John Wooden Quotes

While I made my living as a coach, I have lived my life to be a mentor, and to be mentored! Constantly. Everything in the world has been passed down. Every piece of knowledge is something that has been shared by someone else. If you understand it as I do, mentoring becomes your true legacy. It is the greatest inheritance you can give to others. It is why you get up every day — to teach and be taught.

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.

Abraham Lincoln. He once said that the best thing a man can do for his children is to love their mother.

I believe in the basics: attention to, and perfection of, tiny details that might be commonly overlooked. They may seem trivial, perhaps even laughable to those who don’t understand, but they aren’t. They are fundamental to your progress in basketball, business, and life. They are the difference between champions and near champions.

For example, at the first squad meeting each season, held two weeks before our first actual practice, I personally demonstrated how I wanted players to put on their socks each and every time: Carefully roll the socks down over the toes, ball of the foot, arch and around the heel, then pull the sock up snug so there will be no wrinkles of any kind.

It’s so easy to relax, to cut corners, to let down after you’ve reached your goal, and begin thinking you can just “turn it on” automatically, without proper preparation. It takes real character to keep working as hard or even harder once you’re there.

If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?

You can do more good by being good than any other way.

Mistakes come from doing, but so does success.

I am not what I ought to be, Not what I want to be, Not what I am going to be, But I am thankful that I am better than I used to be. It

It took me a long time to understand that even a stubborn mule responds to gentleness.

Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable.

Trusting is part of our higher nature. Doubting is a lower instinct. The latter is easy to do, the former more difficult — but so much more rewarding.

The best leaders are lifelong learners; they take measures to create organizations that foster and inspire learning throughout. The most effective leaders are those who realize it’s what you learn after you know it all that counts most.

Success is peace of mind that is the direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.

The teams that compete at the highest level love the thrill of the contest. They may have winning in their heads, but they have a love for the effort and struggle in their hearts.