Quotes from Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, The Ultra-runners, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen

“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, The Ultra-runners, 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, The Ultra-runners, 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, The Ultra-runners, 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, The Ultra-runners, 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, The Ultra-runners, 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, The Ultra-runners, 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, The Ultra-runners, 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, The Ultra-runners, 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, The Ultra-runners, 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, The Ultra-runners, 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, The Ultra-runners, 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, The Ultra-runners, 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, The Ultra-runners, 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, The Ultra-runners, 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, The Ultra-runners, 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, The Ultra-runners, 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, The Ultra-runners, 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, The Ultra-runners, 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, The Ultra-runners, 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, The Ultra-runners, 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, The Ultra-runners, 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, The Ultra-runners, 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, The Ultra-runners, 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, The Ultra-runners, 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, The Ultra-runners, 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, The Ultra-runners, 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, The Ultra-runners, 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, The Ultra-runners, 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, The Ultra-runners, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen

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Popular quotes

“Much has been said of the aesthetic values of chanoyu- the love of the subdued and austere- most commonly characterized by the term, wabi. Wabi originally suggested an atmosphere of desolation, both in the sense of solitariness and in the sense of the poverty of things. In the long history of various Japanese arts, the sense of wabi gradually came to take on a positive meaning to be recognized for its profound religious sense. ...the related term, sabi,... It was mid-winter, and the water's surface was covered with the withered leaves of the of the lotuses. Suddenly I realized that the flowers had not simply dried up, but that they embodied, in their decomposition, the fullness of life that would emerge again in their natural beauty.”
― Kakuzō Okakura, quote from The Book of Tea

“No. Not really red,
but the color of a rose when it bleeds.”
― Anne Sexton, quote from The Complete Poems

“İdam sehpasının birkaç metre ötesinden, Saint-Jean-Decolle tarikatından dört keşiş, siyah kukuletaları, kaba kumaştan giysileri içinde, idam mahkûmlarına işkence yapılmasından sorumlu bu dört din adamı, mahkûmlar kilisesinden, Beatrice'in babasının ikinci eşini -baba katlinde suç ortağı ve ensest olayının tanığı olan kişiyi çıkarıyorlardı.
İlk o ölecekti. Kadın ayakta duramıyordu; onu baltaya götürecek olan güvenlik görevlilerinin oluşturduğu çitin arasında bitkindi. İki keşiş onu koltuk altlarından tutuyordu. Ötekisi de ölüme layıkıyla gitmesini salık veren sözler söylüyordu kulağına. Sonuncusu ise, onun yüzü hizasında bir ayna tutar gibi, idam sehpasını görmesini engelleyen, boyalı bir tahta levha tutuyordu. Bu tahta üzerinde Vaftizci Yahya'nın (Saint-Jean-Baptise) gümüş tepsi içindeki kesik başının tasviri vardı. Acıdan tükenmiş haldeydi, elinde baltasıyla onu bekleyen celladı görünce, mahkûm kadın bayıldı. Sehpaya çıkardıkları, bilinci yerinde olmayan zavallı bir kadındı. Onu kesme kütüğüne yatırdılar. Görülecek ne var gerisinde? Gerisi kasaplık. Asıl dram sonrasındaydı. Kiliseden tek başına, hızla ilerleyen, Beatrice'in silueti çıktı. Bütün kent haykırdı. Acıma, hayranlık, öfke; bütün Roma, hapishanelerinden saraylarına dek aynı heyecanla sarsılmış gibiydi.
İdam sehpasının altındaki ressam grubu hariç; onlar, ses çıkarmadan oldukları yerde kaldılar. Ellerinde kâğıt kalemleri, en küçük bir ayrıntıyı kaçırmamak kaygısı içindeydiler. İnsanlar; üç dört hatta beş kadar idama alışık olsalar da, kutlamalar öncesi bir dönemde, böylesi güzel ve soylu bir kadının idam edilmesi sık rastlanan bir durum değildi.
Bu neredeyse bir çocuktu, yapılan işkencelere dokuz saat boyunca dayandığı söyleniyordu ve oradaki herkes onu masum buluyordu. Roma halkı, kalabalığın içinden dimdik, kendinden emin, Tanrıya dualar ederek Papaya hakaretler okuyarak ilerleyen bu genç kızın gösterdiği yüreklilikte, Reform karşıtlarının, Katolikler anısına Hıristiyan sanatçılara sipariş ettikleri, Sainte Catherine, Sainte Ursula ve Sainte Cecile gibi azizeleri görmekteydi.
Hemen sonrasında bir sessizlik oldu. Genç kız kafasını kesme kütüğüne koydu. Celladın kollarını havaya kaldırdığı görüldü. Baltanın gün ışığında yalkın verdiği görüldü. Yalnızca bunlar görüldü: güneş, balta ve Saint-Pierre Kilisesi'nin kubbesi. Kollar tekrar aşağı indi. Boğuk bir çarpma sesi duyulur gibi oldu. Halk haykırdı. Baba despotluğunun ve papa haksızlığının kurbanı bir genç kızın kafasını gördüklerinde, korku, acıma, öfke ve kin dolu bir çığlık yükseldi.
Gösteriyi yakından izlemeyi başarmış olan ressamlar arasında soğukkanlılığını koruyabilen iki kişi vardı. Bir baba ve kızı. Orazio Gentileschi ve küçük Artemisia.”
― Alexandra Lapierre, quote from Artemisia

“Sinclair doesn't love your sister."
"Not yet." I said darkly. "Give him time."
"Look, I'm sure he's interested in her—"
"Wait till you see her. Just wait."
"Like he doesn't have pussy thrown at him from cars?"
"What a horrifying mental image.”
― MaryJanice Davidson, quote from Undead and Unappreciated

“She supposed she missed him, but it was not easy to go on missing a person when life had been lived without him for so long, with the only contact his monthly letters, which were three weeks old when they arrived, and not very inspiring even then.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, quote from Coming Home

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