Phil Knight Quotes

Hard work is critical, a good team is essential, brains and determination are invaluable, but luck may decide the outcome.

I thought back on my running career at Oregon. I’d competed with, and against, men far better, faster, more physically gifted. Many were future Olympians. And yet I’d trained myself to forget this unhappy fact. People reflexively assume that competition is always a good thing, that it always brings out the best in people, but that’s only true of people who can forget the competition. The art of competing, I’d learned from track, was the art of forgetting, and I now reminded myself of that fact. You must forget your limits. You must forget your doubts, your pain, your past.

The art of competing, I’d learned from track, was the art of forgetting, and I now reminded myself of that fact. You must forget your limits. You must forget your doubts, your pain, your past.

People reflexively assume that competition is always a good thing, that it always brings out the best in people, but that’s only true of people who can forget the competition.

Oneness — in some way, shape, or form, it’s what every person I’ve ever met has been seeking.

Driving back to Portland I’d puzzle over my sudden success at selling. I’d been unable to sell encyclopedias, and I’d despised it to boot. I’d been slightly better at selling mutual funds, but I’d felt dead inside. So why was selling shoes so different? Because, I realized, it wasn’t selling. I believed in running. I believed that if people got out and ran a few miles every day, the world would be a better place, and I believed these shoes were better to run in. People, sensing my belief, wanted some of that belief for themselves. Belief, I decided. Belief is irresistible.

People, sensing my belief, wanted some of that belief for themselves. Belief, I decided. Belief is irresistible.

Trade is the path of coexistence, cooperation.

Because mothers are our first coaches.

In the timeless, clarifying light of that moon, I begin to make a list.

If you get simple beauty and naught else, you get about the best thing God invents.

confidence was cash. You had to have some to get some. And people were loath to give it to you.

Sometimes, after a really cathartic guffaw, I’d look around the table and feel overcome by emotion. Camaraderie, loyalty, gratitude. Even love. Surely love. But I also remember feeling shocked that these were the men I’d assembled. These were the founding fathers of a multimillion-dollar company that sold athletic shoes? A paralyzed guy, two morbidly obese guys, a chain-smoking guy? It was bracing to realize that, in this group, the one with whom I had the most in common was . . . Johnson.

Any building is a temple if you make it so.

What if there were a way, without being an athlete, to feel what athletes feel? To play all the time, instead of working? Or else to enjoy work so much that it becomes essentially the same thing.