48 Most Exclusive Rowing Quotes For Real Motivation

Rowing Quotes – Rowing Quotes is one of the sports that need water and boating, along with a single or a bunch of folks riding the boat in full esteem. It is also referred to as Crew in the United States of America as well.

It is slightly different from padding sports in that rowing oars are attached to the boat using oarlocks, while paddles are not attached to the boat. This particular sport is divided into two disciplines that include sweep rowing and sculling rowing.

48 Inspiring Rowing Quotes and Proverbs

“The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.” ~ Phil Jackson
“Be not afraid of rowing slowly. Be afraid of standing still.” ~ Hannah Whitall Smith
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” ~ Scott Fitzgerald
“In rowing as in life, there are competitors and there are racers. The competitor works hard and rows to his limit. The racer does not think of limits, only the race.” ~ Jim Dietz
“Harmony, balance, and rhythm. They’re the three things that stay with you your whole life. Without them civilization is out of whack. And that’s why an oarsman, when he goes out in life, he can fight it, he can handle life. That’s what he gets from rowing.” ~ Daniel James Brown
“And all the way, to guide their chime, With falling oars they kept their time.” ~ Andrew Marvell
“Rowing harder doesn’t help if the boat is headed in the wrong direction.” ~ Kenichi Ohmae
“Rowing is a sport for dreamers. As long as you put in the work, you can own the dream.” ~ Jim Dietz
“No member of a crew is praised for the rugged individuality of his rowing.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Internally, you experience rowing as a graphic microcosm of life – solitude, learning, work, rest, nourishment, sharing and ultimately challenge.” ~ Allen Rosenberg
“”Stepping outside your comfort zone is supposed to feel uncomfortable because we’re in new and unfamiliar territory. Being uncomfortable is a sign of success, NOT of failure! So if we are uncomfortably outside our comfort zones, then than means we are growing!!! And THAT is cause for celebration!” (modified from a passage in Roz Savage’s “Rowing the Atlantic”)” ~ Roz Savage
“There is a place where cerebral an corporeal meet: they call it rowing” ~ Barry S. Strauss
“We must row in whatever boat we find ourselves in.” ~ Christie Watson
“When eight row together with swing the boat becomes the ninth rower.” ~ Phillip Thomas
“There is advantage in the wisdom won from pain.” ~ Aeschylus
“Rowing provided a place to go, a community where people cared about what I did and what I achieved.” ~ Nancy Greene
“There is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.” ~ Kenneth Grahame
“Learning is like rowing upstream; not to advance is to drop back.” – Chinese proverb” ~ Alvin Toffler
“There is a moment, right before a person blacks out, when their vision blurs and their hearing falters. At that point most people would stop whatever they’re doing. Rowers keep erging, keep running, keep lifting. They ignore the warning signs and keep destroying the piece.”
“To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.” – Steve Prefontaine
“The only good race pace is a suicide pace, and today looks like a good day to die.” – Steve Prefontaine
I love Steve Prefontaine quotes and find them super motivational! If you haven’t watched any of the movies or documentaries about him, I highly recommend them!
“Don’t Quite. You’re already in pain. You’re already hurt. Get a reward from it.”
“Rowing is perhaps the toughest of sports. Once the race starts, there are no timeouts, no substitutions. It calls upon the limits of human endurance. The coach must therefor impart the secrets of the special kind of endurance that comes from the mind, heart, and body. – George Pocock
“When your legs scream stop and your lungs are bursting. That’s when it starts. That’s the hurt locker. Winners love it there.”
“I don’t deserve anything, I have to earn my seat everyday.”
“In order to win you have to do something that the boat next to you isn’t willing to do.”
“Rowers…can do it all, and they can do it well. Joining the rowing team will be the greatest decision you will ever make, if you choose to accept the harsh realities of the sport. By doing so, you will understand the incalculable value of an indomitable spirit – and you will learn, above all, that your achievements in life are limited only by the magnitude of your drive to achieve them.” – Amy Yao
“You don’t want to look back and know you could have done better.”
“Eight hearts must beat as one in an eight oared shell or you don’t have a crew!”- George Pocock
“All were merged into one smoothly working machine; they were in fact, a poem of motion, a symphony of swinging blades.” – Boys in the Boat
“In rowing, as in life, there are competitors and there are racers. The competitor works hard and rows to his limit. The racer does not think of limits, only the race.” – Jim Dietz
“Rowing is a sport for dreamers. As long as you put in the work, you can own the dream. When the work stops, the dream disappears.” – Jim Dietz
“On race day, there’s tremendous anxiety. Leading up to the stake boat, I distinctly remember saying to myself, ‘I can’t wait till this is over.’”- Frank Shields
“When one rows, it is not the rowing which moves the ship, rowing is only a magical ceremony by means of which one compels a demon to move the ship” – Friedrich Nietzsche
“If anyone here is secretly dreaming of making the Olympics, I can tell you exactly how to do it, two words: Sustained Obsession. The obsession isn’t so hard. But keeping it sustained is a tough nut to crack. A heart-felt enemy can go a long way to sustaining your obsession. Love your enemy.” – Brad Alan Lewis
“Rowing is such a fine sport. Everyone goes backward, and the leader can see his opponents as they struggle in vain.” – Brad Alan Lewis
“In rowing I found a sport that demanded some skill, granted, but placed a much higher premium on plain hard work and persistence.” – Harry Parker
“Glory is in the team not the individual.” – Sean Sullivan
“For the rest of your life, you will always be able to say I was a member of a very special team whose whole was greater than the sum of its parts, and it was one of the greatest experiences of my life.”
“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
“Normal people do not have blisters on their hands. They can sleep as long as they want on the weekends. They do not have to erg. They do not have to feel the pain we go through during a race. But they do not have a crew. They aren’t as fit as we are. They will never experience the feeling we have after finishing a race. They will never prove how far they can go. They will never race. And they will never row.”
“No one guy can make the boat go faster by himself.” – Harry Parker