64 Quotes by Wilma Rudolph

When I was going through my transition of being famous, I tried to ask God why was I here? what was my purpose? Surely, it wasn't just to win three gold medals. There has to be more to this life than that.

They say things like they don't want men opening doors for them anymore, and they don't want men lighting their cigarettes for them anymore. Big deal. Black women have been opening doors for themselves and lighting their own cigarettes for a couple centuries in this country. Black women don't quibble about things that are not important.

The triumph cannot be had without the struggle. And I know what struggle is. I have spent a lifetime trying to share what it has meant to be a woman first in the world of sports so that other young women have a chance to reach their dreams.

I know black women in Tennessee who have worked all their lives, from the time they were twelve years old to the day they died. These women don't listen to the women's liberation rhetoric because they know that it's nothing but a bunch of white women who had certain life-styles and who want to change those life-styles.

I thought I'd never get to see that. Florence Griffith Joyner -- every time she ran, I ran.

By the time I was 12 I was challenging every boy in our neighborhood at running, jumping, everything.

What do you do after you are world-famous and nineteen or twenty and you have sat with prime ministers, kings and queens, the Pope? Do you go back home and take a job? What do you do to keep your sanity? You come back to the real world.

Black women . . . work because their husbands can't make enough money at their jobs to keep everything going. . . . They don't go to work to find fulfillment, or adventure, or glamour and romance, like so many white women think they are doing. Black women work out of necessity.

I would be disappointed if I were remembered as a runner because I feelthat my contribution to the youth of America has far exceeded the woman who was the Olympic champion.