Tony Hawk once said that "skateboarding is an art form, a lifestyle, and a sport." Maybe it's even more than that. Perhaps it already is a current of thought.
Skateboarding is one of the most popular action sports in the world, with over 11 million active participants.
The first skateboards were built in the late 1940s by California surfers.
When the ocean was flat, they would ride the streets of the coastal communities on homemade wooden boards with wheels attached to the bottom.
The expansion of skateboarding as a global outdoor activity was especially felt and seen in the 1960s and 1970s.
The surfers of the asphalt created their own lifestyle, language, dress codes, and group hierarchies.
Skateboarding rapidly became a sociological phenomenon with a tight and long-lasting impact on music, visual arts, dance, and street culture.
The first generation of skating pioneers has now reached middle age.
And riders like Tony Hawk, Rodney Mullen, Mark Gonzales, Stacy Peralta, Steve Caballero, Jay Adams, Mike Vallely, Lance Mountain, Natas Kaupas have become the most influential skateboarders of all time.
Here are some of the most memorable, timeless, and famous skateboarding quotes of all time:
Skateboarding is not a crime.
Unknown Author
Skateboarding is a meditation.
Rodney Mullen
When I skate, it's like my brain is turned off; not thoughts, just feelings.
Valeria Figueroa
I never got into skateboarding to be number one.
Tony Hawk
I was a real skateboarder - not a gifted skateboarder. I represented that skateboarding was fun to do by being terrible at it.
Lance Mountain
All skateboarding is putting ideas into action.
Marc Johnson
Freestyle was never cool.
Rodney Mullen
Contests militated against progression because they forced me into a pattern of consistency.
Rodney Mullen
Skateboarding teaches you how to take a fall properly.
Bam Margera
Some girls can skate, but I personally believe that skateboarding is not for girls at all. Not one bit.
Nyjah Huston
Skateboarding is poetry of motion.
Stevie Williams
There is no second place. There is only losing.
Rodney Mullen
I had an intuitive yearning that skating was for me.
Rodney Mullen
I see people with talent, but the one thing they don't have is that love for doing it for the sake of it.
Rodney Mullen
I won't quit skateboarding until I am physically unable.
Tony Hawk
Skateboarding is a lifestyle. If I weren't a professional skateboarder, I'd be skating every day.
Ryan Sheckler
Skate for fun - not for fame.
Unknown Author
I honestly don't even feel like I'm in the skateboarding industry.
Justin Schulte
I love skateboarding, but it makes me the worst psychopathic maniac.
Mike Taylor
Having sponsors that aren't skate companies is very commonplace now.
Tony Hawk
The beauty of skating is that everybody has a unique set of variables that they can put in place and express their individual identity in the form of - call it - greatness.
Rodney Mullen
I never wanted to look at those dusty trophies and say that's who I was.
Rodney Mullen
If you skateboard, you can't be afraid to have people laugh at you.
Mark Gonzales
Date a skater - we break bones, not hearts.
Unknown Author
Skateboarding doesn't need the validation of the Olympics.
Tony Hawk
The Olympic Games need skateboarding more than we need them.
Tony Hawk
Skateboarding is more popular than many of the sports that are in the Summer Olympics.
Tony Hawk
They'll try to apply the rules of the day to the game - where you can't touch your board, or you can't step off your board, etc. And I want nothing to do with it. It's like a game from a different planet or something, and it's hard for me to relate to anybody who would think of skateboarding in such a narrow way.
Mike Vallely
I'm privileged that I started some tricks, and then other people have taken it - that turned into a vocabulary for us to express ourselves. That, to me, is a living trophy.
Rodney Mullen
Skaters gonna skate.
Unknown Author
Skateboarding teaches kids a lot about self-discipline.
Tony Hawk
You did not quit skateboarding because you got old. You got old because you quit skateboarding.
Jay Adams
Skating is a puzzle.
Rodney Mullen
It's better to go out like a man - trying - than to play it safe and get second.
Sean Malto
Skateboarding is training, but I don't think of it as training - it's fun.
Shaun White
I like to snowboard on a skateboard on concrete.
Eiki Helgason
I live to ride and ride to live.
Ryan Sheckler
I try to surround myself with people with character.
Rodney Mullen
I skate. I roll around. I do tricks. I do maneuvers. Magicians and prostitutes do tricks.
Rodney Mullen
Usually, the thing that signifies that I'm done with the winter is that I start skateboarding.
Shaun White
Having a girlfriend that skates is as bad as having a girlfriend that strips.
Clyde Singleton
Usually, when you get what you thought you wanted, the fire goes away.
Rodney Mullen
If you really want a career in professional skateboarding, you got to stop pushing mongo.
Jamie Thomas
When in doubt, skate it out.
Unknown Author
Skateboarding is the best thing that ever happened to me. But it ruined my life.
Mike Leslie
Skateboarding till I crumble.
Unknown Author
When I get to heaven, I expect death metal to be played at the pearly gates.
Rodney Mullen
Video games brought kids into skateboarding. They inspired them to try it.
Tony Hawk
Don't let anything poison your individuality. Break away and look in, not outward.
Rodney Mullen
Don't skate in front of the camera, don't practice in front of the camera, and don't publish it on YouTube every time you get a new trick - it's not about that.
Rodney Mullen
My quest for the 900 took almost ten years.
Tony Hawk
Skateboarding is a way to let your body control the mind.
Shaun White
Skateboarding doesn't make you a skateboarder. Not being able to stop skateboarding makes you a skateboarder.
Lance Mountain
I skate in isolation.
Rodney Mullen
Vert skating was the kind of skating that was done in pools, where you could get airborne and be weightless. The other style, which is what I did, was called freestyle - tricks you could do on flat ground.
Rodney Mullen
The possibilities that the ollie brought were so exciting that it was hard to sleep sometimes.
Natas Kaupas
I can't wait to wake up and try something new. I can't sleep at night because I want to try something new.
Rodney Mullen
I fell in love with skateboarding because it was individual; there were no teams or captains, and there was nothing to perfect or style to be measured.
Rodney Mullen
Skateboarding is a part of hip-hop culture. I think it's the fifth element of hip hop - emceeing, deejaying, b-boying, graffiti, and skateboarding. Skateboarders live and die on the streets. It's expression. It's everything that hip hop is.
Yelawolf