Zamperini Quotes

At that moment, something shifted sweetly inside him. It was forgiveness, beautiful and effortless and complete. For Louie Zamperini, the war was over.

One moment of pain is worth a lifetime of glory.

The one who forgives never brings up the past to that person's face. When you forgive, it's like it never happened. True forgiveness is complete and total.

I'd made it this far and refused to give up because all my life I had always finished the race.

Yet a part of you still believes you can fight and survive no matter what your mind knows. It's not so strange. Where there's still life, there's still hope. What happens is up to God.

All I want to tell young people is that you're not going to be anything in life unless you learn to commit to a goal. You have to reach deep within yourself to see if you are willing to make the sacrifices.

The great commandment is that we preach the gospel to every creature, but neither God nor the Bible says anything about forcing it down people's throats.

I think the hardest thing in life is to forgive. Hate is self destructive. If you hate somebody, you're not hurting the person you hate, you're hurting yourself. It's a healing, actually, it's a real healing...forgiveness.

People tell me, "You're such an optimist". Am I an optimist? An optimist says the glass is half full. A pessimist says the glass is half empty. A survivalist is practical. He says, "Call it what you want, but just fill the glass." I believe in filling the glass.

God knew my needs and took care accordingly.

The world, we'd discovered, doesn't love you like your family loves you.

To live, a man needs food, water, and a sharp mind.

I was raised to face any challenge.

You only have one life. You should never be too busy to save it.

It was all in His hands now - as it had always been.

Someone who doesn't make the (Olympic) team might weep and collapse. In my day no one fell on the track and cried like a baby. We lost gracefully. And when someone won, he didn't act like he'd just become king of the world, either. Athletes in my day were simply humble in our victory. I believe we were more mature then...Maybe it's because the media puts so much pressure on athletes; maybe it's also the money. In my day we competed for the love of the sport...In my day we patted the guy who beat us on the back, wished him well, and that was it.

don’t be afraid to make mistakes; they are just the stepping-stones to success.

I've always been called Lucky Louie. It's no mystery why.

God has given me so much. He expects so much out of me.

People tell me, “You’re such an optimist.” Am I an optimist? An optimist says the glass is half full. A pessimist says the glass is half empty. A survivalist is practical. He says, “Call it what you want, but just fill the glass.” I believe in filling the glass. —LOUIS SILVIE ZAMPERINI

(On surviving on the raft for 47 days) We had truly made it on a wing and prayer.

All I knew was that hate was so deadly as any poison and did no one any good. You had to control and eliminate it, if you could.

I'll be an easier subject than Seabiscuit, because I can talk." Louis Zamperini to Laura Hillenbrand.

The great lesson of my life is perseverance. Never give up. It’s like my brother said, “Isn’t one minute of pain worth a lifetime of glory?

Everyone needs that support-even if at first you don't think you do. Look around. See who's on your side and in your corner. You don't have to go it alone.

The race film had confirmed a dead heat. That was great. But even better, most of the New York press finally learned to spell my name correctly.

(after asking Christ into his heart) I waited. And then, true to His promise, He came into my heart and my life. The moment was more than remarkable; it was the most realistic experience I'd ever had. I'm not sure what I expected; perhaps my life or my sins or a great white light would flash before my eyes; perhaps I'd feel a shock like being hit by a bolt of lightning. Instead, I felt no tremendous sensation, just a weightlessness and an enveloping calm that let me know that Christ had come into my heart.

I believe everybody in the world should try to help somebody else. Let’s say half the people in the world are successful. If they help the other half, hey, you’ve got no problem.

Your mind is everything. It’s like a muscle. You must exercise it or it will atrophy—just like a muscle.

Green Hornet being loaded for its final flight. Courtesy of Louis Zamperini

If you can take it, you can make it

ALL HE COULD SEE, IN EVERY DIRECTION, WAS WATER. It was June 23, 1943. Somewhere on the endless expanse of the Pacific Ocean, Army Air Forces bombardier and Olympic runner Louie Zamperini lay across a small raft, drifting westward. Slumped alongside him was a sergeant, one of his plane’s gunners. On a separate raft, tethered to the first, lay another crewman, a gash zigzagging across his forehead. Their bodies, burned by the sun and stained yellow from the raft dye, had winnowed down to skeletons. Sharks glided in lazy loops around them, dragging their backs along the rafts, waiting.

His old riot of black hair was now a translucent scrim of white, but his blue eyes still threw sparks.

as the Bible says, a smooth sea never made a good sailor. I believe that to this day.

Isn’t one minute of pain worth a lifetime of glory?

A month earlier, twenty-six-year-old Zamperini had been one of the greatest runners in the world, expected by many to be the first to break the four-minute mile, one of the most celebrated barriers in sport. Now his Olympian’s body had wasted to less than one hundred pounds and his famous legs could no longer lift him. Almost everyone outside of his family had given him up for dead.

Sometimes what we see as a loss turns out in the end to be a gain, and sometimes a gain is a loss. I try not to be too swift to pass judgment on any situation, preferring instead to be patient and take the long view because I believe that in the end all things work together for good.

The Bible speaks of the Word of God as added. Sometimes it's planted by the wayside, and nothing grows there. Sometimes it's sown among the thorns and represents the person who makes the decision an then goes back to his old life of bars and chasing women or whatever. A third seed is sown among the rocks. There's sand and dirt between the rocks, and when it rains you'll see a stalk of green coming up. But on the first day with sunshine it wilts because there is no room for roots. The fourth seed is planted on fertile soil, and finally it takes hold and has a chance to grow and live. That's what happened to me.

What I’ve learned is that the more you help people, the longer you live. The good feelings are a healing process.

Hope is incomplete and ongoing. Faith is the substance of things hoped for and is complete.

Zamperini looked toward his crewmates. They were too weak

From the moment that Watanabe locked eyes with Louie Zamperini, an officer, a famous Olympian, and a man for whom defiance was second nature, no man obsessed him more.

you’re not going to be anything in life unless you learn to commit to a goal. You have to reach deep within yourself to see if you are willing to make the sacrifices. Your dreams won’t always come true, but you’ll never know if you don’t try. Either way, you will always discover so much of value along the way because you’ll always run into problems—or as I call them, challenges.

I didn’t know it then, but my persistence, perseverance, and unwillingness to accept defeat when things looked all but hopeless were part of the very character traits I would need to make it through World War II alive.

When there’s no further hope, men always look up.

I’ve accepted Christ as my Savior.

Positive self-esteem must be preceded by self-respect. To get self-respect you have to do something good.

the mind is a crucial line of defense against adversity.

You should make your life count right up to the last minute.

The best way to meet any challenge is to be prepared for it.

One moment of pain is worth a lifetime of glory

If you cling to the axe you’re grinding, eventually you’ll only hurt yourself.

I wonder what they'd do if they knew the truth about my high life and my low life and all the demons in between.

By the way, I didn’t win the 5000-meter race at the Olympics, but making the team and not winning is like going to the moon and stumbling over a rock and falling. So what? You’re still on the moon.

Louie's mother, Louise, took a different tack. Louie was a copy of herself, right down to the vivid blue eyes. When pushed, she shoved; sold a bad cut of meat, she'd march down to the butcher, frying pan in hand. Loving mischief, she spread icing over a cardboard box and presented it as a birthday cake to a neighbor, who promptly got the knife stuck. When Pete told her he'd drink his castor oil if she gave him an empty candy box. "You only asked for the box, honey," she said with a smile. "That's all I got." And she understood Louie's restiveness. One Halloween, she dressed as a boy and raced around town trick-or-treating with Louie and Pete. A gang of kids, thinking she was one of the local toughs, tackled her and tried to steal her pants. Little Louise Zamperini, mother of four, was deep in the melee when the cops picked her up for brawling.

The Olympic Spirit is like the wind. You don’t see it coming or going but you hear its voice. You feel the power of its presence. You enjoy the results of its passing. And then it becomes a memory, an echo of days of glory.

But I couldn’t give up hope. Not my style. I would do what I had to do to survive. From that moment until the end of the war, when we were freed, I would really come to understand the meaning of “Don’t give up, don’t give in.

There is not a just man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not,” Dr. Graham said. “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.

For what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?

I just knew that no matter how bad the pain, I had to keep going.

The Bible says all things work together for good, for those who love the Lord.

To whom much has been given, much is expected

I’ve gone through my life drawing from my experiences both positive and negative to try and influence others for the good.

I thought I had problems, but now, knowing what you went through, I’ve stopped feeling sorry for myself. I’m going to quit tearing myself apart and treat my problems more lightly.

Louie in his early eighties. “I think my skateboarding shakes up a few people. Some stop their cars to be sure their eyes aren’t deceiving them.

What the Zamperinis were experiencing wasn’t denial, and it wasn’t hope. It was belief.

If you try to stand alone, you’re going to fall. The Lord says, ‘Cast all your cares upon me’—in other words, lean your entire weight on me—‘and I will uphold you with the right hand of my righteousness.

If you give everything and you lose, so what? It’s not going to put you in your grave. I walked away knowing I could handle defeat gracefully, and I had more self-esteem from that than from winning the race.

Before, as much as the hate poisoned me, I think it gave me a kind of satisfaction. I believed hating was the same as getting even, but those I hated didn’t even know my feelings. All I did was destroy myself with my hate.

One day we were fighting for our lives, the next we were enjoying the clouds, the sunset, the soaring albatross, the dolphins and porpoises. Through it all I never lost my sense that life could be beautiful. I kept my zest for living, morning and night. I’d made it this far and refused to give up because all my life I had always finished the race.

Many people reject Christ because they feel they can’t live a Christian life. Well, nobody can live a Christian life—without help.” I thought when you accepted Christ you had to be perfect, but he said, “Christ has promised to help you. He said, ‘I will uphold you with the right hand of my righteousness. If you have problems in life, cast all your cares on me, for I care for you.

I decided then that while I’d continue telling my story to whoever would listen. Rather than preach I’d just plant the seed, live an impeccable life so people could see the difference in me, and let God grant the increase. It was all in His hands now—as it had always been.

Askim was notorious for his kleptomania; the Zamperinis lived above a grocery, and the dog made regular shoplifting runs downstairs, snatching food and fleeing. His name was a clever joke: When people asked what the dog’s name was, they were invariably confused by the reply, which sounded like “Ask him.

Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us,” and I sat straight up in my seat. How had he known what was in my mind? Then he said, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

VERY FEW PEOPLE really understand the difficulties of accepting Christianity. The picture painted by the well-meaning is that after a conversion God gives the new believer a steady diet of happiness and all is immediately well. Nothing of the sort is true. On the contrary, like every other sincere person who is striving to believe in spite of having so long lived another way with a mind conditioned to cynicism, I had to go through a period of despondency, doubt, and painful self-examination.

I had finally come full circle. Except for continuing to tell my story and spreading the Word, a great part of my life was over: the delinquency, the running, the war, the imprisonment, the drinking, the nightmares, the greediness and desperation, the unhappiness. I was completely satisfied with my test of forgiveness and more than ready to move on.

In Sugamo, Louie asked his escort what had happened to the Bird. He was told that it was believed that the former sergeant, hunted, exiled and in despair, had stabbed himself to death. The words washed over Louie. In prison camp, Watanabe had forced him to live in incomprehensible degradation and violence. Bereft of his dignity, Louie had come home to a life lost in darkness, and had dashed himself against the memory of the Bird. But on an October night in Los Angeles, Louie had found, in Payton Jordan’s words, “daybreak.” That night, the sense of shame and powerlessness that had driven his hate the Bird had vanished. The Bird was no longer his monster. He was only a man. In Sugamo Prison, as he was told of Watanabe’s fate, all Louie saw was a lost person, a life beyond redemption. He felt something that he had never felt fro his captor before. With a shiver of amazement, he realized that it was compassion. At that moment, something shifted swiftly inside him. It was forgiveness, beautiful and effortless and complete. For Louie Zamperini, the was was over.

Never give up, no matter what.

If you can take it, you can make it

you have to find your way through to the top. Reaching the final destination is what matters. Other times you

I wasn’t reaching for glory at Naoetsu. I just wouldn’t give the Bird the satisfaction of destroying my dignity. Don’t let anyone take yours away, either.

The one who forgives never brings up the past to that person’s face. When you forgive, it’s like it never happened. True forgiveness is complete and total.

I knew then that I would not turn back. I’d struggled to come this far, and I would commit myself to whatever happened next.

Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved,” so I took Him at His word, begged for His pardon, and asked Jesus to come into my life.

A moment of pain is worth a lifetime of victory

All I knew was that hate was as deadly as any poison and did no one any good. You had to control and eliminate it, if you could.

My forgiveness was so authentic and total that I looked forward to seeing each of them. I longed to look into their eyes and say not only “I forgive you,” but to tell them of the greatest event of forgiveness the world has ever known when Christ on the Cross, and at the peak of his agony, could say of his executioners, “Forgive them father, for they know not what they do.

One day I knew the war would be over, but I wondered how long the remains of war would last in me and in them even after the bombs had stopped falling and the guns were silent. What I feared most was that my generation would teach the hatred and resentment I was learning at the hands of the Japanese to our own children and the cycle of disaffection and violence would never stop.

I’m often asked about my generation, which some people call the Greatest Generation but which I also call the Hardy Generation. What made us hardy? The Depression years. We were not spoiled with money, that’s for sure. When we had disputes we didn’t use attorneys; we settled them on the street, even got broken bones and noses from fighting. In all ways we helped one another. We shared, we had neighborhood picnics, we made our own toys. (There were no toy stores; I built racing cars.) I also rode one of the first skateboards, with a box on the front. We had a single soccer ball for four or five blocks’ worth of kids; you were lucky if you got to kick it once. We had free time to burn. Distractions? Radio, yes, but no TV. Movies were only once a week. We were happier than people are today, despite the hard times. We overcame adversity and each time we did we enhanced our hardiness. We also knew how to win and lose gracefully.

This was the first time God had crossed my mind in over a year, and again only in my moment of absolute hopelessness. I’d done the same on the raft and in the prison camps when I’d promised God my life should he let me survive. Had I kept my promise? No. And this time, instead of promises, I had only anger and complaints and blame. But I didn’t blame myself; I blamed God. Maybe he was listening, maybe not, but even if, as I sometimes suspected, God watched over me, I couldn’t blame him for cutting me loose this time.

thanked God for my life from the day I was born, for all that I’d been and been through, all that I’d lost, all the times I’d tried to change and failed, all the times I’d prayed to survive and had. Otherwise I’d never have known Christ. All things work together for the good. The Lord had seen to it that I’d made it through every life-threatening situation and lost in every business venture because that’s what brought me to the tent. Now I knew that God’s hand had always been upon me and had prepared me for this moment.

I had taken the Bird’s daily beatings at Omori, and then at Naoetsu. I had to. I never complained. I just got knocked down, bled, got up, got knocked down, bled, got up. I expected it. I wouldn’t let it get me down. Sometimes it took me two days to recover, but I always had a positive attitude. Steely, but positive. No way would he break me.

When you receive Jesus as your Savior,” Dr. Graham continued, “you are regenerated by the spirit of God. Your life is transformed. You are a new person in Jesus Christ. Remember, Jesus doesn’t want part of your life, He wants all of your life. He wants you to repent of your sins and then completely and totally surrender your life to Him and follow Him.

For the first time in my life the beautiful story made clear sense. I began to cry, overwhelmed by the emotion. For many years the Bible had been a mystery to me, but now it was an open book. This was the clincher: how could I suddenly understand the Bible when I never could before? How often had I picked it up and put it down because I couldn’t make heads or tails of what it was all about? But with the Holy Spirit as my interpreter, the meanings were obvious.

THE BIBLE SPEAKS of the Word of God as a seed. Sometimes it’s planted by the wayside, and nothing grows there. Sometimes it’s sown among the thorns and represents the person who makes the decision and then goes back to his old life of bars and chasing women or whatever. A third seed is sown among the rocks. There’s sand and dirt between the rocks, and when it rains you’ll see a stalk of green coming up. But on the first day with sunshine it wilts because there is no room for roots. The fourth seed is planted on fertile soil, and finally it takes hold and has a chance to grow and live. That’s what happened to me.

Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved,” so I took Him at His word, begged for His pardon, and asked Jesus to come into my life. I waited. And then, true to His promise, He came into my heart and my life. The moment was more than remarkable; it was the most realistic experience I’d ever had. I’m not sure what I expected; perhaps my life or my sins or a great white light would flash before my eyes; perhaps I’d feel a shock like being hit by a bolt of lightning. Instead, I felt no tremendous sensation, just a weightlessness and an enveloping calm that let me know that Christ had come into my heart.

Louie never left himself a moment to think of the war. "I just thought I was empty and now I'm being filled," he said later, "and I just wanted to keep being filled.:

HarperCollins

Everyone in America is a European—or the descendant of a European. We become Americans when we leave behind us all the ancient prejudices and manners of the Old World and when we accept new ones from the way of life in the New World. Here, individuals of all nations are melted into one race of man.

My self-esteem was affected by my anxiety over what others thought of me. That weakened my natural confidence. And made me angry. Positive self-esteem must be preceded by self-respect. To get self-respect you have to do something good. Causing mischief wasn't good.