52 Powerful Ronda Rousey Quotes to Never Give Up The Fight

As a weapon in the fighting ring, Ronda Rousey is no stranger to pushing hard and getting what she’s absolutely worth! Her relentless spirit has paid off and today, she’s one of the most respected fighters in UFC history.

Like many who rose to fame, her childhood was challenging. For instance, she struggled with basic speech until she turned 7 due to apraxia. Then her biological father committed suicide when Ronda was just 8 years old after discovering he’d become a paraplegic following a sledding accident.

It was her mom that helped her with regular Judo for much of her teenage life. She was just 21 when she won her first Judo gold model at the Olympic Games in Beijing, China in 2008. She then retired to pursue MMA from age 22., initially with mixed results.

More than 10 years on and her constant perseverance has certainly paid off. She never game up on her dreams and neither should you, especially with these powerful and aspirational quotes.

1. If you can’t dream big, ridiculous dreams, what’s the point in dreaming at all?

Ronda Rousey

2. Success is the result of hard work, busting your ass every day for years on end without cutting corners or taking shortcuts.

Ronda Rousey

3. Once you’ve conquered the worst things that could happen, there is no need to fear the unknown. You are fearless.

Ronda Rousey

4. I like to be part of the change I want to see in the world. Not being afraid of criticism is actually a big advantage. I feel like I tried to be agreeable and failed–it failed me. And so I just did not give a shit and ended up succeeding a lot more because of it.

Ronda Rousey

5. To be a fighter, you have to be passionate. I have so much passion, it’s hard to hold it all in. That passion escapes as tears from my eyes, sweat from my pores, blood from my veins.

Ronda Rousey

6. It is not about just winning the round. It is not just about winning the fight. It is about winning every single second of your life.

Ronda Rousey

7. Everyone wants to win. But to truly succeed–whether it is at a sport or at your job or in life – you have to be willing to do the hard work, overcome the challenges, and make the sacrifices it takes to be the best at what you do.

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8. You have to fight because you can’t count on anyone else fighting for you…. To get anything of real value, you have to fight for it.

Ronda Rousey

9. Look at my face. Does it look like I can take a good hit?

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10. No drug or amount of money or favoritism can ever give you belief in yourself.

Ronda Rousey

11. Life is a fight from the minute you take your first breath to the moment you exhale your last.

Ronda Rousey

12. To be the best, you have to constantly be challenging yourself, raising the bar, pushing the limits of what you can do. Don’t stand still, leap forward.

Ronda Rousey

13. People want to project their own insecurities on others, but I refuse to allow them to put that on me. Just because you don’t think that you could be the best in the world doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t have the confidence to believe I can do anything.

Ronda Rousey

14. No matter how much you try or what you say, people aren’t going to fully understand you or where you’re coming from. You just have to get used to being misunderstood.

Ronda Rousey

15. The kind of hope I’m talking about is the belief that something good will come. That everything you’re going through and everything you’ve gone through will be worth the struggles and frustrations. The kind of hope I’m talking about is a deep belief that the world can be changed, that the impossible is possible.

Ronda Rousey

16. A sleeper just waits and when the time is right, they come out and wow everyone. That’s you, kiddo. Don’t you worry.

Ronda Rousey

17. Somehow, self-deprecation is considered modesty, and my confidence was considered arrogance, and it’s considered a bad thing to compliment yourself. We’re always told to compliment everyone around you and talk yourself down. I don’t know how we’re expected to look at ourselves healthily if we’re told to talk about ourselves negatively.

Ronda Rousey

18. No one is ever going to give you anything of value. You have to work for it, sweat for it, fight for it. But there is far greater value in accomplishments you earn than in accolades that are merely given to you. When you earn something, you never have to worry about justifying that you truly deserve it.

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19. The whole ‘bad girl’ thing allows me to mess up sometimes. And I have freedom to say more of what I want to.

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20. I want to be a perfect fighter, and that’s one of those unattainable goals because you will never be perfect. But I can always be closer to perfect.

Ronda Rousey

21. Once you start caring about people’s opinions of you, you give up control.

Ronda Rousey

22. You call me arrogant? I say it’s an accurate self-assessment because I work my ass off to be as good as I am at what I do and I’m proud of myself.

Ronda Rousey

23. If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery; it wouldn’t seem so wonderful at all.

Ronda Rousey

24. I feel like I started doing this because I wanted to find a way to pay my bills doing something that I loved, and it’s gotten bigger than that. It’s gotten bigger than me.

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25. People say to me all the time, ‘You have no fear.’ I tell them, ‘No, that’s not true. I’m scared all the time. You have to have fear in order to have courage. I’m a courageous person because I’m a scared person.

Ronda Rousey

26. It is not about just winning the round, it is not just about winning the fight. It is about winning every single second of your life.

Ronda Rousey

27. I’m scared of failure all the time, but I’m not scared enough to stop trying.

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28. It is one thing to fight other people, but fighting yourself is different. If you’re fighting yourself, who wins? Who loses?

Ronda Rousey

29. Everything in the world is information. The information you choose to acknowledge and the information you choose to ignore is up to you. You can let outside factors beyond your control throw off your focus, You can let aching muscles hold you back. You can let silence make you feel uncomfortable. By choosing to focus only on the information that is necessary, you can tune out every distraction, and achieve far more.

Ronda Rousey

30. I am not looking to escape the pressure. I am embracing it. Pressure is what builds up in the chamber behind a bullet before it explodes out of the gun.

Ronda Rousey

31. Most people focus on the wrong thing: They focus on the result, not the process. The process is the sacrifice; it’s all the hard parts–the sweat, the pain, the tears, the losses. You make the sacrifices anyway. You learn to enjoy them, or at least embrace them. In the end, it is the sacrifices that must fulfill you.

Ronda Rousey

32. I am not looking to escape the pressure. I am embracing it. Pressure is what builds up in the chamber behind a bullet before it explodes out of the gun.

Ronda Rousey

33. The knowledge that everything good can be taken away at any second is what makes me work so hard.

Ronda Rousey

34. How you feel is entirely in your mind. Your mind has nothing to do with your environment. It has nothing to do with anyone around you. It is entirely your decision. Making a change in your life is as easy as making a decision and acting on it. That’s it.

Ronda Rousey

35. The knowledge that everything good can be taken away at any second is what makes me work so hard.

Ronda Rousey

36. For me, MMA is like speed chess. It’s like I’m herding a person into a certain position. Say my endgame is an armbar. I’m not gonna actually take you and put you there. What I’m going to do is convince you that it’s a good idea to move in the direction I want you to go.

Ronda Rousey

37. There were times when I knew I was in a terrible situation, but I also knew it wouldn’t last forever. Those are the moments when you have to remind yourself that this experience is a defining moment in your life, but you are not defined by it.

Ronda Rousey

38. People can say I am a terrible role model because I swear all the time or that I fight people. Look, I don’t want little girls to have the same ambitions as me. I want them to know that it is O.K. to be ambitious. I want them to know that it is O.K. to say whatever it is that is on their mind.

Ronda Rousey

39. The dog with the bone is always in danger, so of course I’m always the most worried.

Ronda Rousey

40. The moment you stop viewing your opponent as a threat is the moment you leave yourself open to getting beat.

Ronda Rousey

41. One of the greatest days of my life was when I came to understand that other people’s approval and my happiness were not related.

Ronda Rousey

42. Some people like to call me cocky or arrogant, but I just think, ‘How dare you assume I should think less of myself? The problem isn’t me thinking I can achieve any goal I set for myself, the problem is you projecting your own self-doubt onto me.

Ronda Rousey

43. The bigger my chest is, the more it gets in the way. It just creates space. It makes me much more efficient if I don’t have so much in the way between me and my opponent.

Ronda Rousey

44. There is nothing in my life that I would go back and change, even the darkest moments. All the successes and greatest joys in my life are a result of the absolute worst things. Every missed opportunity is a blessing in disguise.

Ronda Rousey

45. I worry about [losing]…. That’s why I work so much harder than they do. And it’s why I go to sleep every night worrying about every single possible scenario and I’m so much more prepared than them.

Ronda Rousey

46. Don’t you ever let anyone tell you that not doing your absolute best is good enough.

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47. I don’t shy away from any questions. I’m not scared of any question. I’ll give you an answer. A lot of people are scared of having actual opinions out there. People are so scared of criticism… I’m not scared of people disliking me.

Ronda Rousey

48. Everyone wants to win. But to truly succeed – whether it is at a sport or at your job or in life – you have to be willing to do the hard work, overcome the challenges, and make the sacrifices it takes to be the best at what you do.

Ronda Rousey

49. There have always been people who have written me off. They’re not going away. I use that to motivate me. I’m driven to show them just how wrong they are.

Ronda Rousey

50. The bigger my chest is, the more it gets in the way. It just creates space. It makes me much more efficient if I don’t have so much in the way between me and my opponent.

Ronda Rousey

51. If I could have had everything exactly the way I wanted, this is how I would have written it down. Win all my fights in the first round, then go to the UFC and headline a show, and have it as a pay-per-view and at home. People’s dreams don’t come true like that.

Ronda Rousey

52. Making a change in your life is as easy as making a decision and acting on it. That’s it.

Ronda Rousey