Inspirational Bicycle Quotes

Riding a bicycle is one of the greatest metaphors for living life, thus these wonderful quotable bicycle quotes from some historically inspirational people. I'm quite proud of this collection of bike quotes, whIch I've been collecting since about 1997. Please submit your favorite quote.

I feel that I am entitled to my share of lightheartedness and there is nothing wrong with enjoying one's self simply, like a boy. ~ Leo Tolstoy, In response to criticism for learning to ride a bicycle at age 67

The bicycle is a curious vehicle. Its passenger is its engine. ~John Howard

If constellations had been named in the 20th century, I suppose we would see bicycles. ~ Professor Carl Sagan

Newspapers are unable, seemingly to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilization. ~ George Bernard Shaw

The journey of life is like a man riding a bicycle. We know he got on the bicycle and started to move. We know that at some point he will stop and get off. We know that if he stops moving and does not get off he will fall off. ~ William G. Golding, Nobel Laureate, author of "The lord of the flies."

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

After your first day of cycling, one dream is inevitable. A memory of motion lingers in the muscles of your legs, and round and round they seem to go. You ride through Dreamland on wonderful dream bicycles that change and grow. ~ H.G. Wells, The Wheels of Chance

"Bicycles are almost as good as guitars for meeting girls" ~ Bob Weir, Grateful Dead

As a kid I had a dream - I wanted to own my own bicycle. When I got the bike I must have been the happiest boy in Liverpool, maybe the world. I lived for that bike. Most kids left their bike in the backyard at night. Not me. I insisted on taking mine indoors and the first night I even kept it in my bed. ~ John Lennon

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

Let a man find himself, in distinction from others, on top of two wheels with a chain -- at least in a poor country like Russia -- and his vanity begins to swell out like his tires. ~ Leon Trotsky

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

Bicycle Advocacy Slogans

Government must help to eliminate cars so that bicycles can help to eliminate government. ~ Advocacy slogan in Holland

One Less Car ~ Richard Rosenthal, Advocacy slogan for Transportation Alternatives, NYC, 1981

Honk if you love bikes! ~ Critical Mass, San Francisco

I dream on two wheels ~ Adventure Cycling Association

Fun bike quotes from fictional characters

Exhibit B: Another photograph. What's missing from this picture? It's just me WITHOUT MY BIKE! ~ Pee Wee Herman, Pee-wee's Big Adventure the movie

Bicycling is a big part of the future. It has to be. There's something wrong with a society that drives a car to workout in a gym. ~ Bill Nye the Science Guy

When i was little, I wanted a bicycle for my birthday, but my parents got me a baseball glove. So, you know what i did? I pretended that baseball glove was a bicycle, and I rode it to school every day. True story. ~ Gerg Germann, as the agent in Bolt the movie

Great bicycle quotes from the Women's Suffrage
and Feminist Movements

Next to a leisurely walk I enjoy a spin on my tandem bicycle. It is splendid to feel the wind blowing in my face and the springy motion of my iron steed. The rapid rush through the air gives me a delicious sense of strength and buoyancy, and the exercise makes my pulse dance and my heart sing. ~ Helen Keller, deaf and blind political activist

Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel...the picture of free, untrammelled womanhood. ~ Susan B. Anthony 1896

The bicycle has done more for the emancipation of women than anything else in the world. ~ Susan B. Anthony 1896

The bicycle will accomplish more for women’s sensible dress than all the reform movements that have ever been waged. ~ Author unknown, from Demerarest’s Family Magazine. 1895

I began to feel that myself plus the bicycle equaled myself plus the world, upon whose spinning wheel we must all learn to ride, or fall into the sluiceways of oblivion and despair. That which made me succeed with the bicycle was precisely what had gained me a measure of success in life -- it was the hardihood of spirit that led me to begin, the persistence of will that held me to my task, and the patience that was willing to begin again when the last stroke had failed. And so I found high moral uses in the bicycle and can commend it as a teacher without pulpit or creed. She who succeeds in gaining the mastery of the bicycle will gain the mastery of life. ~ Frances E. Willard, How I Learned To Ride The Bicycle. 1895

I finally concluded that all failure was from a wobbling will rather than a wobbling wheel. ~ Frances E. Willard

The bicycle is just as good company as most husbands and, when it gets old and shabby, a woman can dispose of it and get a new one without shocking the entire community. ~ Ann Strong, Minneapolis Tribune, 1895.

Get a bicycle. You will certainly not regret it, if you live.

~ Mark Twain, Taming the Bicycle. 1884
Read Twain's short story Taming the Bicycle or see the quotes below.

The steps of one's progress are distinctly marked. At the end of each lesson he knows he has acquired something, and he also knows what that something is, and likewise that it will stay with him. It is not like studying German, where you mull along, in a groping, uncertain way, for thirty years; and at last, just as you think you've got it, they spring the subjunctive on you, and there you are. No -- and I see now, plainly enough, that the great pity about the German language is, that you can't fall off it and hurt yourself. There is nothing like that feature to make you attend strictly to business. But I also see, by what I have learned of bicycling, that the right and only sure way to learn German is by the bicycling method. That is to say, take a grip on one villainy of it at a time, and learn it -- not ease up and shirk to the next, leaving that one half learned. ~ Mark Twain Taming the Bicycle. 1884.

Suddenly the nickel-clad horse takes the bit in its mouth and goes slanting for the curbstone defying all prayers and all your powers to change its mind -- your heart stands still, your breath hangs fire, your legs forget to work. ~ Mark Twain Taming the Bicycle. 1884.

Great bike quotes from the Tour de France

Why not create an adventure and a quotable moment of your own? ~ Scott

It never gets easier, you just go faster. ~ Greg LeMond

I have always struggled to achieve excellence. One thing that cycling has taught me is that if you can achieve something without a struggle it's not going to be satisfying. ~ Greg LeMond

You don't suffer, kill yourself and take the risks I take just for money. I love [bicycling]. ~ Greg LeMond

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

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

Lance Armstrong quotes have been demoted to a secondary page. Read some of his best inspirational and uninspirational bicycle quotes here >>>

The difference between me and Lance Armstrong is that I still have a chance to win the Tour de France. ~ Anyone

More Bike Sayings or Quotes

It would not be at all strange if history came to the conclusion that the perfection of the bicycle was the greatest incident of the nineteenth century. ~ Anonymous

When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realized that the Lord doesn't work that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me. ~ Emo Philips

The bicycle, the bicycle surely, should always be the vehicle of novelists and poets. ~ Christopher Morley, American author 1890-1957

A bicycle does get you there and more.... And there is always the thin edge of danger to keep you alert and comfortably apprehensive. Dogs become dogs again and snap at your raincoat; potholes become personal. And getting there is all the fun. ~ Bill Emerson, On Bicycling, Saturday Evening Post, 1967

Melancholy is incompatible with bicycling. ~ James E. Starrs

The bicycle is just as good company as most husbands and, when it gets old and shabby, a woman can dispose of it and get a new one without shocking the entire community. ~ Ann Strong

You never have the wind with you -- either it is against you or you're having a good day. ~ Daniel Behrman, The Man Who Loved Bicycles

On my tenth birthday a bicycle and an atlas coincided as presents and a few days later I decided to cycle to India. ~ Dervla Murphy, Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle

The bicycle is the noblest invention of mankind. ~ William Saroyan Nobel prize winner

There is nothing like walking to get the feel of a country. A fine landscape is like a piece of music; it must be taken at the right tempo. Even a bicycle goes too fast. ~ Paul Scott Mowrer

Mankind has invested more than four million years of evolution in the attempt to avoid physical exertion. Now a group of backward-thinking atavists mounted on foot-powered pairs of Hula-Hoops would have us pumping our legs, gritting our teeth, and searing our lungs as though we were being chased across the Pleistocene savanna by saber-toothed tigers. Think of the hopes, the dreams, the effort, the brilliance, the pure force of will that, over the eons, has gone into the creation of the Cadillac Coupe de Ville. Bicycle riders would have us throw all this on the ash heap of history. ~ P.J. O'Rourke

The bicycle, the bicycle, surely should always be the vehicle of novelists and poets. ~ Christopher Morely Nobel prize winner

Bicycles are the indicator species of a community, like shellfish in a bay. ~ P. Martin Scott

Whoever invented the bicycle deserves the thanks of humanity. ~ Lord Charles Beresford

If I can bicycle, I bicycle. ~ David Attenborough

Great bicycle quotes from some not-yet famous people

A bicycle ride around the world begins with a single pedal stroke. ~ Scott Stoll

It is the unknown around the corner that turns my wheels. ~ Heinz Stucke, Bicycle touring for 50 years and still going

The cyclist creates everything from almost nothing, becoming the most energy-efficient of all... animals and machines and, as such, has a [genuine] ability to challenge the entire value system of a society.... The bicycle may be too cheap, too available, too healthy, too independent and too equitable for its own good. In an age of excess it is minimal and has the subversive potential to make people happy in an economy fuelled by consumer discontent. ~ Jim McGurn

Pray Every Day And Listen. ~ Rev. Johannes Myors, The Pedaling Preacher

Falling Uphill — The short film

One man's quest for happiness around the world on a bicycle

Now in HD with annotations. A montage of photos and videos from Scott's 4 year, 26,000 mile bicycle tour around the world. Previously a Youtube Feature Video and specially requested for the Boston Bicycle Film Festival.

I nearly cried watching this video. Just a normal guy and look what he has achieved. ~ Ingrid K.