20 Cycling Quotes to Motivate and Inspire You to Ride

Cycling is about more than a bike, a sport, or fitness routine.  At this time of the year it’s nice to reflect on the joy, beauty and power in cycling.  I’ve gone ahead and listed what I think are the 20 most inspirational and motivational cycling quotes. Some are deep and some are simple but all of them are sure to resonate with your cycling soul and get you excited about your bike

Quotes for Inspiration

It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle. ~Ernest Hemingway

When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. –H.G. Wells

Give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime. Teach a man to cycle and he will realize fishing is stupid and boring. ~Desmond Tutu

Consider a man riding a bicycle. Whoever he is, we can say three things about him. We know he got on the bicycle and started to move. We know that at some point he will stop and get off. Most important of all, we know that if at any point between the beginning and the end of his journey he stops moving and does not get off the bicycle he will fall off it. That is a metaphor for the journey through life of any living thing, and I think of any society of living things. ~William Golding

Cycle tracks will abound in Utopia. ~H.G. Wells

Life is like a ten speed bicycle. Most of us have gears we never use. ~ Charles M. Schulz

When the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work becomes monotonous, when hope hardly seems worth having, just mount a bicycle and go out for a spin down the road, without thought on anything but the ride you are taking. ~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

When man invented the bicycle he reached the peak of his attainments. Here was a machine of precision and balance for the convenience of man. And (unlike subsequent inventions for man’s convenience) the more he used it, the fitter his body became. Here, for once, was a product of man’s brain that was entirely beneficial to those who used it, and of no harm or irritation to others. Progress should have stopped when man invented the bicycle. ~ Elizabeth West

There will be a lot of complaining that today was too hard, but the winners never complain. ~ Phil Liggett

Smile more. Ride a bike ~ Unknown

Quotes for Motivation

“The race is won by the rider who can suffer the most” ~ Eddy Merckx

“Crashing is part of cycling as crying is part of love.” ~ Johan Museeuw

“If you do something right the first time, then it’s not hard enough.” ~Danny MacAskill

“Never ignore your instinct and you can always push harder. I get inspired when I think about people who have pushed their bodies to the limit” ~ Rachel Atherton

“If you brake, you don’t win.”~ Mario Chipollini

“Life’s too short not to go big” ~ Josh Bender

“The slower you go the more likely it is you’ll crash” ~ Juli Furtado

Bike riding is a way to explore, a way to explore nature and the world” ~ Cam Zink

As long as I breathe, I attack.~ Bernard Hinault

And I had to end with The Jensie:

When my legs hurt, I say: “Shut up legs! Do what I tell you to do!” ~ Jens Voigt

What are your favorite biking quotes or cycling quotes? Let me know in the comments.