Faith & Spirit Quote by Major Taylor

A prayer from an athlete lands differently when the athlete has been forced to treat the world itself as an opponent. Major Taylor isn’t offering a generic pep talk; he’s naming the real adversary - “that dreadful monster prejudice” - and then prescribing a survival toolkit sturdy enough to outlast it. The word choice matters. “Monster” casts racism as something both grotesque and stalking, a threat that’s not solved by individual virtue but endured, evaded, and confronted. It also smuggles in a bitter realism: monsters don’t get reasoned out of existence.

Taylor’s intent is communal and forward-facing. “They” isn’t his rivals or fans; it’s the next wave of Black strivers he knows will inherit the same hostile terrain. Coming from a champion cyclist in the late 19th and early 20th century - a period when Jim Crow hardened, when Black excellence was policed as “uppity,” when Taylor faced bans, threats, and segregation even at the height of his fame - the line reads like a message passed through a locked door.

The subtext is almost painfully strategic: success will require more than talent. “Patience” and “perseverance” acknowledge delay and repetition; “courage” and “fortitude” acknowledge fear and exhaustion. He’s blessing ambition while quietly warning that prejudice will try to turn victory into a moral failing. The sentence refuses the myth that sports are an escape hatch from politics. Taylor frames achievement as both personal salvation and a form of resistance - carrying on as the first, necessary act.