Sports Quotes - Page 17

You can't win unless you learn how to lose.

A hard-fought, well-fought, hairline-close game is as classical in sports as tragedy is in the theater. Victory is contained within defeat, and defeat is contained within victory. That's the way it is in the best of games. What counts in sports is not the victory, but the magnificence of the struggle.

Sports 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.

One day or another every athlete feels like taking it easy. He stops trying to exceed his limits, and thinks he can keep winning because of his lucky star, or the bad luck of his opponents. You must overcome this negative instinct, which affects all of us, and which is the only difference between the person who wins a race, and those who lose. This is the battle you have to fight every day of your life.

What is the difference between an obstacle and an opportunity? Our attitude toward it. Every opportunity has a difficulty, and every difficulty has an opportunity.

I have always believed that one should not be scared of losing, I think that really is the key.

What to do with a mistake: recognize it, admit it, learn from it, forget it.

Some people tell me that we professional players are soccer slaves. Well, if this is slavery, give me a life sentence.

The ones who want to achieve and win championships motivate themselves.

There are plenty of teams in every sport that have great players and never win titles. Most of the time, those players aren't willing to sacrifice for the greater good of the team. The funny thing is, in the end, their unwillingness to sacrifice only makes individual goals more difficult to achieve. One thing I believe to the fullest is that if you think and achieve as a team, the individual accolades will take care of themselves. Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.

Sports can do so much. They've given me a framework: meeting new people, confidence, self-esteem, discipline, motivation. All these things I learned, whether I knew I was learning them or not, through sports.

Great moments are born from great opportunities.

An athlete cannot run with money in his pockets. He must run with hope in his heart and dreams in his head.

Nutrition has always played a huge role in my life. I became a vegetarian when I was 13 and then got my entire family to become vegetarians. And I have always been active my whole life. I genuinely enjoy sports and I spend time on my total gym.

My greatest point is my persistence. I never give up in a match. However down I am, I fight until the last ball. My list of matches shows that I have turned a great many so-called irretrievable defeats into victories.

Never play leapfrog with a unicorn.

If you want to experience all of the successes and pleasure in life, you have to be willing to accept all the pain and failure that comes with it.

You can make a lot of money in this game. Just ask my ex-wives. Both of them are so rich that neither of their husbands work.

The humility to prepare and the self-confidence to bring it off.

Professional football in America is a special game, a unique game ... It is a rare game. The men who play it make it so. All of them are fearless. All of them are strong, quick. And all of them are part of a story that began long ago. A story written by men who found, in the sport, a demanding measure for their own courage and ability.

I had pro offers from the Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers, who were pretty hard up for linemen in those days. If I had gone into professional football the name Jerry Ford might have been a household word today.

One man's Poison Ivy is another Fellow's Spinach.

What keeps faith cheerful is the extreme persistence of gentleness and humor. Gentleness is everywhere in daily life, a sign that faith rules through ordinary things: through cooking and small talk, through storytelling, making love, fishing, tending animals and sweet corn and flowers, through sports, music, and books, raising kids-all the places where the gravy soaks in and grace shines through. Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people. Lacking any other purpose in life, it would be good enough to live for their sake.

What I need to do is have a great positive attitude and a great work ethic. Those two things validate me. Yes, it's important that I have good numbers, and I'm well-respected as a player. But I think it's more important that I'm respected as a man.

Because she is too ugly to kiss goodbye.