Let’s face it, we’re always looking for something to motivate and encourage us and many times we find that boost in the actions and words of others. With that in mind, we’ve created a living and constantly growing list of the top and best motivational, inspirational and funny quotes by athletes, coaches, trainers, actors, etc., that covers everything, from running and training quotes, to football, basketball, soccer, baseball and golf quotes! Even better, we add quotes regularly and all are searchable by author and keywords via the search button! As of 5/31/2013, we are slowly revamping the entire quotes database to add player/coach pages which have each person’s quotes. Those links are starting to populate below as we add them. Keep checking back in!
| Name | Quote |
|---|---|
| Michael Jordan | "I can accept failure. Everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying." |
| Jack Nicklaus | "Resolve never to quit, never to give up, no matter what the situation." |
| Michael Jordan | "Some people want it to happen. Some wish it would happen. Others make it happen." |
| Bear Bryant | "Show class, have pride, and display character. If you do, winning takes care of itself." |
| Michael Jordan | "I’ve always believed that if you put in the work, the results will come." |
| Jerry Rice | "Today I will do what others won’t, so tomorrow I can accomplish what others can’t." |
| Michael Jordan | "Just play. Have fun. Enjoy the game." |
| Knute Rockne | "One man practicing sportsmanship is far better than fifty preaching it." |
| Mike Singletary | "Do you know what my favorite part of the game is? The opportunity to play." |
| Dan Gable | "Gold medals aren’t really made of gold. They’re made of sweat, determination, and a hard-to-find alloy called guts." |
| Rogers Hornsby | "I don’t want to play golf. When I hit a ball, I want someone else to go chase it." |
| William James | "Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they’ve got a second." |
| Rogers Hornsby | "People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring." |
| Peter Ueberroth | "The integrity of the game is everything." |
| Ernie Banks | "The only way to prove that you’re a good sport is to lose." |
| Bob Lemon | "The two most important things in life are good friends and a strong bullpen." |
| Joe Adcock | "Trying to sneak a fastball past Hank Aaron is like trying to sneak the sunrise past a rooster." |
| Michael Phelps | "You can’t put a limit on anything. The more you dream, the farther you get." |
| K. Abdul-Jabbar | "You can’t win unless you learn how to lose." |
| Jim Bouton | "You spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time." |
| Satchel Paige | "Never let your head hang down. Never give up and sit down and grieve. Find another way." |
| Eddie Robinson | "Leadership, like coaching, is fighting for the hearts and souls of men and getting them to believe in you." |
| George Halas | "Nobody who ever gave his best regretted it." |
| Paul Brown | "When you win, say nothing, when you lose, say less." |
| Babe Ruth | "Never let the fear of striking out get in your way." |
| Oliver W. Holmes | "We do not quit playing because we grow old. We grow old because we quit playing." |
| Lou Holtz | "Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it." |
| Arthur Ashe | "From what we get, we can make a living; what we give, however, makes a life." |
| Dale Earnhardt | "The winner ain’t the one with the fastest car, it’s the one who refuses to lose." |
| Tommy Lasorda | "The difference between the impossible & the possible lies in a man’s determination." |
| Roberto Clemente | "If you have an opportunity to make things better & you don’t, then you are wasting your time on earth." |
| Lou Holtz | "If you’re bored with life, you don’t have enough goals." |
| John Wooden | "Success is never final, failure is never fatal. It’s courage that counts." |
| Jesse Owens | "Find the good. It’s all around you. Find it, showcase it & you’ll start believing in it." |
| Lou Brock | "One of the trademarks of a champion is that he can outlast you." |
| John Wooden | "You can’t live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you." |
| Muhammad Ali | "Don’t count the days, make the days count." |
| Lou Holtz | "If what you did yesterday seems big, you haven’t done anything today." |
| Dale Earnhardt | "You can’t let one bad moment spoil a bunch of good ones." |
| John Wooden | "A coach is someone who can give correction without causing resentment." |
| John Wooden | "It’s not so important who starts the game but who finishes it." |
| John Wooden | "It’s the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen." |
| Dan Reeves | "Difficulties in life are intended to make us better, not bitter." |
| Jesse Owens | "One chance is all you need." |
| Tom Landry | "A winner never stops trying." |
| Wilt Chamberlain | "I believe that good things come to those who work." |
| Jim Courier | "Sportsmanship for me is when a guy walks off the court and you really can’t tell whether he won or lost, when he carries himself with pride either way." |
| Vince Lombardi | "It does not matter how many times you get knocked down, but how many times you get up." |
| Brooks Clark | "Good coaches teach respect for the opposition, love of competition, the value of trying your best, and how to win and lose graciously." |
| Ben Hogan | "As you walk down the fairway of life you must smell the roses, for you only get to play one round." |
| Tom Clark | "I’m convinced that every boy, in his heart, would rather steal second base than an automobile." |
| Humphrey Bogart | "A hot dog at the ball park is better than steak at the Ritz." |
| Tommy Lasorda | "The saddest day of the year is the day baseball season ends." |
| Yogi Berra | "Love is the most important thing in the world, but baseball is pretty good too." |
| Pete Rose | "I’d walk through hell in a gasoline suit to keep playing baseball." |
| Roberto Clemente | "I would be lost without baseball. I don’t think I could stand being away from it as long as I was alive." |
| John Wooden | "Don’t let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do." |
| Joe Namath | "If you aren’t going to go all the way, why go at all." |
| Muhammad Ali | "Champions aren’t made in the gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them; a desire, a dream, a vision." |
| Vince Lombardi | "Life’s battles don’t always go to the stronger or faster man. But sooner or later the man who wins, is the man who thinks he can." |
| Wayne Gretzky | "You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take." |
| John Wooden | "Being a role model is the most powerful form of educating. Youngsters need good models more than they need critics." |
| Jackie Robinson | "A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives." |
| Knute Rockne | "Make the present good and the past will take care of itself." |
| Michael Jordan | "Twenty-six times I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed." |
| Archie Griffin | "It's not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog." |
| Jesse Owens | "Awards become corroded, friends gather no dust." |
| Babe Ruth | “Every strike brings me closer to the next home run.” |
| Vince Lombardi | “Winning isn't everything. But wanting to win is.” |
| Vince Lombardi | “Winning is a habit. Unfortunately so is losing.” |
| Michael Jordan | “I've never lost a game I just ran out of time.” |
| W. Arthur Ward | “Adversity causes some men to break; others to break records." |
| Wayne Gretzky | “A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.” |
| Vince Lombardi | “Football is like life - it requires perserverance, self-denial, hard work, sacrifice, dedication and respect for authority.” |
| Hank Aaron | “It took me seventeen years to get three thousand hits in baseball. It took one afternoon on the golf course.” |
| Eric Liddell | “In the dust of defeat as well as the laurels of victory there is a glory to be found if one has done his best.” |
| Muhammad Ali | “The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.” |
| Knute Rockne | “Build up your weaknesses until they become your strong points.” |
| Satchel Paige | “Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you.” |
| Bobby Orr | “There are no environments where you're only going to win, because life just isn't like that.” |
| Mia Hamm | “If a team intimidates you physically and you let them, they've won.” |
| Jesse Owens | "A lifetime of training for just ten seconds." |
| Tom Landry | “Football is an incredible game. Sometimes it's so incredible, it's unbelievable." |
| Ted Williams | “Baseball is the only field of endeavor where a man can succeed three times out of ten and be considered a good performer." |
| Phil Jackson | “Approach the game with no preset agendas and you'll probably come away surprised at your overall efforts." |
| Steve Nash | “I'm playing; I'm here. I'm going to fight until they tell me they don't want me anymore." |
| Phil Jackson | “The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team." |
| Bobby Orr | “Developing better people should be the number one goal for any coach when dealing with kids. In trying to develop better people, we are going to develop more and better pros." |
| W.P. Kinsella | “Any game becomes important when you know and love the players." |
| Bill Veeck | “Baseball is almost the only orderly thing in a very unorderly world. If you get three strikes, even the best lawyer in the world can't get you off. ” |
| Knute Rockne | “On the road we're somebody else's guests and we play in a way that they're not going to forget we visited them.” |
| Peter Ueberroth | “Baseball is a public trust. Players turn over, owners turn over and certain commissioners turn over. But baseball goes on." |
| Lou Holtz | “Without self-discipline, success is impossible, period.” |
| Vince Lombardi | “The strength of the group is the strength of the leaders.” |
| Bud Wilkinson | “If you are going to be a champion, you must be willing to pay a greater price.” |
| Vince Lombardi | “The harder you work, the harder it is to surrender.” |
| Chuck Noll | “You can’t make a great play unless you do it first in practice.” |
| Ben Franklin | “Things that hurt, instruct.” |
| Wilt Chamberlain | “Everybody pulls for David, nobody roots for Goliath.” |
| K. Abdul-Jabbar | “One man can be a crucial ingredient on a team, but one man cannot make a team.” |
| Tim Duncan | “Good, better, best. Never let it rest. Until your good is better and your better is best.” |
| Hank Aaron | “The pitcher has got only a ball. I’ve got a bat. So the percentage of weapons is in my favor and I let the fellow with the ball do the fretting.” |
| Mickey Mantle | “During my 18 years I came to bat almost 10,000 times. I struck out about 1,700 times and walked maybe 1,800 times. You figure a ballplayer will average about 500 at bats a season. That means I played seven years without ever hitting the ball.” |
| Pete Rose | “You owe it to yourself to be the best you can possible be – in baseball and in life.” |
| John Wooden | “Make sure that team members know they are working with you, not for you.” |
| George Halas | “What makes a good coach? Complete dedication.” |
| Harvey Penick | “I learn teaching from teachers. I learn golf from golfers. I learn winning from coaches.” |
| Homer Rice | “You can motivate by fear, and you can motivate by reward. But both those methods are only temporary. The only lasting thing is self motivation.” |
| Don Shula | “My responsibility is leadership, and the minute I get negative, that is going to have an influence on my team.” |
| Arthur Ashe | “You are never really playing an opponent. You are playing yourself, your own highest standards, and when you reach your limits, that is real joy.” |
| Chuck Noll | “A life of frustration is inevitable for any coach whose main enjoyment is winning.” |
| Bud Wilkinson | “Every game is an opportunity to measure yourself against your own potential.” |
| Homer Norton | “It is how you show up at the showdown that counts.” |
| Andre Agassi | “If you don’t practice, you don’t deserve to win.” |
| Tiger Woods | “You can always become better.” |
| Dick Vermeil | “If you don’t invest very much, then defeat doesn’t hurt very much and winning is not very exciting.” |
| Vince Lombardi | “The spirit, the will to win, and the will to excel are the things that endure. These qualities are so much more important than the events that occur.” |
| Pat Riley | “There are only two options regarding commitment; you’re either in or you’re out. There’s no such thing as life in-between.” |
| Vince Lombardi | “The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather in a lack of will.” |
| Muhammad Ali | “The man who has no imagination has no wings.” |
| Earl Warren | “I always turn to the sports section first. The sports page records people’s accomplishments; the front page has nothing but man’s failures.” |
| Steve Garvey | “The difference between the old ballplayer and the new ballplayer is the jersey. The old ballplayer cared about the name on the front. The new ballplayer cares about the name on the back." |
| Sylvester Stallone | “Playing polo is like trying to play golf during an earthquake.” |
| Sam Snead | “I figure practice puts your brains in your muscles.” |
| Emil Zatopek | “An athlete cannot run with money in his pockets. He must run with hope in his heart and dreams in his head.” |
| Ross Perot | “Most people give up just when they’re about to achieve success. They quit on the one yard line. They give up at the last minute of the game, one foot from a winning touchdown.” |
| John Wooden | "Ability may get you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there. " |
| Jerry Barber | "The more I practice, the luckier I get." |
| Michael Jordan | "You have to expect things of yourself before you can do them." |
| Tony Dorsett | "To succeed...You need to find something to hold on to, something to motivate you, something to inspire you." |
| Ronnie Lott | "If you can believe it, the mind can achieve it." |
| Michael Jordan | "Love is playing every game as if it's your last." |
| Vince Lombardi | "Winning means you're willing to go longer, work harder, and give more than anyone else." |
| Andy Roddick | "At one point in your life you either have the thing you want, or the reasons why you don't." |
| Muhammad Ali | "Only a man who knows what it is like to be defeated can reach down to the bottom of his soul and come up with the extra ounce of power it takes to win when the match is even." |
| K. Abdul-Jabbar | "You have to be able to center yourself, to let all of your emotions go. Don't ever forget that you play with your soul, as well as your body." |
| Doug Williams | "Never give up, never give in, and when the upper hand is ours, may we have the ability to handle the win with the dignity that we absorbed the loss." |
| Matt Biondi | "Persistence can change failure into extraordinary achievement." |
| Jackie Joyner-Kersee | "Age is no barrier. It's a limitation you put on your mind." |
| Bo Jackson | "Set your goals high, and don't stop till you get there." |
| Laird Hamilton | 'Make sure your worst enemy doesn't live between your own two ears." |
| Billie Jean King | "Champions keep playing until they get it right." |
| Mark Spitz | "If you fail to prepare, you're prepared to fail." |
| Andre Agassi | "What makes something special is not just what you have to gain, but what you feel there is to lose." |
| Mary Lou Retton | "A trophy carries dust. Memories last forever." |
| Pele | "The more difficult the victory, the greater the happiness in winning." |
| Arnold Palmer | "Always make a total effort, even when the odds are against you." |
| Gordie Howe | "You find that you have peace of mind and can enjoy yourself, get more sleep, and rest when you know that it was a one hundred percent effort that you gave–win or lose." |
| Lou Brock | "Show me a guy who's afraid to look bad, and I'll show you a guy you can beat every time." |
| Mario Andretti | "If you have everything under control, you're not moving fast enough." |
| Ted Williams | "Just keep going. Everybody gets better if they keep at it." |
| Picabo Street | "To uncover your true potential you must first find your own limits and then you have to have the courage to blow past them." |
| Larry Bird | "Push yourself again and again. Don't give an inch until the final buzzer sounds." |
| Muhammad Ali | "I hated every minute of training, but I said, “Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.'" |
| Tom Landry | "I've learned that something constructive comes from every defeat." |
| Lance Armstrong | "Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever." |
| Evander Holyfield | "Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever." |
| Joe Patero | "The will to win is important, but the will to prepare is vital." |
| Bobby Knight | "Your biggest opponent isn't the other guy. It's human nature." |
| Jack Dempsey | "A champion is someone who gets up when he can't." |
| Yogi Berra | "It ain't over till it's over." |
| Mike Ditka | "You're never a loser until you quit trying." |
| Jim Valvano | "Never give up! Failure and rejection are only the first step to succeeding." |
| Muhammad Ali | "It's just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up." |
| John Wooden | "Don't measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished with your ability." |
| Shaquille O'Neal | "Excellence is not a singular act but a habit. You are what you do repeatedly." |
| Ken Griffey Jr. | "I can't play being mad. I go out there and have fun. It's a game, and that's how I am going to treat it." |
| A. Parseghian | “A good coach will make his players see what they can be rather than what they are.” |
| Jessee Owens | "In the end, it’s extra effort that separates a winner from second place. But winning takes a lot more that, too. It starts with complete command of the fundamentals. Then it takes desire, determination, discipline, and self-sacrifice. And finally, it takes a great deal of love, fairness and respect for your fellow man. Put all these together, and even if you don’t win, how can you lose?” |
| Bear Bryant | “It’s not the will to win that matters—everyone has that. It’s the will to prepare to win that matters.” |
| Steve Prefontaine | “Most people run a race to see who is fastest. I run a race to see who has the most guts.” |
| Jim Abbott | "It's not the disability that defines you; it's how you deal with the challenges the disability presents you with. We have an obligation to the abilities we do have, not the disability." |
| Mia Hamm | “I’ve worked too hard and too long to let anything stand in the way of my goals. I will not let my teammates down, and I will not let myself down.” |
| Tim Duncan | "The time when there is no one there to feel sorry for you or to cheer for you is when a player is made.” |
| Gail Devers | “Keep your dreams alive. Understand to achieve anything requires faith and belief in yourself, vision, hard work, determination, and dedication. Remember all things are possible for those who believe.” |
| Gordie Howe | “I always tell kids, you have two eyes and one mouth. Keep two open and one closed. You never learn anything if you’re the one talking.” |
| Bob Cousy | “Sports creates a bond between contemporaries that lasts a lifetime. It also gives your life structure, discipline and a genuine, sincere, pure fulfillment that few other areas of endeavor provide.” |
| Bobby Jones | “Competitive sports are played mainly on a five-and-a-half inch court, the space between your ears.” |
| Arthur Ashe | “I have always tried to be true to myself, to pick those battles I felt were important. My ultimate responsibility is to myself. I could never be anything else.” |
| Pele | "Every kid around the world who plays soccer wants to be Pele. I have a great responsibility to show them not just how to be like a soccer player, but how to be like a man." |
| Jimmie Johnson | “Treat a person as he is, and he will remain as he is. Treat him as he could be, and he will become what he should be.” |
| Yogi Berra | "When you come to a fork in the road, take it." |
| Yogi Berra | “Baseball is 90 percent mental. The other half is physical.” |
| Roger Bannister | "Doctors and scientists said that breaking the four-minute mile was impossible, that one would die in the attempt. Thus, when I got up from the track after collapsing at the finish line, I figured I was dead." |
| Tiger Woods | "My dad has always taught me these words: care and share. That's why we put on clinics. The only thing I can do is try to give back. If it works, it works." |
| Babe Ruth | "The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don't play together, the club won't be worth a dime." |
| Greg LeMond | "Perhaps the single most important element in mastering the techniques and tactics of racing is experience. But once you have the fundamentals, acquiring the experience is a matter of time." |
| Joe Paterno | "You need to play with supreme confidence, or else you'll lose again, and then losing becomes a habit." |
| Andre Agassi | "You have to have the mentality of executing your game when you don't feel like there's a lot of hope. I think the best feeling is when somebody pushes you to the limit and you dig down a little bit extra. By the same token, you also need a little luck. Sometimes they come together." |
| Magic Johnson | "Ask not what your teammates can do for you. Ask what you can do for your teammates." |
| Tom Landry | "Leadership is a matter of having people look at you and gain confidence, seeing how you react. If you're in control, they're in control." |
| Herschel Walker | "If you train hard, you'll not only be hard, you'll be hard to beat." |
| Jerry Rice | "I feel like I'm the best, but you're not going to get me to say that." |
| Pat Williams | "We can't win at home. We can't win on the road. As general manager, I just can't figure out where else to play." |
| Doug Collins | “Any time Detroit scores more than 100 points and holds the other team below 100 points, they almost always win.” |
| Rocky Graziano | "I quit school in the sixth grade because of pneumonia. Not because I had it, but because I couldn't spell it." |
| Joe Theismann | "Nobody in football should be called a genius. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein." |
| Wes Westrum | "Baseball is like church. Many attend but few understand." |
| Dale Earnhardt | "You win some, lose some, and wreck some." |
| Frank Robinson | “Close don't count in baseball. Close only counts in horseshoes and grenades.” |
| Steffi Graf | "When you lose a couple of times, it makes you realize how difficult it is to win." |
| Emmitt Smith | "For me, winning isn't something that happens suddenly on the field when the whistle blows and the crowds roar. Winning is something that builds physically and mentally every day that you train and every night that you dream." |
| Jacques Plante | ”Goaltending is a normal job, sure. How would you like it in your job if every time you made a small mistake, a red light went on over your desk and 15,000 people stood up and yelled at you?” |
| Gale Sayers | "I learned that if you want to make it bad enough, no matter how bad it is, you can make it." |
| Lou Pinella | "Statistics are like bikinis; they show a lot but not everything." |
| Rudy | "You're five foot nothin', 100 and nothin', and you have nearly a speck of athletic ability. And you hung in there with the best college footbal team in the land for two years. And you're getting a degree from the University of Notre Dame. In this life, you don't have to prove nothin' to nobody but yourself." |
| Field of Dreams | "The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, is a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and that could be again. Oh, people will come, Ray. People will most definitely come." |
| League of Their Own | "Because there's no crying in baseball!" |
| Hoosiers | "I'll make it." |
| The Replacements | "Pain heals. Chicks dig scars. Glory lasts forever." |
| Bull Durham | "A good friend of mine used to say, 'This is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains.' Think about that for a while." |
| Miracle | Great moments are born from great opportunity. And that's what you have here, tonight, boys." |
| Lou Gehrig | "Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth." |
| Hoosiers | "If you put your effort and concentration into playing to your potential, to be the best that you can be, I don't care what the scoreboard says. At the end of the game, in my book, we're gonna be winners." |
| Field of Dreams | "Hey Dad, you wanna have a catch?" |
| Rudy | "I've been ready for this my whole life!" |
| League of Their Own | "It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great." |
| Friday Night Lights | "Gentlemen, the hopes and dreams of an entire town are riding on your shoulders. You may never matter again in your life as much as you do right now." |
| Herb Brooks | “You were born to be a player. You were meant to be here. This moment is yours.” |
| Billie Jean King | "A champion is afraid of losing. Everyone else is afraid of winning." |
| Bill Bowerman | "Victory is in having done your best. If you've done your best, you've won." |
| Ron O'Brie | "What keeps me going is not winning, but the quest for reaching potential in myself as a coach and my kids as divers. It's the pursuit of excellence." |
| Teri McKeever | "I think sports gave me the first place where this awkward girl could feel comfortable in my own skin. I think that's true for a lot of women; sports gives you a part of your life where you can work at something and you look in the mirror and you like that person." |
| Larry Brown | “You have to do something in your life that is honorable and not cowardly if you are to live in peace with yourself." |
| Mike Krzyzewski | “I have a rule on my team: When we talk to one another, we look each other right in the eye, because I think it's tough to lie to somebody. You give respect to somebody.“ |
| Eddie Reese | “The hardest skill to acquire in this sport is the one where you compete all out, give it all you have, and you are still getting beat no matter what you do. When you have the killer instinct to fight through that, it is very special.” |
| Carl Lewis | "If you don't have confidence, you'll always find a way not to win." |
| Pat Tyson | "Number one is just to gain a passion for running. To love the morning, to love the trail, to love the pace on the track. And if some kid gets really good at it, that's cool too." |
| Herb Elliott | "The more I talk to athletes, the more convinced I become that the method of training is relatively unimportant. There are many ways to the top, and the training method you choose is just the one that suits you best. No, the important thing is the attitude of the athlete, the desire to get to the top." |
| Ken Doherty | "The five S's of sports training are: stamina, speed, strength, skill, and spirit; but the greatest of these is spirit." |
| John Wooden | "Nothing will work unless you do." |
| Martina Navratilova | "Just go out there and do what you've got to do." |
| Sarah Bombell | "The pain of discipline is far less than the pain of regret." |
| Willie Mays | "In order to excel, you must be completely dedicated to your chosen sport. You must also be prepared to work hard and be willing to accept constructive criticism. Without a total 100 percent dedication, you won't be able to do this." |
| Vince Lombardi | "The real glory is being knocked to your knees and then coming back. That's real glory." |
| John Wooden | "The most important key to achieving great success is to decide upon your goal and launch, get started, take action, move." |
| Wilman Rudolph | "My mother taught me very early to believe I could achieve any accomplishment I wanted to. The first was to walk without braces." |
| Bear Bryant | "If you believe in yourself, have dedication and pride and never quit, you'll be a winner. The price of victory is high, but so are the rewards." |
| Arthur Ashe | "The ideal attitude is to be physically loose and mentally tight." |
| Jerry West | "You can't get much done in life if you only work on the days when you feel good." |
| Bruce Jenner | "I learned that the only way you are going to get anywhere in life is to work hard at it. Whether you're a musician, a writer, an athlete or a businessman, there is no getting around it. If you do, you'll win--if you don't, you won't." |
| Jack Nicklaus | "It's great to win, but it's also great fun just to be in the thick of any truly well and hard fought contest against opponents you respect, whatever the outcome." |
| Steve Young | "The principle is competing against yourself. It's about self improvement, about being better than you were the day before." |
| Katarina Witt | "When I go our on the ice, I just think about my skating. I forget it is a competition." |
| Ron Jaworski | "Positive thinking is the key to success in business, education, pro football, anything that you can mention. I go out there thinking that I'm going to complete every pass." |
| Red Auerbach | "Just do what you do best." |
| Lance Armstrong | "I didn't just jump back on the bike and win. There were a lot of ups and downs, good results and bad results, but this time I didn't let the lows get to me." |
| Stan Smith | "Experience tells you what to do; confidence allows you to do it." |
| Hank Aaron | "My motto was always to keep swinging. Whether I was in a slump or feeling badly or having trouble off the field, the only thing to do was keep swinging." |
| Red Auerbach | "An acre of performance is worth a whole world of promise." |
| Joe Paterno | "Besides pride, loyalty, discipline, heart, and mind, confidence is the key to all the locks." |
| Bruce Jenner | "I always felt that my greatest asset was not my physical ability, it was my mental ability." |
| Mia Hamm | "Somewhere behind the athlete you've become and the hours of practice and the coaches who have pushed you is a little girl who fell in love with the game and never looked back... play for her." |
| Plato | "You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation." |
| Mike Ditka | "Success is about having, excellence is about being. Success is about having money and fame, but excellence is being the best you can be." |
| Mark Twain | "Golf is a good walk spoiled." |
| Mia Hamm | "I am building a fire, and everyday I train, I add more fuel. At just the right moment, I light the match." |
| Walt Whitman | "I see great things in baseball. It's our game - the American game." |
| Charles Barkley | "These are my new shoes. They're good shoes. They won't make you rich like me, they won't make you rebound like me, they definitely won't make you handsome like me. They'll only make you have shoes like me. That's it." |
| Billy Graham | "The only time my prayers are never answered is on the golf course." |
| Jack Lemon | "If you think it's hard to meet new people, try picking up the wrong golf ball." |
| Yogi Berra | " "You wouldn't have won if we'd beaten you." |
| Reggie Jackson | "You wouldn't have won if we'd beaten you." |
| Bobby Unser | "Success is where preparation and opportunity meet." |
| Gerald R. Ford | "I know I am getting better at golf because I am hitting fewer spectators." |
| Pete Rose | "It's a round ball and a round bat, and you got to hit it square." |
| Carl Lewis | "Life is abount timing." |
| Woodrow Wilson | "Golf is a game in which one endeavors to control a ball with implements ill adapted for the purpose." |
| Billie Jean King | "Tennis is a perfect combination of violent action taking place in an atmosphere of total tranquillity." |
| Billie Jean King | "Sports are a microcosm of society." |
| Bob Hope | "If you watch a game, it's fun. If you play it, it's recreation. If you work at it, it's golf." |
| Bobby Knight | "You don't play against opponents, you play against the game of basketball." |
| Frank Gifford | "Gray skies are just clouds passing over." |
| Barry Switzer | "Some people are born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple." |
| Sam Snead | "If a lot of people gripped a knife and fork the way they do a golf club, they'd starve to death." |
| Ben Hogan | "Reverse every natural instinct and do the opposite of what you are inclined to do, and you will probably come very close to having a perfect golf swing." |
| Paul Harvey | "Golf is a game in which you yell "fore," shoot six, and write down five." |
| Paul Coffey | "Nobody's a natural. You work hard to get good and then work to get better. It's hard to stay on top." |
| Hugo Black | "When I was 40, my doctor advised me that a man in his 40s shouldn't play tennis. I heeded his advice carefully and could hardly wait until I reached 50 to start again." |
| Joe DiMaggio | "You always get a special kick on opening day, no matter how many you go through. You look forward to it like a birthday party when you're a kid. You think something wonderful is going to happen." |
| Grantland Rice | "Eighteen holes of match play will teach you more about your foe than 18 years of dealing with him across a desk." |
| Warren Spahn | "Hitting is timing. Pitching is upsetting timing." |
| Hank Aaron | "The triple is the most exciting play in baseball. Home runs win a lot of games, but I never understood why fans are so obsessed with them." |
| Robert W. Lynd | "It is almost impossible to remember how tragic a place the world is when one is playing golf." |
| Greg LeMond | "You don't suffer, kill yourself and take the risks I take just for money. I love bike racing." |
| Arnold Palmer | "What other people may find in poetry or art museums, I find in the flight of a good drive." |
| Jim Bishop | "Golf is played by twenty million mature American men whose wives think they are out having fun." |
| Ben Hogan | "The only thing a golfer needs is more daylight." |
| Harry Caray | "You know they're not going to lose 162 consecutive games." |
| Roger Kahn | "Tennis and golf are best played, not watched." |
| Michael Jordan | "Obstacles don’t have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it." |
| Pat Riley | "You have no choices about how you lose, but you do have a choice about how you come back and prepare to win again." |
| Larry Bird | "A winner is someone who recognizes his God-given talents, works his tail off to develop them into skills, and uses these skills to accomplish his goals." |
| Pat Riley | "There’s no such thing as coulda, shoulda, or woulda. If you shoulda and coulda, you woulda done it." |
| Larry Bird | "Leadership is diving for a loose ball, getting the crowd involved, getting other players involved. It’s being able to take it as well as dish it out. That’s the only way you’re going to get respect from the players." |
| John Wooden | " Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are." |
| Phil Jackson | "Wisdom is always an overmatch for strength." |
| Michael Jordan | "Always turn a negative situation into a positive situation." |
| Pat Riley | "If you have a positive attitude and constantly strive to give your best effort, eventually you will overcome your immediate problems and find you are ready for greater challenges." |
| Michael Jordan | "I play to win, whether during practice or a real game. And I will not let anything get in the way of me and my competitive enthusiasm to win." |
| Pat Riley | "Excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better." |
| Jack Lemmon | "If you think it's hard to meet new people, try picking up the wrong golf ball." |
| Jack Kent Cooke | "Sports are one of the main cultural activities on the face of the earth." |
| Tim Ryan | "I've been on enough sports teams in my life to have experienced the magic of what can happen when a group of people care for and love each other." |
| Bob Hayes | "I'm thrilled, I'm grateful, I'm blessed. I played for the world's greatest professional sports team in history. Once a Dallas Cowboy, always a Dallas Cowboy." |
| Deion Sanders | "I don't care what they say about me when I'm through with sports. I don't want to be known as anything else in life but a great father." |
| Mike Piazza | "I long for the days when athletes were revered. I want to see the romance return to sports, to see people enjoy the game purely for the game and the players." |
| Mike Schmidt | "They read their sports pages, know their statistics and either root like hell or boo our butts off. I love it. Give me vocal fans, pro or con, over the tourist types who show up in Houston or Montreal and just sit there." |
| Neil Simon | "Sports is the only entertainment where, no matter how many times you go back, you never know the ending." |
| Rebecca Lobo | "There's nothing masculine about being competitive. There's nothing masculine about trying to be the best at everything you do, nor is there anything wrong with it. I don't know why a female athlete has to defend her femininity just because she chooses to play sports." |
| Jim Valvano | "I asked a ref if he could give me a technical foul for thinking bad things about him. He said, of course not. I said, well, I think you stink. And he gave me a technical. You can't trust em." |
| Jim Valvano | "How do you go from where you are to where you want to be? I think you have to have an enthusiasm for life. You have to have a dream, a goal, and you have to be willing to work for it." |
| Jim Valvano | "My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person, he believed in me." |
| Jim Valvano | "There are 86,400 seconds in a day. It's up to you to decide what to do with them." |
| Jim Valvano | "If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that's a full day. That's a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you're going to have something special." |
| Jim Valvano | "I can't tell you what an honor it is, to even be mentioned in the same breath with Arthur Ashe. This is something I certainly will treasure forever." |
| Jim Valvano | "Be a dreamer. If you don't know how to dream, you're dead." |
| Jim Valvano | "No matter what business you're in, you can't run in place or someone will pass you by. It doesn't matter how many games you've won." |
| Jim Valvano | "Cancer can take away all of my physical abilities. It cannot touch my mind, it cannot touch my heart, and it cannot touch my soul." |
| Percy Cerutty | “You only ever grow as a human being if you’re outside your comfort zone.” |
| George Patton | “Human beings are made up of flesh and blood, and a miracle fiber called courage.” |
| William Faulkner | “Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.” |
| Doug Larson | “Some of the world’s greatest feats were accomplished by people not smart enough to know they were impossible.” |
| George Sheehan | “It’s very hard in the beginning to understand that the whole idea is not to beat the other runners. Eventually you learn that the competition is against the little voice inside you that wants you to quit.” |
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Individual Quote Pages:
Click Name Favorite Quote Ali, Muhammad "The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life." Holtz, Lou "Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it." James, LeBron "I like criticism. It makes you strong." Jordan, Michael "Love is playing every game as if it’s your last." Lombardi, Vince "Life’s battles don’t always go to the stronger or faster man. But sooner or later the man who wins, is the man who thinks he can." Owens, Jesse "Find the good. It’s all around you. Find it, showcase it & you’ll start believing in it." Rockne, Knute "One man practicing sportsmanship is far better than fifty preaching it." Valvano, Jim "My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person, he believed in me." Wooden, John "You can’t live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you." Riley, Pat "There’s no such thing as coulda, shoulda, or woulda. If you shoulda and coulda, you woulda done it." Pele "The more difficult the victory, the greater the happiness in winning." Clemente, Roberto "If you have an opportunity to make things better & you don’t, then you are wasting your time on earth." Jackson, Phil "Wisdom is always an overmatch for strength." Berra, Yogi "Love is the most important thing in the world, but baseball is pretty good, too." Durant, Kevin "I’m not a guy that’s going to brag or feel like I’m better than the group." Ashe, Arthur "From what we get, we can make a living; what we give, however, makes a life."