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Motivation Quote by Lance Armstrong

"If you worried about falling off the bike, you'd never get on"

About this Quote

Armstrong’s line is built like a locker-room shrug that doubles as a life philosophy: stop pre-litigating disaster, or you’ll never start. It works because it frames fear not as wisdom but as a kind of paralysis-by-imagination, the mental equivalent of standing over the bike forever, rehearsing scrapes you haven’t earned yet. The sentence is clean, almost childlike, which is part of its force. It implies that courage isn’t a heroic trait; it’s a behavioral choice made before you have evidence you’ll be fine.

The subtext is pure athletic pragmatism. Every rider knows you will fall. So the question becomes whether risk disqualifies the attempt or simply comes bundled with it. By making “worry” the obstacle rather than the fall itself, Armstrong shifts the battleground from the body to the mind, where the most common loss isn’t injury but abstention.

Context complicates the motivational sheen. Armstrong is not just any cyclist; he’s a symbol of performance, belief, and the costs of winning narratives. Read after the doping scandal, the quote can feel like a disturbingly efficient justification for willful blindness: don’t dwell on consequences, just commit. Yet that tension is why it endures. It captures the seductive, culturally celebrated idea that relentless forward motion is virtue. The line asks you to be brave, but it also reveals how easily bravery can be marketed as permission to ignore the price of getting back on.

Quote Details

TopicMotivational
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Armstrong, Lance. (n.d.). If you worried about falling off the bike, you'd never get on. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/if-you-worried-about-falling-off-the-bike-youd-152684/

Chicago Style
Armstrong, Lance. "If you worried about falling off the bike, you'd never get on." FixQuotes. Accessed February 3, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/if-you-worried-about-falling-off-the-bike-youd-152684/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"If you worried about falling off the bike, you'd never get on." FixQuotes, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/if-you-worried-about-falling-off-the-bike-youd-152684/. Accessed 3 Feb. 2026.

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About the Author

Lance Armstrong

Lance Armstrong (born September 18, 1971) is a Athlete from USA.

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