Quotes from Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen

Christopher McDougall ·  287 pages

Rating: (130.7K votes)


“Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up, it knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn't matter whether you're the lion or a gazelle-when the sun comes up, you'd better be running.”
― Christopher McDougall, quote from Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen


“You don't stop running because you get old, you get old because you stop running.”
― Christopher McDougall, quote from Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen


“The reason we race isn't so much to beat each other,... but to be with each other.”
― Christopher McDougall, quote from Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen


“If you don't have answers to your problems after a four-hour run, you ain't getting them.”
― Christopher McDougall, quote from Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen


“That was the real secret of the Tarahumara: they'd never forgotten what it felt like to love running. They remembered that running was mankind's first fine art, our original act of inspired creation. Way before we were scratching pictures on caves or beating rhythms on hollow trees, we were perfecting the art of combining our breath and mind and muscles into fluid self-propulsion over wild terrain. And when our ancestors finally did make their first cave paintings, what were the first designs? A downward slash, lightning bolts through the bottom and middle--behold, the Running Man.
Distance running was revered because it was indispensable; it was the way we survived and thrived and spread across the planet. You ran to eat and to avoid being eaten; you ran to find a mate and impress her, and with her you ran off to start a new life together. You had to love running, or you wouldn't live to love anything else. And like everyhing else we ove--everything we sentimentally call our 'passions' and 'desires' it's really an encoded ancestral necessity. We were born to run; we were born because we run. We're all Running People, as the Tarahumara have always known.”
― Christopher McDougall, quote from Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen



“You don't have to be fast. But you'd better be fearless.”
― Christopher McDougall, quote from Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen


“Suffering is humbling. It pays to know how to get your butt kicked.”
― Christopher McDougall, quote from Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen


“We've got a motto here-you're tougher than you think you are, and you can do more than you think you can.”
― Christopher McDougall, quote from Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen


“...there was some kind of connection between the capacity to love and the capacity to love *running*. The engineering was certainly the same: both depended on loosening your grip on your own desires, putting aside what you wanted and appreciating what you've got, being patient and forgiving and... undemanding...maybe we shouldn't be surprised that getting better at one could make you better at the other.”
― Christopher McDougall, quote from Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen


“There's something so universal about that sensation, the way running unites our two most primal impulses: fear and pleasure. We run when we're scared, we run when we're ecstatic, we run away from our problems and run around for a good time.”
― Christopher McDougall, quote from Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen



“Make friends with pain, and you will never be alone.~Ken Chlouber, Colorado miner and creator of the Leadville Trail 100 mile race”
― Christopher McDougall, quote from Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen


“If you don't think you were born to run you're not only denying history. You're denying who you are.”
― Christopher McDougall, quote from Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen


“There are two goddesses in your heart,” he told them. “The Goddess of Wisdom and the Goddess of Wealth. Everyone thinks they need to get wealth first, and wisdom will come. So they concern themselves with chasing money. But they have it backwards. You have to give your heart to the Goddess of Wisdom, give her all your love and attention, and the Goddess of Wealth will become jealous, and follow you.” Ask nothing from your running, in other words, and you’ll get more than you ever imagined.”
― Christopher McDougall, quote from Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen


“Perhaps all our troubles - all the violence, obesity, illness, depression, and greed we can't overcome - began when we stopped living as Running People. Deny your nature, and it will erupt in some other, uglier way.”
― Christopher McDougall, quote from Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen


“Nearly all runners do their slow runs too fast, and their fast runs too slow." Ken Mierke says. "So they're just training their bodies to burn sugar, which is the last thing a distance runner wants. You've got enough fat stored to run to California, so the more you train your body to burn fat instead of sugar, the longer your limited sugar tank is going to last."
-The way to activate your fat-burning furnace is by staying below your aerobic threshold--your hard-breathing point--during your endurance runs.”
― Christopher McDougall, quote from Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen



“But you can't muscle through a five-hour run that way; you have to relax into it like easing your body into a hot bath, until it no longer resists the shock and begins to enjoy it.”
― Christopher McDougall, quote from Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen


“We run when we're scared, we run when we're ecstatic, we run away from our problems and run around for a good time.”
― Christopher McDougall, quote from Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen


“Sometimes,' she said, 'it takes a woman to bring out the best in a man.”
― Christopher McDougall, quote from Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen


“But yeah, Ann [Trason] insisted, running was romantic; and no, of course her friends didn't get it because they'd never broken through. For them, running was a miserable two miles motivated solely by size 6 jeans: get on the scale, get depressed, get your headphones on, and get it over with. But you can't muscle through a five-hour run that way; you have to relax into it, like easing your body into a hot bath, until it no longer resists the shock and begins to enjoy it.”
― Christopher McDougall, quote from Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen


“We were born to run; we were born because we run.”
― Christopher McDougall, quote from Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen



“Blaming the running injury epidemic on big, bad Nike seems too easy - but that's okay, because it's largely their fault.”
― Christopher McDougall, quote from Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen


“-The reason we race isn't so much to beat each other but to be with each other.
-The Hopis consider running a form of prayer; they offer every step as a sacrifice to a loved one, and in return ask the Great Spirit to match their strength with some of his own.”
― Christopher McDougall, quote from Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen


“We wouldn't be alive without love we wouldn't have survived without running maybe we shouldn't be surprised that getting better at one could make you better at the other.”
― Christopher McDougall, quote from Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen


“That was the real secret of the Tarahumara: they'd never forgotten what it felt like to love running. They remembered that running was mankind's first fine art, our original act of inspired creation.”
― Christopher McDougall, quote from Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen


“Distance running was revered because it was indispensable; it was the way we survived and thrived and spread across the planet. You ran to eat and to avoid being eaten; you ran to find a mate and impress her, and with her you ran off to start a new life together. You had to love running, or you wouldn't live to love anything else. And like everything else we love-everything we sentimentally call our 'passions' and 'desires'-it's really an encoded ancestral necessity. We were born to run; we were born because we run.”
― Christopher McDougall, quote from Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen



“Lisa Smith-Batchen, the amazingly sunny and pixie-tailed ultrarunner from Idaho who trained through blizzards to win a six-day race in the Sahara, talks about exhaustion as if it's a playful pet. 'I love the Beast,' she says. 'I actually look forward to the Beast showing up, because every time he does, I handle him better. I get him more under control.' Once the Beast arrives, Lisa knows what she has to deal with and can get down to work. And isn't that the reason she's running through the desert in the first place-to put her training to work? To have a friendly little tussle with the Beast and show it who's boss? You can't hate the Beast and expect to beat it; the only way to truly conquer something, as every great philosopher and geneticist will tell you , is to love it.”
― Christopher McDougall, quote from Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen


“When I'm out on a long run," she continued, "the only thing in life that matters is finishing the run. For once, my brain isn't going blehblehbleh all the time. Everything quiets down, and the only thing going on is pure flow. It's jus time and the movement and the motion.That's what love--just being a barbarian, running through the woods.”
― Christopher McDougall, quote from Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen


“Only recently have we come up with the technology to turn lazing around into a way of life. We've taken our sinewy, durable, hunter-gatherer bodies and plunked them into an artificial world of leisure.”
― Christopher McDougall, quote from Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen


“You ran to eat and to avoid being eaten; you ran to find a mate and impress her, and with her you ran off to start a new life together. You had to love running, or you wouldn’t live to love anything else…We were born to run; we were born because we run”
― Christopher McDougall, quote from Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen


About the author

Christopher McDougall
Born place: in The United States
Born date January 1, 1962
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“You had better not open that door.”
― George MacDonald, quote from Phantastes


“I would let her...have adventures. I would let her...choose her path. It would be hard...it was hard...but I would do it. Oh, not completely, of course. Some things have to go on. Cleaning one's teeth, arithmetic. But Maia fell in love with the Amazon. It happens. THe place was for her - and the people. Of course there was some danger, but there is danger everywhere. Two years ago, in this school, there was an outbreak of typhus, and three girls died. CHildren are knocked down and killed by horses every week, here in these streets--" She broke off, gathering her thoughts. "When she was traveling and exploring...and finding her songs, Maia wasn't just happy, she was...herself. I think something broke in Maia when her parents died, and out there it healed. Perhaps I'm mad--and the professor too-- but I think children must lead big lives...if it is in them to do so.”
― Eva Ibbotson, quote from Journey to the River Sea


“There's no shame in trying to make stuff work, is how I see it. It's better than just accepting the broken.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from Saint Anything


“For almost a year, from June 1948 to October 1949, they kept the city alive by plane. In that time American and British planes made some 277,728 flights through Soviet airspace to drop bundles of food, clothing, cigarettes, medicine, fuel and equipment, including components for a new power station, to the people of West Berlin. In the west, the aircraft came to be known as the ‘Rosinenbomber’, or ‘raisin bombers’, because they brought food. But in the east, Koch and his classmates were told the enemy planes sprayed potato beetles over East German crops as they flew over, in order to spoil the harvest.”
― Anna Funder, quote from Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall


“...speaking as a novelist myself, I know that members of our profession live in our imaginations as much or more as we inhabit what people call 'the real world'...”
― Dan Simmons, quote from Drood


Interesting books

Tex
(9.1K)
Tex
by S.E. Hinton
Stealing Harper
(15.1K)
Stealing Harper
by Molly McAdams
Clockwork Angels
(2.4K)
Clockwork Angels
by Kevin J. Anderson
The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden
(33.7K)
The Girl Who Saved t...
by Jonas Jonasson
Bad Feminist
(54.1K)
Bad Feminist
by Roxane Gay
Lancelot
(2.3K)
Lancelot
by Walker Percy

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.