49 Great Biking Quotes For Motivation & Inspiration

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Need a little inspiration to fuel your ride or help you find the motivation to crush your two-wheeled goals? In this post, I’ve rounded up the best biking quotes and cycling quotes from both professional cyclists as well as everyday riders who simply enjoy the freedom and simplicity of bicycles.

Whether you’re looking for motivation for your own pursuits, inspiration for life, a bit of humor, or need help convincing your friends that bikes can save the world, you’ll find a great cycling quote below.

My favorite biking quotes

1. “Get a bicycle. You will not regret it. If you live.”

Mark Twain, American writer & Humorist

2. “Good morale in cycling comes from good legs.”

Sean Yates, English former professional cyclist

3. “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.”

Albert Einstein, theoretical physicist

4. “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 on the road, without thought on anything but the ride you are taking.”

Arthur Conan Doyle, British writer & physician (creator of Sherlock Holmes)

5. “Life is like a 10-speed bicycle. Most of us have gears we never use.”

Charles M. Schultz, Cartoonist (creator of the comic strip Peanuts)

6. “Whoever invented the bicycle deserves the thanks of humanity.”

Lord Charles Beresford, 1st Baron of Beresford

7. “Bicycles may change, but cycling is timeless.”

Zapata Espinoza, Journalist

8. “My two favourite things in life are libraries and bicycles. They both move people forward without wasting anything. The perfect day: riding a bike to the library.”

Peter Golkin, NASA scientist

9. “Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race.”

H .G. Wells, English writer

10. “I asked God for a bike, but I know God doesn’t work that way. So I stole a bike and asked for forgiveness.”

Emo Philips, American Actor & Comedian

11. “My bike is my gym, my wheelchair, and my church all in one. I’d like to ride my bike all day long but I’ve got this thing called a job that keeps getting in the way.”

Bill Walton, Former professional basketball player

12. “It’s the first machine we master as children and the one we abandon when the seductions of the automobile take over.”

Colman Mc Cartly

13. “When you ride hard on a mountain bike, sometimes you fall, otherwise you’re not riding hard.”

George Bush, Former US President

14. “If I can bicycle, I bicycle.”

David Attenborough, English Broadcaster

Cycling quotes about the ride

15. “The slower you go the more likely it is you’ll crash.”

Julie Furtado, American former professional mountain biker

16. “It never gets easier, you just go faster.”

Greg LeMond, American former professional road racing cyclist

17. “Ride as much or as little or as long or as short as you feel, but ride!”

Eddy Merckx, Belgian former professional road & track bicycle racer

18. “Don’t buy upgrades; ride up grades!”

Eddy Merckx, Belgian former professional road & track bicycle racer

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

Danny Macaskill, Scottish trials cyclist

20. “One thing that cycling has taught me is that if you achieve something without a struggle it’s not going to be satisfying.”

Greg Lemond, American former professional road racing cyclist

21. “You are one ride away from a good mood.”

Sarah Bentley, British Cyclist

22. “Crashing is part of cycling as crying is part of love.”

Johan Museeuw, Belgian former professional road racing cyclist

23. “The bicycle has a soul. If you succeed to love it, it will give you emotions that you will never forget.”

Mario Cipollini, Italian former professional road cyclist

24. “The best rides are the ones where you bite off much more than you can chew, and live through it.”

Doug Bradbury, Early adopter of mountain biking

25. “If you brake, you don’t win.”

Mario Cipollini, retired Italian professional road cyclist

26. “Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever.”

Lance Armstrong, American former professional road racing cyclist

27. “My fear isn’t crashing this bike at 85 miles per hour and losing my skin. It is sitting in my chair at 90 and thinking, ‘I wish I’d done more.”

Graeme Obree, Scottish former racing cyclist

28. “The cyclist is a man half made of flesh and half of steel that only our century of science and iron could have spawned.”

Louis Baudry de Saunier, French Author

Biking life quotes

29. “I thought of that while riding my bicycle.”

Albert Einstein On the theory of relatively, theoretical physicist

30. “Nothing compares to the simple pleasure of a bike ride.”

John F. Kennedy, Former US President

31. “When I go biking I am mentally far, far away from civilisation. The world is breaking someone else’s heart.”

Diane Ackerman, American Poet

32. “Bicycles are the indicator species of a community, like shellfish in a bay.”

P. Martin Scott

33. “One of the most important days of my life was when I learned to ride a bicycle.”

Michael Palin, English Actor

34. “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 realise fishing is stupid and boring.”

Desmond Tutu, South African Anglican bishop & theologian

35. “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.”

Arthur conan Doyle, British writer & physician (creator of Sherlock Holmes)

36. “Anyone who rides a bike is a friend of mine.”

Gary Fisher, Considered one of the Inventors of the modern mountain bike

37. “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

38. “I relax by taking my bicycle apart and putting it back together again.”

Michelle Pfeiffer, American Actress

39. “There is beauty in silence and there is silence in beauty and you can find both in a bicycle!”

Mehmet Murat ildan Contemporary Turkish playwright, novelist & thinker

40. “The bicycle has done more for the emancipation of women than anything else in the world.”

Susan B. Anthony, American Women’s Right activist

41. “She who succeeds in gaining the mastery of the bicycle will gain the mastery of life.”

Susan B. Anthony, American Women’s Right activist

 42. “The bike will transform anyone who is willing to let it happen.”

Ina-Yoko Teuntenberg, German former road bicycle racer

43. “Those who wish to control their own lives and move beyond existence as mere clients and consumers—those people ride a bike.”

Wolfgang Sachs, German researcher & Author

44. “Life is like riding a bicycle: you don’t fall off unless you stop pedaling.”

Claude Pepper, Former American politician

45. “Bicycling is a big part of the future. It has to be. There’s something wrong with a society that drives a car to work out in a gym.”

Bill Nye, The Science guy!

46. “A bicycle ride is a flight from sadness.”

James E. Starrs, Professor & Author

Biking adventure quotes

47. “You have no such accurate remembrance of a country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle.”

Ernest Hemingway, American novelist

48. “A bicycle ride around the world begins with a single pedal stroke.”

Scott Stoll, Adventurer (and yes, he pedaled around the world)

49. “Cyclists see considerable more of this beautiful world than any other class of citizens. A good bicycle, well applied, will cure most ills this flesh is heir to.”

Dr. K. K. Doty, Adventurer & bicycling evangelist

What are your favorite biking quotes or cycling quotes? Did I leave any out? Let me know in the comments!