“It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them.”
Ernest Hemingway – Nobel Prize-awarded writer, journalist, novelist, and sportsman
“It was fantastic to see my friend and one of my heroes Greta Thunberg last week and go on a bike ride around Santa Monica together and I was so pumped to introduce her to my daughter Christina. Keep inspiring, Greta!”
Arnold Schwarzenegger – Austrian actor and American politician
“When you ride hard on a mountain bike, sometimes you fall, otherwise you’re not riding hard.”
Former US president George W. Bush in July 2005 after a crash into a bike cop at the G8 summit in Scotland
“Cycling has encountered more enemies than any other form of exercise.”
Louis Baudry de Saunier – 19th-century journalist, writer, a popular scientist interested mostly in cycling, motor vehicles, and tourism
“Cycling is possibly the greatest and most pleasurable form of transport ever invented. It is like walking only with one-tenth of the effort. Ride through a city and you can understand its geography in a way that no motorist, contained by one-way signs and traffic jams, will ever be able to. You can whiz from one side to the other in minutes. You can overtake £250,000 sports cars that are going nowhere fast. You can park pretty much anywhere. It truly is one of the greatest feelings of freedom once can have in a metropolitan environment. Amazingly, you can feel this free in a modern city.”
Daniel Pemberton – English composer known for movie scores for Ridley Scott, Danny Boyle or Guy Ritchie
“One of the most important days of my life was when I learned to ride a bicycle.”
Michael Palin – English comedian, actor, writer, television presenter, and member of the former comedy group Monty Python
“I used to work in a bank when I was younger and to me, it doesn’t matter whether it’s raining or the sun is shining or whatever: as long as I’m riding a bike I know I’m the luckiest guy in the world.”
Professional racer Mark Cavendish after one of the stage wins during the 2008 Tour de France.
“It’s a risky business being a cyclist in the UK, there are a lot of people who really dislike us. It’s the Jeremy Clarkson influence – we’re hated on the roads. We just hope people realise we are just flesh and bones on two wheels.”
Victoria Pendleton – British track cyclist and women’s sprint gold medal winner at the Beijing Olympics in 2008.
“At that age, it’s one of the worst things in the world to wake up and not see your bike where you left it.”
50 Cent – hip hop star on the theft of his childhood bike
“Nothing compares to the simple pleasure of riding a bike.”
John F. Kennedy – former US president who was assassinated in 1963
“I will stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons. And we won’t be using a man like Secretary Kerry that has absolutely no concept of negotiation, who’s making a horrible and laughable deal, who’s just being tapped along as they make weapons right now and then goes into a bicycle race at 72 years old, and falls and breaks his leg. I won’t be doing that. And I promise I will never be in a bicycle race. That I can tell you.”
Donald Trump – US president who founded the Tour de Trump cycling race back in 1989, which was intended to become the Tour de France of North America
“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 realize fishing is stupid and boring.”
Desmond Tutu – South African Anglican cleric and theologian known for his work as an anti-apartheid and human rights activist who received plenty of awards including the Nobel Peace Prize
“Cycling isn’t a game, it’s a sport. Tough, hard and unpitying, and it requires great sacrifices. One plays football, or tennis, or hockey. One doesn’t play at cycling.”
Jean de Gribaldy was a French cyclist, Tour de France participant, and sportive director
“I wish I’d built more segregated cycling routes for London. If I had my time again, and if I knew then what I know now, I would have gone straight in with a massive programme of segregated cycle superhighways. I probably wouldn’t have been re-elected, unfortunately. That’s one thing to consider. But that would have been the right thing to do.”
Boris Johnson – UK Prime Minister shortly after he ended his mandate as the mayor of London
“I wanted to make sure that the children who saw that picture knew that even the Democratic nominee for president wears a helmet when he goes biking.”
Barrack Obama – former US president on if he considered wearing a bike helmet could spoil his campaign as it happened to the Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis in 1988. Dukakis lost the election to George Bush because of photos showing him riding on a tank with a ludicrously XL-sized helmet on his head.
