Athlete: Th' athletic fool, to whom what Heaven denied of soul, is well compensated in limbs.

John Armstrong (adapted)

I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense.

H. L. Mencken, Heathen Days.

Can't anything be done about calling these guys "student athletes"? That's like referring to Atilla the Hun's cavalry as "weekend warriors."

Russell Baker

Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind.

Thomas Jefferson

Rugby is a beastly game played by gentlemen; soccer is a gentlemen's game played by beasts; football is a beastly game played by beasts.

Henry Blaha

Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words, it is war minus the shooting.

George Orwell

Give me an athlete and I'll give you an army.

Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf.

EXERCISE, NUTRITION, FITNESS

Whenever I get the urge to exercise, I lie down until the feeling passes away.

Robert M. Hutchins, former President of the University of Chicago.

I have never taken any exercise, except for sleeping and resting, and I never intend to take any. Exercise is loathsome.

Mark Twain, Essays: Seventieth Birthday.

I get my exercise acting as a pallbearer to my friends who exercise.

Chauncey Depew

Exercise is a modern superstition invented by people who ate too much, and had nothing to think about. Athletics don't make anybody either long-lived or useful.

George Santayana

As a nation we are dedicated to keeping physically fit–and parking as close to the stadium as possible.

Bill Vaughan, Kansas City Star.

The word aerobics comes from two Greek words: aero, meaning "ability to," and bics, meaning "withstand tremendous boredom."

Dave Barry

People are so busy lengthening their lives with exercise they don't have time to live them.

Johathan Miller

I refuse to spend my life worrying about what I eat. There is no pleasure worth forgoing just for an extra three years in the geriatric ward.

John Mortimer.

What some call health, if purchased by perpetual anxiety about diet, isn't much better than tedious disease.

George Dennison Prentice

Anything that says 'healthy' I say away from... Giving up butter, for instance, means that in about two years you will be covered in dandruff.

Julia Child, TV cooking show host, writer of books on food.

Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.

Redd Foxx

SKIING

I do not participate in any sport with ambulances at the bottom of a hill.

Erma Bombeck

BASEBALL

Knowin' all about baseball is just about as profitable as bein' a good whittler.

Kin Hubbard

FOOTBALL

College football: I do not see the relationship of those highly industrialized affairs on Saturday afternoons to higher learning in America.

Robert M. Hutchins, former President of the University of Chicago.

Football: A sport that bears the same relation to education that bullfighting does to agriculture.

Elbert Hubbard

Football, fraternities, and fun have no place in the university. They were introduced only to entertain those who shouldn't be in the university.

Robert M. Hutchins, former President of the University of Chicago.

Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game and dumb enough to think it's important.

Eugene McCarthy.

Football combines the two worst features of American life: violence and committee meetings.

George Will

College football would be much more interesting if the faculty played instead of the students, and even more interesting if the trustees played. There would be a great increase in broken arms, legs and necks, and simultaneously an appreciable diminution in the loss to humanity.

H. L. Mencken, Minority Report, [186]

If the players were armed with guns, there wouldn't be stadiums large enough to hold the crowds.

Irwin Shaw

The game of football is played all over the world. In some countries, such a game may be called a soccer match. In others, a revolution. However, there are several differences between a football game and a revolution. For one thing, a football game usually lasts longer and the participants wear uniforms. Also, there are usually more casualties in a football game. The object of the game is to move the ball past the other team's goal line. This counts as six points. No points are given for lacerations, contusions, or abrasions, but then no points are deducted, either. Kicking is very important in football. In fact, some of the more enthusiastic players even kick the football occasionally.

Alfred Hitchcock

HUNTING AND FISHING

A sportsman is a man who, every now and then, simply has to get out and kill something.

Stephen Leacock, "What is Sport?"

When a man wants to murder a tiger, he calls it sport; when the tiger wants to murder him, he calls it Ferocity.

George Bernard Shaw

When a man wantonly destroys one of the works of man we call him a vandal, when he wantonly destroys one of the works of God we call him a sportsman.

Joseph Wood Krutch

The fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly on whether you are at the right or wrong end of the gun.

P. G. Wodehouse

Racing and hunting excite man's heart to madness.

Lao-Tse

There's a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot.

Steven Wright

GOLF

Golf: A plague invented by the Calvinistic Scots as a punishment for man's sins.

James Reston

Golf: A good walk spoiled.

Mark Twain

If I had my way no man guilty of golf would be eligible to any office of trust under the United States.

H. L. Mencken, quoted in "The Angry Fan" by Randall Poe. Harper's, Nov. 1975.

[Golf is] a sport for liars, drinkers and cussers who like to walk two or three miles belaboring an object 1/45th their size with a loaded cane.

Vesta M. Kelly

Golf. A game in which one endeavors to control a ball with implements ill adapted for the purpose.

Woodrow Wilson

Golf. Trying to knock a tiny ball into an even smaller hole with implements ill suited to the purpose.

Winston Churchill.

Golf: The most ... perfect expression of National Stupidity.

Max Beerbohm

Golf is essentially an exercise in masochism conducted out of doors; it affords opportunity for a certain swank, it induces a sense of kinship in its victims, and it forces them to breathe fresh air, but it is, at bottom, an elaborate and addictive rite calculated to drive them crazy for hours on end and send them straight to the whiskey bottle after that.

Paul O'Neil, "Palmer Tightens His Grip on Golf," Life, June 15, 1962, p. 103.

Golf: The most useless outdoor game ever devised to waste the time and try the spirit of man.

Westbrook Pegler

PHYSICAL EDUCATION

Comedian Bill Alexander characterized the academic difficulty of physical education course work: "Within the next three weeks, read pages 6, 7, and 8 and connect the dots on page 4."

Return to Donald Simanek's Page, http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek