Inspirational Sports Quotes
Below is our collection of inspiring quotes directed at athletes, coaches, and others who are looking for inspiration, motivation, or encouragement. They are about achieving goals, building teams, finding passion, revealing character, and finding the true lessons of sports. Take a few moments to read some and reflect on how it may apply to you or your team.
“The harder you work, the harder it is to surrender.” – Vince Lombardi
“You can’t outperform your self-image.” – Dennis Connor
“Success is peace of mind that can be obtained only from the self-satisfaction of knowing that you have made the effort to do the very best of which you are capable.” – John Wooden
“We write our own destiny; we become what we do.” – Madame Chiang Kai-Shek
“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” – Confucius
“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.” – Theodore Roosevelt
“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.” Maria Robinson
“You can gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
“Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.” – Vincent Van Gogh
“We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.” Buddha
“Success means having the courage, the determination, and the will to become the person you believe you were meant to be.” George A. Sheehan
“The world makes way for the man who knows where he is going.” Ralph Waldo Emereson
“In the end, we are all separate: our stories, no matter how similar, come to a fork and diverge. We are drawn to each other because of our similarities, but it is our differences we must learn to respect.”
Watch your thoughts, for they become words.
Watch your words, for they become actions.
Watch your actions, for they become habits.
Watch your habits, for they become character.
Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.
– Frank Outlaw
“If you think you are beaten, you are. If you think you dare not, you don’t.
If you’d like to win, but think you can’t, It’s almost a cinch you won’t.
If you think you’ll lose, you’re lost. For out in the world we find
success begins with a fellow’s will; It’s all in the state of mind.
If you think you’re outclassed, you are; You’ve got to think high to rise.
You’ve got to be sure of yourself before you can ever win a prize.
Life’s battles don’t always go to the stronger or faster man;
But soon or later the man who wins is the one who thinks he can.”
-Walter D. Wintle
‘You wonder how they do it
You look to see the knack
You watch the foot in action
Or the shoulder or the back.
But when you spot the answer
Where the higher glamours lurk
You’ll find in moving higher
Up the laurel-covered spire
That most of it is practice
And the rest of it is work”
– Grantland Rice
I missed 9000 shots in my career
I lost almost 300 games
26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot, and missed…
I failed over and over again in my life
And that is why I succeed
– Michael Jordan