Vince Lombardi quotes: sturdy advice from the football icon.
“There are three things that are important to every man in this locker room. His God, his family, and the Green Bay Packers. In that order.”
“There is something good in men that really yearn for discipline.”
“The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor.”
“Once you agree upon the price you and your family must pay for success, it enables you to ignore the minor hurts, the opponent’s pressure, and the temporary failures.”
“Show me a good loser, and I’ll show you a loser.”
“The good Lord gave you a body that can stand most anything. It’s your mind you have to convince.”
“Winning is a habit. Watch your thoughts, they become your beliefs. Watch your beliefs, they become your words. Watch your words, they become your actions. Watch your actions, they become your habits. Watch your habits, they become your character.”
“The greatest accomplishment is not in never falling, but in rising again after you fall.”
“Winning is not everything – but making the effort to win is.”
“The harder you work, the harder it is to surrender.”
“You never win a game unless you beat the guy in front of you. The score on the board doesn’t mean a thing. That’s for the fans. You’ve got to win the war with the man in front of you. You’ve got to get your man.”
“No leader, however great, can long continue unless he wins battles. The battle decides all.”
“The achievements of an organization are the results of the combined effort of each individual.”
“Winning is not a sometime thing, it is an all the time thing. You don’t do things right once in a while – you do them right all the time.”
“People who work together will win, whether it be against complex football defenses, or the problems of modern society.”
“The objective is to win: fairly, squarely, decently, win by the rules, but still win.”
“Individual commitment to a group effort – that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.”
“It’s not whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you get up.”
“Most important of all, to be successful in life demands that a man make a personal commitment to excellence and to victory, even though the ultimate victory can never be completely won. Yet that victory might be pursued and wooed with every fiber of our body, with every bit of our might and all our effort. And each week, there is a new encounter; each day, there is a new challenge.”
“Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect.”
“Teams do not go physically flat, they go mentally stale.”
“Unless a man believes in himself and makes a total commitment to his career and puts everything he has into it – his mind, his body, his heart – what’s life worth to him?”
“To achieve success, whatever the job we have, we must pay a price.”
“A man can be as great as he wants to be. If you believe in yourself and have the courage, the determination, the dedication, the competitive drive, and if you are willing to sacrifice the little things in life and pay the price for the things that are worthwhile, it can be done.”
“There is no substitute for work.”
“Confidence is contagious and so is lack of confidence, and a customer will recognize both.”
“Football is a great deal like life in that it teaches that work, sacrifice, perseverance, competitive drive, selflessness, and respect for authority is the price that each and every one of us must pay to achieve any goal that is worthwhile.”
“A team that thinks it’s going to lose is going to lose.”
“It’s easy to have faith in yourself and have discipline when you’re a winner, when you’re number one. What you’ve got to have is faith and discipline when you’re not yet a winner.”
“I firmly believe that any man’s finest hour, the greatest fulfillment of all that he holds dear, is the moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle, victorious.”
“Perfection is not attainable. But if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence.”
“They call it coaching but it is teaching. You do not just tell them; you show them the reasons.”
“Once you learn to quit, it becomes a habit.”
“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.”
“Obstacles are what you see when you take your eyes off of the goal.”
“In order to succeed, this group will need a singleness of purpose, they will need a dedication, and they will have to convince all of their prospects of the willingness to sacrifice.”
“Fatigue makes cowards of us all.”
“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.”
“Mental toughness is many things and rather difficult to explain. Its qualities are sacrifice and self-denial. Also, most importantly, it is combined with a perfectly disciplined will that refuses to give in. It’s a state of mind; you could call it character in action.”
“Inches make champions.”
“There’s only one way to succeed in anything, and that is to give it everything. I do, and I demand that my players do.”
“If you’ll not settle for anything less than your best, you will be amazed at what you can accomplish in your lives.”
“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.”
“Having the capacity to lead is not enough. The leader must be willing to use it.”
“A leader must identify himself with the group, must back up the group, even at the risk of displeasing superiors. He must believe that the group wants from him a sense of approval. If this feeling prevails, production, discipline, and morale will be high, and in return, you can demand the cooperation to promote the goals of the community.”
“Success is based upon a spiritual quality, a power to inspire others.”
“If it doesn’t matter who wins or loses, then why do they keep score?”
“After all the cheers have died down and the stadium is empty, after the headlines have been written, and after you are back in the quiet of your room and the championship ring has been placed on the dresser and after all the pomp and fanfare have faded, the enduring thing that is left is the dedication to doing with our lives the very best we can to make the world a better place in which to live.”
“In great attempts, it is glorious even to fail.”
“If you don’t think you’re a winner, you don’t belong here.”
“Don’t succumb to excuses. Go back to the job of making the corrections and forming the habits that will make your goal possible.”
“Faithfulness and truth are the most sacred excellences and endowments of the human mind.”
“Some of us will do our jobs well and some will not, but we will all be judged on one thing: the result.”
For more quotes like Lombardi’s, read John Wooden’s wisdom.
