Sports Motivational Quotes

“My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person, he believed in me.”
Jim Valvano, Basketball Coach

"If you don't invest very much, then defeat doesn't hurt very much and winning is not very exciting."
Dick Vermeil

"Leaders are made, they are not born. They are made by hard effort, which is the price which all of us must pay to achieve any goal that is worthwhile."
Vince Lombardi, Football Coach

"It doesn't matter if you try and try and try again, and fail. It does matter if you try and fail, and fail to try again."
Charles Kettering

"The highest compliment that you can pay me is to say that I work hard every day, that I never dog it."
Wayne Gretzky, Canadian Hockey Player

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, Basketball Coach

"It is impossible to win the race unless you venture to run, impossible to win the victory unless you dare to battle."
Richard DeVos

“I found out that if you are going to win games, you had better be ready to adapt.”
Scotty Bowman, Hockey Coach

"Procrastination is one of the most common and deadliest of diseases and its toll on success and happiness is heavy."
Wayne Gretzky, Canadian Hockey Player “The fewer rules a coach has, the fewer there are for a player to break.”
John Madden, Football Coach

"Never let your head hang down. Never give up and sit down and grieve. Find another way."
Satchel Paige

“I won’t accept anything less than the best a player’s capable of doing, and he has the right to expect the best that I can do for him and the team!
Lou Holtz, Football Coach

“Winning is only half of it. Having fun is the other half.”
Bum Phillips, Football Coach

“A good coach will make his players see what they can be rather than what they are.”
Ara Parasheghian, Football Coach

"The achievements of an organization are the results of the combined effort of each individual."
Vince Lombardi, Football Coach

You'll always miss 100% of the shots you don't take.
Wayne Gretzky, Canadian Hockey Player

“The only way to get people to like working hard is to motivate them. Today, people must understand why they’re working hard. Every individual in an organization is motivated by something different.”
Rick Pitino, Basketball Coach

"Ability is what you’re capable of doing.
Motivation determines what you do.
Attitude determines how well you do it."
Lou Holtz, Football Coach

"A total commitment is paramount to reaching the ultimate in performance."
Tom Flores, Football Coach

"The man who has no imagination has no wings."
Muhammad Ali, Champion Wrestler

“Coaches have to watch for what they don’t want to see and listen to what they don’t want to hear.”
John Madden

"They call it coaching but it is teaching. You do not just tell them - you show them the reasons."
Vince Lombardi, Football Coach

"Show me a guy whos afraid to look bad, and I'll show you a guy you can beat every time."
Lou Brock

"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 wont be worth a dime."
Babe Ruth, Baseball Player

"It's lack of faith that makes people afraid of meeting challenges, and I believed in myself."
Muhammad Ali, Champion Wrestler

"Nobody who ever gave his best regretted it."
George Halas, Pro Football Coach

"If you are going to be a champion, you must be willing to pay a greater price."
Bud Wilkinson

"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."
Bruce Jenner, Decathlon Olympic Gold Medalist

"Don't give up at half-time. Concentrate on winning the second half."
Paul Bear Bryant, Coach

"I've never known a man worth his salt who in the long run, deep down in his heart, didn't appreciate the grind, the discipline. I firmly believe that any man's finest hour - this greatest fulfillment to all he holds dear is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle, victorious."
Vince Lombardi, Football Coach

"You have to expect things of yourself before you can do them."
Michael Jordan, Basketball Player

"Adversity cause some men to break; others to break records."
William A. Ward

'To me, there are three things we all should do every day. We should do this every day of our lives. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. And number three is, you should have your emotions moved to tears, could be happiness or joy. But think about it. 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, Basketball Coach