Michael Phelps Swimming Quotations

One thing with me, and every goal I've had - - in the sport of swimming, my mother didn't know my goals. The only person that knew my goals were my coaches.

The only reason I started swimming was for water safety. Then, once I started falling in love with sports, I got more comfortable with it.

Swimming is fun. It's a lot funner than golf.

I wanted to do something nobody ever did. This goes hand in hand with my goal of changing swimming.

Swimming is normal for me. I'm relaxed. I'm comfortable, and I know my surroundings. It's my home.

I won't predict anything historic. But nothing is impossible.

This is my 20th year in the sport. I've known swimming and that's it. I don't want to swim past age 30; if I continue after this Olympics, and come back in 2016, I'll be 31. I'm looking forward to being able to see the other side of the fence.

It's cool just because I've had this dream of changing the sport of swimming and it's finally happening.

Why is it such a big deal what I'm swimming?

I wanted to get the fastest time in the world this year, but with everything going on, it's a pretty decent swim, ... I knew I was under world record pace. You could tell by the crowd. You can always tell at these meets when something good is going on because of the crowd.

When we got in the race, we knew what we had to do and knew what we wanted to do. Having three of four guys from the American record 800 free relay is a pretty solid relay, so we thought we could take a crack at the U.S. Open record tonight. We're all a little tired, but that's fifth-fastest American relay ever, so it's not a bad time. We ended tonight on a great note.

Coming into tonight, I knew it was going to be a great race, ... In the 400, Laszlo put up a 4:10.1 earlier in the year, and so you expect him to put up a good time in (the 200). I knew Ryan was going to be fast coming off his short course season, and he's improved a lot since Athens, so I just wanted to go out there and relax a bit and go out there and do what I had to do.

This is the first medal I've ever won in an international meet. For it to be gold is incredible. It feels great. I can't explain it.

I'm satisfied in a way because this is an eye opener for me, ... I didn't have the success I've always been able to have. I learned a lot.

I don't like to be second in anything. I was trying, I just wasn't going anywhere.

We're all a little tired.

We wanted to see how close we could get to the world record. We'll take that for right now.

I treat every race the same. We all wanted to swim fast today and give something back to the crowd.

I don't want to be the next Mark Spitz; I want to be the first Michael Phelps

If you're not on your 'A' game in our workouts every day, you're going to get absolutely smoked.

I have reached a place in my life where I need to sit down and say, 'Well, what do I do? What's best for me?' I need to look into options for the future.

Before the (Olympic) trials I was doing a lot of relaxing exercises and visualization. And I think that that helped me to get a feel of what it was gonna be like when I got there. I knew that I had done everything that I could to get ready for that meet, both physically and mentally

I have the opportunity to be part of swimming history. To take the sport to a new level would be an honor for me. There's no better time to try this than now.

Swimming is more than a once-every-four-years sport. My goal is to bring attention to swimming - to give it some personality.

I want to test my maximum and see how much I can do. And I want to change the world of swimming.

I try to separate my personal life from swimming.

I think that everything is possible as long as you put your mind to it and you put the work and time into it. I think your mind really controls everything.

When the Australians walked out, the crowd went nuts, and when we walked out, the crowd went even more nuts. I can't describe how amazing that was. Three thousand people were here rooting for the two strongest swimming nations. I'll never forget that, and I was glad to be part of it.

Being compared to Ian Thorpe, that could be one of the greatest compliments you could ever get in swimming - being compared to him and Mark Spitz.

I want to be able to look back and say, 'I've done everything I can, and I was successful.' I don't want to look back and say I should have done this or that. I'd like to change things for the younger generation of swimmers coming along.