You are the master of your own ship, pal. There are lots of people who fall into troubled waters and don't have the guts or the knowledge or the ability to make it to shore. They have nobody to blame but themselves.
— Evel Knievel
Nothing's worse than a guy who loses fair and square and then whines about it.
My grandpa got me a set of Wilson clubs, Sam Snead models, when I was 12. Many years later, when I'd become well known, I got to know Sam, and we played a lot of golf together.
I decided to fly through the air and live in the sunlight and enjoy life as much as I could.
I am a guy who is first of all a businessman. I'm not a stunt man. I'm not a daredevil. I'm - I'm an explorer.
Kids come up to me all the time and say, 'Once I was going through a really bad time, and I saw you crash and get up, and it inspired me.'
I can still crack a safe with one hand tied behind my back. I'm not proud of it. But I was always against society.
I am not, never have been, and never will be a politician. But I want to tell you the United States has always been proud of having the support of the United Kingdom, of keeping Britain in Europe. We need Britain in Europe.
I went through high school, but I didn't graduate.
Breaks your heart when your son doesn't love you.
You can't say you're going to jump the Grand Canyon and then jump some other canyon.
I always wanted to live to about 70. I thought that'd be a good age.
The saddest thing is when a guy is paying so much attention to the world and everything going by that he can't take the time for his own mother.
I'm better than P. T. Barnum and Colonel Parker put together.
If you fall during your life, it doesn't matter. You're never a failure as long as you try to get up.
My life has been being a daredevil. I am Evel Knievel. I am a daredevil.
You know, I had a couple hundred jumps in my career, and I made most of them, but the ones they show over and over are the ones when I crashed.
You can't forbid children to do things that are available to them at every turn. God told Eve, 'Don't give the apple to Adam,' and look what happened. It's in our nature to want the things we see.
You'd think a guy who has broken 35 bones in his body would have a high pain threshold, but mine is pretty low. I got hit in the shin with a golf ball once, and it almost brought tears to my eyes. I've had broken bones that didn't hurt as bad.
The finest compliment you can pay a man is that his word was as good as gold.
I play golf five days a week. I find that if I play seven days a week, I get stale.
I can't keep track of my hospital time. It all sort of blurs together.
My failures had a lot to do with my fame. I created Evel Knievel, and then he sort of got away from me.
Those extreme-sports kids today are good, but they have it easy. Try falling off of a motorcycle going 70 or 80 miles per hour on asphalt. Believe me, nothing equals it.
Sometimes I keep a car for only a week or two. I like the newest and the flashiest.
I think if you have ability and talent in one way, you have it in all ways. I'm not a jack of all trades; I'm a master of many. I don't feel there is anything I can't do if I want to.
I want to be the first. If they'd let me go to the moon, I'd crawl all the way to Cape Kennedy just to do it. I'd like to go to the moon, but I don't want to be the second man to go there.
A motorcycle coming down from 30 feet at 70 mph gives you a terrible jolt.
If there is a heaven, I don't know anything else I can do to get there - and neither do you.
I wish there was such a thing as reincarnation.
I've always been concerned about kids - not just my own three, but all kids - what kind of an image I'm providing for them, what kind of inspiration. I don't know now. Maybe I'm leading them down the path to self-destruction.
Marty Stanovich was an honorable man.
All my life people have been waiting around to watch me die.
I always knew how to draw a crowd.
The Internal Revenue Service is more ruthless than the Gestapo. Abolish the IRS! Stamp out organized crime!
I learned one thing from jumping motorcycles that was of great value on the golf course, the putting green especially: Whatever you do, don't come up short.
I'm not only the best-known daredevil on the face of the earth, I'm the oldest.
I guess I'm like any other concerned father, except that nobody else's son guns a cycle over 17 pickups without holding on to the handlebars.
Anybody can jump a motorcycle. The trouble begins when you try to land it.
It's easy to be famous today. People pay a million dollars to be recognized, but nobody cares about them. They cared about me because I did things other men were afraid to do. That's why my fans identified with me. They were mostly working-class.
I have my tombstone already. A tombstone company in the East gave it to me when I jumped Snake Canyon. My plot is in Montana.
I like to help kids, work with kids in detention homes. Don't tell a kid what's right and wrong. He knows what's right and wrong. Find out what his attitude and his aptitude are; try to help him where he wants to go.
Prison was tough on me. I saw people in prison that made me ashamed I was a human being. Some make Qaddafi and Idi Amin look like Sunday-school teachers.
I don't have any problems in life, just situations.
There's just no stopping me. I went through life big-bang-banda-boom-bada-boom.
God made us. He's in charge of everything, right? If He didn't like us, why didn't he change us?
I don't know what in the world happened. I don't know if it was the power of the prayer or God himself, but it just reached out, either while I was driving or walking down the sidewalk or sleeping, and it just - the power of God in Jesus just grabbed me... All of a sudden, I just believed in Jesus Christ. I did, I believed in him!
The most important thing in life is, if you have a dream, I mean a real good dream, follow it.
Titanic Thompson and Amarillo Slim would have run from a game with Marty Stanovich. Marty could really play, and he didn't cheat.
I went through life big-bang-banda-boom-bada-boom.
