Swimming is more than a once-every-four-years sport.
My goal is to bring attention to swimming - to give it some personality.
There is water in every lane, so it is OK.
I am not going to allow myself not to perform well just because I don't feel well. I am bulletproof to the extent that a lot of things can be thrown at me, but it's about how much I am prepared to let them affect me

I enjoyed every bit of my swimming career.
I think that's the most important advice - to enjoy what you do
I told myself there was no way I was going to let this training go to waste.
It was my time, and I was ready to go.
Don't wait for your ship to come in, swim out to it.

Simplicity is the key to brilliance.
I like to get in my own world. When I'm getting ready for a meet, I always have headphones on, listening to rap music to get myself fired up
Wrestling is the only sport I've ever competed in that puts you totally in a situation of constant motion without breaks. I could play football or baseball, swim -- but there's always some kind of situation that would break my thoughts, break my concentration.

I swam the race like I trained to swim it.
It is not mathematical. I just let my body do it. It is a lot easier if you let your body do what it is trained for.
Being your best is not so much about overcoming the barriers other people place in front of you as it is about overcoming the barriers we place in front of ourselves.
My Mom said she learned how to swim when someone took her out in the lake and threw her off the boat. I said, 'Mom, they weren't trying to teach you how to swim.'

Breastroke is an athletic event, butterfly is a political statement.
If I walked on water, my accusers would say it is because I can't swim.
Tonight was not about winning, it was about focusing on myself and what I was aiming to do. It's the reason why I was able to swim so well

Before the (Olympic) trials I was doing a lot of relaxing exercises and visualization. And I think that that helped me to get a feel of what it was gonna be like when I got there. I knew that I had done everything that I could to get ready for that meet, both physically and mentally
In my retirement I go for a short swim at least once or twice every day.
It's either that or buy a new golf ball.
You can't put a limit anything.

I'm really quite exhausted at the moment, but you never know, you are always surprised at what you can find sometimes, and maybe I will find something deep within to find the desire to swim fast
People ask me 'what was going through your mind in the race?' and I don't know.
I try and ...let my body do what it knows
I have been visualizing myself every night for the past four years standing on the podium having the gold placed around my neck.

Do men who have got all their marbles go swimming in lakes with their clothes on?
Mainly, I like to have fun. Swimming is all about having fun, and I am firm believer that you should keep swimming as long as you are having fun, but I can say that it becomes much more fun as you get older and learn more about the sport, life, and especially more about yourself
You can swim all day in the Sea of Knowledge and not get wet.

I made a list of the happiest periods in my life, and I realized that none of them involved money. I realized that building stuff and being creative and inventive made me happy. Connecting with a friend and talking through the entire night until the sun rose made me happy. Trick-or-treating in middle school with a group of my closest friends made me happy. Eating a baked potato after a swim meet made me happy. Pickles made me happy.
If you're not on your 'A' game in our workouts every day, you're going to get absolutely smoked.
I don't think I'm unbeatable, nobody is

I know I've made huge gains in my confidence, and knowing more about my racing and myself as a person. That has made me a better athlete
I used to beat myself up everyday if I did not win an event.
I am quite open about those things now and that has been a big change.
It's easy to forget when you're an elite athlete that everyone else gets nervous as well. Even the best people in the world, at whatever they do, they're still nervous
In training everyone focuses on 90% physical and 10% mental, but in the races its 90% mental because there's very little that separates us physically at the elite level
Our conscious motivations, ideas, and beliefs are a blend of false information, biases, irrational passions, rationalizations, prejudices, in which morsels of truth swim around and give the reassurance albeit false, that the whole mixture is real and true. The thinking processes attempt to organize this whole cesspool of illusions according to the laws of plausibility. This level of consciousness is supposed to reflect reality; it is the map we use for organizing our life.