60 Inspiring and Motivating Running Quotes

For millions of people, running is an integral part of their life. Once you really get to experience all the benefits of running, it’s very unlikely that you will ever stop doing it. Running gives you an almost indescribable feeling of accomplishment and provides powerful relief. It helps you to clear your mind and reduces stress. As such, running is pure therapy for the soul. If there’s a problem you are struggling with, go run a mile and see what happens! While running may not help you to solve all your problems, it definitely will help you through the tough times of life. At the same time, only those who have never truly experienced the joy of running struggle to understand why running is so powerful. For many, even the thought of having to run for half an hour is quite exhausting and sickening. To them, running is not something that provides relief but it’s simply considered a punishment. Luckily, we runners know better than that. To celebrate the joy of running, we’ve created the following collection of inspiring and motivating running quotes. (You may also like our article on how to get motivated to run).

What is so wonderful about running is that basically anyone who can walk can start practicing this sport. It doesn’t take special skills or the greatest physical condition like so many other team sports require. Instead, all it takes is to put one foot in front of the other and the willingness to keep going for a while.

“The miracle isn’t that I finished. The miracle is that I had the courage to start.”
John Bingham

Once you’ve become a regular runner, you’re part of a quickly growing family of like-minded individuals. This large family may often complain about the difficulties and struggles of being a runner. Yet, almost all continue running day after day and week after week simply because it is so refreshing and rejuvenating.

The following collection of running quotes will inspire you to push beyond your limits.

What better way could there be to celebrate the joy of running than with a list of powerful quotes about running?

60 Inspiring and Motivating Running Quotes

No matter if you’re a professional runner or just someone who enjoys exercising, it’s the ambition to improve yourself with each run that will keep you going. In fact, knowing that you’re not only improving your endurance but also your willpower is a great reward. Even more so, the more consistently you practice, the more benefits will you reap. For instance, you’ll eventually notice that you are able to run much faster and longer than just a couple of months ago. These great rewards are in itself a great motivation to keep practicing.

Here are these inspiring running quotes:

1.

“Run when you can, walk if you have to, crawl if you must; just never give up.”
Dean Karnazes

2.

“I don’t run to add days to my life, I run to add life to my days.”
Ronald Rook

3.

“The point is whether or not I improved over yesterday. In long-distance running the only opponent you have to beat is yourself, the way you used to be.”
Haruki Murakami

4.

“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

5.

“I’ll be happy if running and I can grow old together.”
Haruki Murakami

6.

“Running is about finding your inner peace, and so is a life well lived.”
Dean Karnazes

7.

“Running isn’t a sport for pretty boys… It’s about the sweat in your hair and the blisters on your feet. It’s the frozen spit on your chin and the nausea in your gut. It’s about throbbing calves and cramps at midnight that are strong enough to wake the dead. It’s about getting out the door and running when the rest of the world is only dreaming about having the passion that you need to live each and every day with. It’s about being on a lonely road and running like a champion even when there’s not a single soul in sight to cheer you on. Running is all about having the desire to train and persevere until every fiber in your legs, mind, and heart is turned to steel. And when you’ve finally forged hard enough, you will have become the best runner you can be. And that’s all that you can ask for.”
Paul Maurer

8.

“For me, running is both exercise and a metaphor. Running day after day, piling up the races, bit by bit I raise the bar, and by clearing each level I elevate myself.”
Haruki Murakami

9.

“Running! If there’s any activity happier, more exhilarating, more nourishing to the imagination, I can’t think of what it might be. In running the mind flees with the body, the mysterious efflorescence of language seems to pulse in the brain, in rhythm with our feet and the swinging of our arms.”
Joyce Carol Oates

10.

“Crossing the starting line may be an act of courage, but crossing the finish line is an act of faith. Faith is what keeps us going when nothing else will. Faith is the emotion that will give you victory over your past, the demons in your soul, and all of those voices that tell you what you can and cannot do and can and cannot be.”
John Bingham

11.

“I run because if I didn’t, I’d be sluggish and glum and spend too much time on the couch. I run to breathe the fresh air. I run to explore. I run to escape the ordinary. I run…to savor the trip along the way. Life becomes a little more vibrant, a little more intense. I like that.”
Dean Karnazes

12.

“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

13.

“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”
Haruki Murakami

14.

“Some seek the comfort of their therapist’s office, other head to the corner pub and dive into a pint, but I chose running as my therapy.”
Dean Karnazes

15.

“People sometimes sneer at those who run every day, claiming they’ll go to any length to live longer. But don’t think that’s the reason most people run. Most runners run not because they want to live longer, but because they want to live life to the fullest. If you’re going to while away the years, it’s far better to live them with clear goals and fully alive then in a fog, and I believe running helps you to do that. Exerting yourself to the fullest within your individual limits: that’s the essence of running, and a metaphor for life – and for me, for writing as whole. I believe many runners would agree.”
Haruki Murakami

16.

“Struggling and suffering are the essence of a life worth living. If you’re not pushing yourself beyond the comfort zone, if you’re not demanding more from yourself – expanding and learning as you go – you’re choosing a numb existence. You’re denying yourself an extraordinary trip.”
Dean Karnazes

17.

“If you don’t have answers to your problems after a four-hour run, you ain’t getting them.”
Christopher McDougall

18.

“Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever.”
Lance Armstrong

19.

“Your body will argue that there is no justifiable reason to continue. Your only recourse is to call on your spirit, which fortunately functions independently of logic.”
Tim Noakes

20.

“All I do is keep on running in my own cozy, homemade void, my own nostalgic silence. And this is a pretty wonderful thing. No matter what anybody else says.”
Haruki Murakami

21.

“People think I’m crazy to put myself through such torture, though I would argue otherwise. Somewhere along the line, we seem to have confused comfort with happiness. Dostoyevsky had it right: ‘Suffering is the sole origin of consciousness.’ Never are my senses more engaged than when the pain sets in. There is a magic in misery. Just ask any runner.”
Dean Karnazes

22.

“There is something magical about running; after a certain distance, it transcends the body. Then a bit further, it transcends the mind. A bit further yet, and what you have before you, laid bare, is the soul.”
Kristin Armstrong

23.

“If you are losing faith in human nature, go out and watch a marathon.”
Kathrine Switzer

24.

“There is nothing so momentary as a sporting achievement, and nothing so lasting as the memory of it.”
Greg Dening

25.

“Running is real and relatively simple… but it ain’t easy.”
Mark Will-Weber

26.

“How to run an ultramarathon? Puff out your chest, put one foot in front of the other, and don’t stop till you cross the finish line.”
Dean Karnazes

27.

“Ask nothing from your running, in other words, and you’ll get more than you ever imagined.”
Christopher McDougall

28.

“It was being a runner that mattered, not how fast or how far I could run. The joy was in the act of running and in the journey, not in the destination.”
John Bingham

29.

“Getting more exercise isn’t only good for your waistline. It’s a natural anti-depressant, that leaves you in a great mood.”
Auliq Ice

30.

“Try jogging when following your heart, it’s healthier”
Benny Bellamacina

31.

“What I’ve learned from running is that the time to push hard is when you’re hurting like crazy and you want to give up. Success is often just around the corner.”
James Dyson

32.

“I’m often asked what I think about as I run. Usually, the people who ask this have never run long distances themselves. I always ponder the question. What exactly do I think about when I’m running? I don’t have a clue.”
Haruki Murakami

33.

“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

34.

“Adversity causes some men to break; others to break records.”
William Arthur Ward

35.

“Every run is a work of art, a drawing on each day’s canvas. Some runs are shouts and some runs are whispers. Some runs are eulogies and others celebrations.”
Dagny Scott Barrio

36.

“I run because long after my footprints fade away, maybe I will have inspired a few to reject the easy path, hit the trails, put one foot in front of the other, and come to the same conclusion I did: I run because it always takes me where I want to go.”
Dean Karnazes

37.

“After joyfully working each morning, I would leave off around midday to challenge myself to a footrace. Speeding along the sunny paths of the Jardin du Luxembourg, ideas would breed like aphids in my head – for creative invention is easy and sublime when air cycles quickly through the lungs and the body is busy at noble tasks.”
Roman Payne

38.

“My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She’s ninety-seven now, and we don’t know where the heck she is.”
Ellen DeGeneres

39.

“An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.”
Henry David Thoreau

40.

“If you are in a bad mood go for a walk.If you are still in a bad mood go for another walk.”
Hippocrates

41.

“The trouble with jogging is that, by the time you realize you’re not in shape for it, it’s too far to walk back.”
Franklin P. Jones

42.

“If you don’t think you were born to run you’re not only denying history. You’re denying who you are.”
Christopher McDougall

43.

“Jogging is very beneficial. It’s good for your legs and your feet. It’s also very good for the ground. It makes it feel needed.”
Charles M. Schulz

44.

“Yes, I am round. Yes, I am slow. Yes, I run as though my legs are tied together at the knees. But I am running. And that is all that matters.”
John Bingham

45.

“Your body provides you with constant feedback that can help improve your running performance while minimizing biomechanical stress. Learn to differentiate between the discomfort of effort and the pain of injury. When you practice listening, you increase competence in persevering through the former and responding with respect and compassion to the latter.”
Gina Greenlee

46.

“But I also realize that winning doesn’t always mean getting first place; it means getting the best out of yourself.”
Meb Keflezighi

47.

“When I go to the Boston Marathon now, I have wet shoulders—women fall into my arms crying. They’re weeping for joy because running has changed their lives. They feel they can do anything.”
Kathrine Switzer

48.

“The pain of running relieves the pain of living.”
Jacqueline Simon Gunn

49.

“When I was little and running on the race track at school, I always stopped and waited for all the other kids so we could run together even though I knew (and everybody else knew) that I could run much faster than all of them!”
C. JoyBell C.

50.

“If you want to find the real competition, just look in the mirror. After awhile you’ll see your rivals scrambling for second place.”
Criss Jami

51.

“The finest of athletes have, along with skill, a few more essential qualities: to conduct their life with dignity, with integrity, with courage and modesty. All these, are totally compatible with pride, ambition, determination and competitiveness”
Donald Bradman

52.

“Never underestimate the heart of a champion!”
Doc Rivers

53.

“I could feel my anger dissipating as the miles went by–you can’t run and stay mad!”
Kathrine Switzer

54.

“There is about world-class athletes carving out exemptions from physical laws a transcendent beauty that makes manifest God in man.”
David Foster Wallace

55.

“There’s more to marathon day than running long. Learning how your body reacts to the early alarm, light breakfast and warm-up is key. Minimize surprises come race day. Run long the same time of day as the race.”
Gina Greenlee

56.

“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

57.

“Winning has nothing to do with racing. Most days don’t have races anyway. Winning is about struggle and effort and optimism, and never, ever, ever giving up.”
Amby Burfoot

58.

“All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.”
Friedrich Nietzsche

59.

“The thoughts that occur to me while I’m running are like clouds in the sky. Clouds of all different sizes. They come and they go, while the sky remains the same sky always. The clouds are mere guests in the sky that pass away and vanish, leaving behind the sky.”
Haruki Murakami

60.

“The reason we race isn’t so much to beat each other,… but to be with each other.”
Christopher McDougall

I hope you enjoyed this collection of inspirational running quotes. What is it that motivates you to go out and run week after week?

Stay victorious!