quotations about sports
The shame is not in having sported, but in not having broken off the sport.
HORACE
Epistles
Many more people in the world are concerned with sports than with human rights.
S. P HUNTINGTON
The Class of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order
The human being becomes a kind of machine, and his machine-controlled activity becomes a technique. This technical civilization profits by this mechanization: the individual, by means of the discipline imposed on him by sport, not only plays and finds relaxation from the various compulsions to which he is subjected, but without knowing it trains himself for new compulsions. A familiar process is repeated: real play and enjoyment, contact with air and water, improvisation and spontaneity all disappear. These values are lost to the pursuit of efficiency, records, and strict rules. Training in sports makes of the individual an efficient piece of apparatus which is henceforth unacquainted with anything but the harsh joys of exploiting his body and winning.
JACQUES ELLUL
The Technological Society
The playing field is more sacred than the stock exchange, more blessed than Capital Hill or the vaults of Fort Knox. The diamond and the gridiron -- and, to a lesser degree, the court, the rink, the track, and the ring - embody the American dream of Eden.
LEWIS H. LAPHAM
Money and Class in America
Loyalty to any one sports team is pretty hard to justify, because the players are always changing, the team can move to another city. You're actually rooting for the clothes, when you get right down to it. You know what I mean? You are standing and cheering and yelling for your clothes to beat the clothes from another city. Fans will be so in love with a player, but if he goes to another team, they boo him. This is the same human being in a different shirt; they hate him now. Boo! Different shirt! Boo!
JERRY SEINFELD
Seinfeld