Inspirational leaders need to have a winning mentality in order to inspire respect. It is hard to trust in the leadership of someone who is half-hearted about their purpose, or only sporadic in focus or enthusiasm.
Sebastian Coe
Sport is a universal language, building more bridges between people than anything else I can think of.
The biggest fragility in a project is often just the inability to be able to explain to people why you are doing it, and when you're going to do it, and what's going to happen.
All pressure is self-inflicted. It's what you make of it or how you let it rub off on you.
I don't think I am a workaholic. I prefer to keep busy. It is better than the alternative.
I think I'm probably just an old-fashioned Tory. I don't wake up each morning trying to figure out what kind of Conservative I am; for me it's quite instinctive.
I've never sent an email in my life. My kids laugh. I often hand the phone to them and say, 'Can you text this message to somebody.' I don't even have a computer on my desk.
There's a difference between hurting when you lose and being a bad loser. You don't compete at the highest level of sport to feel comfortable about losing, but you behave in a civil way when it goes wrong because that is the flip side.
Our success in Singapore was a Herculean effort by the whole team. Now I am determined to deliver on all we promised. I will be watching like a hawk.
My mum was critical in getting me to recognise very early on that although what I was doing was pretty serious, quite selfish, and probably to most people pretty obsessive, there actually was more to life than running quickly twice round a track.
World records are only borrowed.
Interviewing Hugh McIlvanney, I got to read lots of his stuff again. I'm a big fan of his writing.
Sport was an integral part of school life. The most influential teachers were not necessarily the PE teachers, but the teachers who helped me in sport because they had an understanding of what you were going through.
I will go to my grave believing that participation is best driven by the well-stocked shop window.
Nobody ever becomes an expert parent. But I think good parenting is about consistency. It's about being there at big moments, but it's also just the consistency of decision making. And it's routine.
I'm such an odd mix of things. My grandfather was Indian: I've got more family living in India than I do in the U.K. My old man was East London. I was brought up in Yorkshire. My great-grandfather was Irish.
I started track and field when I was 12 and didn't get to an Olympic Games until I was nearly 23. By any stretch of the imagination that's a very long apprenticeship.
I have always been very good at being able to structure my time. My mother had a huge influence on me. My dad was my coach. He was a hugely influential figure.
The Olympics are a world apart from racing for a record. You put out of your mind pretty much what anyone else doing in the race.
When I moved to Sheffield and went to a secondary modern in the Seventies, there were certain challenges: if you've got a name like Sebastian, you either learn to fight or to run.
I had a very ordinary background in Sheffield; I went to a secondary modern, but I saw something on TV in 1968 that inspired me to join an athletics club, and 12 years later, with great coaching and the support of people who loved me a lot, I ended up at an Olympic Games.
The characteristic shared by people at the top of their profession is that, to get better, they crave criticism. Most people don't like criticism, but if you are trying to shave two tenths of a second at 800 metres, that is what you crave.
Since the break-up of the 1990s, Russia has not had winter sports facilities. All the winter sport venues were effectively located in countries that are no longer part of the federation. There is a strong argument for saying Sochi's legacy will be this country will have winter sports facilities it did not have before.
I joined the local athletics club when I was 12, that's what I did. I did it of my own volition.
There is nothing so marginal as a party that has been in power for 18 years and slides into opposition. You influence nothing.
I can be a bit impatient sometimes. If I'm really focusing on something, I can expect everybody to move at the same pace, and that's probably not massively endearing.
I started daily training at the age of 14. When I was 16 years old, I was running twice a day.
The great thing about athletics is that it's like poker sometimes: you know what's in your hand, and it may be a load of rubbish, but you've got to keep up the front.
During my first Olympics in 1980, at the age of 23, I was physically in great condition but mentally too inexperienced to cope comfortably in the pressure cooker of an Olympic year.
Football was not what I was put on this planet to do.
I still run every other day. Longer at weekends. I probably do 35 miles a week.
We have to recognise there are very few countries you will take the Games to where somebody doesn't have issues on foreign or domestic policy.
Getting the Games for London has been the fulfilment of a dream. It is one which I truly believe can change the lives of hundreds of thousands of young people for the better. But in the end, nothing can quite compare with winning your first Olympic gold medal.
I actually don't believe in big government, and half the time I'm never quite sure I believe in government, generally.
There may be problems we still need to tease out, but we will leave no stone unturned in our bid to make London the host city.
I'm probably one of the few people who can say I did all three types of state sector schooling.
Quite simply the Games are the biggest opportunity sport in this country has ever had. It is one that we must not squander.
I wouldn't have raced a horse. But you'll then throw back at me that Jesse Owens raced against a horse, and he's one of my heroes, so I'm not going to say it was a silly stunt. I know too much about horses. They're highly unreliable, and they've got brains the size of golf balls.
It is really important that we promote competitive support in schools. It is very important that we recognise that has to be underpinned by good quality physical education and by getting people into patterns of exercise.
I can remember the day I decided I would retire from competitive athletics as vividly as if it were yesterday.
Some people found it difficult to understand my relationship with my father, but that may have been because they couldn't get beyond their relationship with their own parents.
I've always referred to my father as 'my coach' because we were always able to separate our relationship into the roles of coach and parent.
When the subsidies are going out there to fund arts, I'd like to see jazz given a better shake of the dice. It attracts as many people as opera does, but not the subsidies.
We need to be confident. We need not to blink.
In 1981, I spoke at the Olympic Congress. I was scandalised that I was the first athlete to be given that chance. But I made the most of it.
My motivation to compete was always about improving one year to the next. At 34, I realised I'd never run any quicker, so why hang on? But I love running and still run along woodland trails and beaches every few days.
Vision is a romantic thing. We have got into 'talent identification'. I am much more interested in passion - finding people who are really excited about doing something.
You hope all good athletes run on the balls of their feet. You don't want them coming down heel first. The perfect style is the foot to come down with a slight supination and on a tilt to the outside.
Everybody recognises that giving young people competitive outlet through sport is a very good thing.
Good running is the ability to have a very well defined on-board computer. The ability to judge distances when running in traffic.
