John Wooden Quotes
Besides being an awesome basketball coach, John Wooden was simply a fantastic person.
While Wooden was the first person to be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame as both a player and a coach, collected ten NCAA Championships coaching at UCLA, and is pretty much thought of as the greatest basketball coach ever, some of the best things he’s contributed are his thoughts on character and how to treat others.
As part of our Basketball Coach Quotes Series, we bring you “John Wooden Quotes”.
When you’re done enjoying the following John Wooden quotes, you can visit our Great Basketball Quotes for hundreds of more basketball quotes.
Now, on to the John Wooden Quotes!
John Wooden Quotes (1-5)
- “It’s the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen.”
- “Talent is God given. Be humble. Fame is man-given. Be grateful. Conceit is self-given. Be careful.”
- “Don’t let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.”
- “For an athlete to function properly, he must be intent. There has to be a definite purpose and goal if you are to progress. If you are not intent about what you are doing, you aren’t able to resist the temptation to do something else that might be more fun at the moment.”
- “I always tried to make clear that basketball is not the ultimate. It is of small importance in comparison to the total life we live. There is only one kind of life that truly wins, and that is the one that places faith in the hands of the Savior. Until that is done, we are on an aimless course that runs in circles and goes nowhere.”
John Wooden Quotes (6-10)
- “The most important key to achieving great success is to decide upon your goal and launch, get started, take action, move.”
- “It is most difficult, in my mind, to separate any success, whether it be in your profession, your family, or as in my case, in basketball, from religion.”
- “Our land is everything to us… I will tell you one of the things we remember on our land. We remember that our grandfathers paid for it – with their lives.”
- “What you are as a person is far more important that what you are as a basketball player.”
- “Material possessions, winning scores, and great reputations are meaningless in the eyes of the Lord, because He knows what we really are and that is all that matters.”
John Wooden Quotes (11-15)
- “Although I wanted my players to work to win, I tried to convince them they had always won when they had done their best.”
- “The main ingredient of stardom is the rest of the team.”
- “It’s not so important who starts the game but who finishes it.”
- “You can’t let praise or criticism get to you. It’s a weakness to get caught up in either one.”
- “Success comes from knowing that you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.”
John Wooden Quotes (16-20)
- “Young people need models, not critics.”
- “It is what we learn after we know it all that really counts.”
- “I’d rather have a lot of talent and a little experience than a lot of experience and a little talent.”
- “Consider the rights of others before your own feelings, and the feelings of others before your own rights.”
- “Winning takes talent, to repeat takes character.”
John Wooden Quotes (21-25)
- “If you’re not making mistakes, then you’re not doing anything. I’m positive that a doer makes mistakes.”
- “Never mistake activity for achievement.”
- “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.”
- “Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.”
- “A coach is someone who can give correction without causing resentment.”
John Wooden Quotes (26-30)
- “Success is never final, failure is never fatal. It’s courage that counts.”
- “Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming.”
- “You cannot attain and maintain physical condition unless you are morally and mentally conditioned. And it is impossible to be in moral condition unless you are spiritually conditioned. I always told my players that our team condition depended on two factors / how hard they worked on the floor during practice and how well they behaved between practices.”
- “Adversity is the state in which man mostly easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free of admirers then.”
- “Ability is a poor man’s wealth.”
John Wooden Quotes (31-35)
- “Be prepared and be honest.”
- “The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones.”
- “Ability may get you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there.”
- “Don’t measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but what you should have accomplished with your ability.”
- “If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?”
John Wooden Quotes (36-40)
- “You can’t live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you.”
- “Things turn out best for people who make the best out of the way things turn out.”
- “It isn’t what you do, but how you do it.”
- “Sports do not build character. They reveal it.”
- “There are many things that are essential to arriving at true peace of mind, and one of the most important is faith, which cannot be acquired without prayer.”
END: John Wooden Quotes