It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.
—John Wooden
Topics: Success, Learning
A coach is someone who can give correction without causing resentment.
—John Wooden
Topics: Success
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.
—John Wooden
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
Topics: Success & Failure, Success
Make each day a Masterpiece.
—John Wooden
Don’t mistake activity with achievement.
—John Wooden
Winning takes talent, to repeat takes character.
—John Wooden
Topics: Talent
It’s not so important who starts the game but who finishes it.
—John Wooden
Topics: Success, Perseverance, Persistence
Don’t measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished with your ability.
—John Wooden
Topics: Measuring, Achieving, Potential, Reflection, Doing Your Best, Vision, Ability, Accomplishment
Talent is God given. Be humble. Fame is man-given. Be grateful. Conceit is self-given. Be careful.
—John Wooden
Topics: Humility, Thankfulness, Talent
Consider the rights of others before your own feelings, and the feelings of others before your own rights.
—John Wooden
Topics: Feelings
Ability is a poor man’s wealth.
—John Wooden
Topics: Ability, One liners, Success
Young people need models, not critics…
—John Wooden
Topics: Youth
You can’t live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you.
—John Wooden
Topics: Kindness, Graduation, Satisfaction, Sacrifice
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.
—John Wooden
Topics: Faith, Prayer
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.
—John Wooden
Topics: Mind, The Mind
Ability may get you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there.
—John Wooden
Topics: Ability
It’s the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen.
—John Wooden
Topics: Little Things, Things
Be prepared and be honest.
—John Wooden
Topics: Honesty
It isn’t what you do, but how you do it.
—John Wooden
Topics: Excellence, Success
Give it away to get it back. There is a wonderful, almost mystical, law of nature that says three of the things we want most—happiness, freedom, and peace of mind—are always attained when we give them to others.
—John Wooden
I’d rather have a lot of talent and a little experience than a lot of experience and a little talent.
—John Wooden
Topics: Success, Talent
Failure to prepare is preparing to fail.
—John Wooden
Topics: Planning, Work, Failure
Success is that peace of mind that comes from knowing you’ve done everything in your power to become the very best you’re capable of becoming.
—John Wooden
Topics: Success
You can’t let praise or criticism get to you. It’s a weakness to get caught up in either one.
—John Wooden
Topics: Criticism, Praise
Don’t let what you can’t do stand in the way of what you can.
—John Wooden
Topics: Success
All of life is peaks and valleys. Don’t let the peaks get too high and the valleys too low.
—John Wooden
What you are as a person is far more important that what you are as a basketball player.
—John Wooden
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
Topics: Passion
It’s wrong to turn people into idols. But it’s also wrong to lose hope, to believe that we can’t find good examples to inspire us.
—John Wooden
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Bob Knight American Sportsperson
- Kareem Abdul-Jabbar American Basketball Player
- Larry Bird American Sportsperson
- Wilt Chamberlain American Sportsperson
- Charles Barkley American Sportsperson
- Woody Hayes American Sportsperson
- Reggie Miller American Basketball Player
- Bear Bryant American Sportsperson
- Michael Jordan American Sportsperson
- Yogi Berra American Sportsperson
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