Inspiring Coach Quotes to Ignite Your Passion and Drive

"Run when you can, walk if you have to, crawl if you must; just never give up."

- Dean Karnazes

"Don't give up. Don't ever give up."

- Jim Valvano

"It's not whether you get knocked down; it's whether you get up."

- Vince Lombardi

"The interesting thing about coaching is that you have to trouble the comfortable, and comfort the troubled."

- Ric Charlesworth

"Failures are expected by losers, ignored by winners."

- Joe Gibbs

"Set goals - high goals for you and your organization. When your organization has a goal to shoot for, you create teamwork, people working for a common good."

- Bear Bryant

"A champion is afraid of losing. Everyone else is afraid of winning."

- Billie Jean King

"The key is not the will to win. Everybody has that. It is the will to prepare to win that is important."

- Bobby Knight

"What keeps me going is not winning, but the quest for reaching potential in myself as a coach and my kids as divers. It's the pursuit of excellence."

- Ron O'Brien

"One man practicing sportsmanship is far better than a hundred teaching it."

- Knute Rockne

"You can motivate by fear, and you can motivate by reward. But both those methods are only temporary. The only lasting thing is self-motivation."

- Homer Rice

"Excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better."

- Pat Riley

"Victory is in having done your best. If you've done your best, you've won."

- Bill Bowerman

"There are three types of baseball players: those who make it happen, those who watch it happen and those who wonder what happens."

- Tommy Lasorda

"Our emphasis is on execution, not winning."

- Pat Summitt

"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."

- Coach John Wooden

"What do you do with a mistake: recognize it, admit it, learn from it, forget it."

- Dean Smith

"There is nothing so uncertain as a sure thing."

- Scotty Bowman

"In basketball — as in life — true joy comes from being fully present in each and every moment, not just when things are going your way."

- Phil Jackson

"Talent sets the floor, character sets the ceiling."

- Bill Belichick

"Champions behave like champions before they are champions."

- Bill Walsh

"Discover your gift, develop your gift, and then give it away every day."

- Don Meyer

"Do your best when no one is looking. If you do that, then you can be successful in anything that you put your mind to."

- Bob Cousy

"You were born a player. You were meant to be here. This moment is yours."

- Herb Brooks

"You can see and you can listen, but you have to have moments in which you feel."

- Mike Krzyzewski

"There are no shortcuts to any place worth going."

- Beverly Sills

"Treat a person as he is, and he will remain as he is. Treat him as he could be, and he will become what he should be."

- Doug Williams

"You can't get much done in life if you only work on the days when you feel good."

- Jerry West

"If what you did yesterday seems big, you haven't done anything today."

- Lou Holtz

"Be led by your dreams. Not by your problems."

- Roy Williams

"The measure of who we are is how we react to something that doesn't go our way."

- Greg Popovich

"Make sure that team members know they are working with you, not for you."

- John Wooden

"Coaching is taking a player where they can’t take themselves."

- Jose Mourinho

"Probably my best quality as a coach is that I ask a lot of challenging questions and let the person come up with the answer."

- Phil Dixon

"My responsibility is leadership, and the minute I get negative, that is going to have an influence on my team."

- Don Shula

"A good coach will make his players see what they can be rather than what they are."

- Ara Parseghian

"I found out that if you are going to win games, you had better be ready to adapt."

- Scotty Bowman

"Success isn’t owned, it’s leased. And the rent is due every day."

- LeBron James

"Coaches have to watch for what they don’t want to see and listen for what they don’t want to hear."

- John Madden

"I've never felt my job was to win basketball games – rather, that the essence of my job as a coach was to do everything I could to give my players the background necessary to succeed in life."

- Bobby Knight

"The effectiveness of a leader is best judged by the actions of those he guides."

- Bill Courtney

"The best coaches never tell their athletes that they are wrong. They rather focus on creating awareness."

- Abhishek Ratna

"Leadership is a matter of having people look at you and gain confidence…If you’re in control, they’re in control."

- Tom Landry

"Everyone needs a coach. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a basketball player, a tennis player, a gymnast or a bridge player."

- Bill Gates

"It should always be about the kids. Everything you do should be to make sure the kids you coach have a positive experience and learn all the great life lessons that sports can teach."

- Helen Williams

"Competitive sports are played mainly on a five-and-a-half inch court, the space between your ears."

- Arthur Ashe

"No one’s ever gotten better by practicing less."

- Ron Jaworski

"No matter who you are, we’re creatures of habit. The better your habits are, the better they will be in pressure situations."

- Wayne Gretzky

"The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra."

- Jimmy Johnson

"Everything is practice."

- Pele

"Think about your dream. Then, put your head down and go to work."

- Dabo Swinney

"I start early and I stay late, day after day, year after year. It took me 17 years and 114 days to become an overnight success."

- Lionel Messi

"It is better to look ahead and prepare than to look back and regret."

- Jackie Joyner-Kersee

"Nothing will work unless you do."

- Maya Angelou

"Learning is pleasurable but doing is the height of enjoyment."

- Novalis

"I never left the field saying I could have done more to get ready and that gives me piece of mind."

- Peyton Manning

"I hated every minute of training, but I said, ‘Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion."

- Muhammad Ali

"Today I will do what others won’t, so tomorrow I can accomplish what others can’t."

- Jerry Rice

"Learning and innovation go hand in hand. The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow."

- William Pollard

"You can’t get much done in life if you only work on the days when you feel good."

- Jerry West

"I’ve got a theory that if you give 100% all of the time, somehow things will work out in the end."

- Larry Bird

"Making a change in your life is as easy as making a decision and acting on it. That’s it."

- Ronda Rousey

"Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard."

- Tim Notke

"You have to believe in yourself when no one else does."

- Serena Williams

"Never say never because limits, like fears, are often just an illusion."

- Michael Jordan

"Ability is what you’re capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it."

- Lou Holtz

"The vision of a champion is bent over, drenched in sweat, at the point of exhaustion, when nobody else is looking."

- Mia Hamm

"It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up."

- Babe Ruth

"The more difficult the victory, the greater the happiness in winning."

- Pele

"You have to be able to accept failure to get better."

- LeBron James

"You have to free your mind to do things you wouldn’t think of doing. Don’t ever say no."

- Carl Lewis

"Everyone has the fire, but the champions know when to ignite the spark."

- Amit Ray

"A champion isn’t made of muscle; a champion is made of heart."

- Liang Chow

"The measure of who we are is what we do with what we have."

- Vince Lombardi

"You fail all the time, but you aren’t a failure until you start blaming someone else."

- Bum Phillips

"Learning the mind is as important as understanding the body."

- Usain Bolt

"You should never stay at the same level. Always push yourself to the next."

- Marnelli Dimzon

"You can’t put a limit on anything. The more you dream, the farther you get."

- Michael Phelps

"Talent is God given. Be humble. Fame is man-given. Be grateful. Conceit is self-given. Be careful."

- John Wooden

"I always tell kids, you have two eyes and one mouth. Keep two open and one closed. You never learn anything if you’re the one talking."

- Bob Cousy

"Continuous learning is the minimum requirement for success in any field."

- Brian Tracy

"You become what you think about and focus on the most."

- Dwayne De Rosario

"A good coach can change a game. A great coach can change a life."

- John Wooden

"When your vision becomes your mission, your business will become a movement."

- Robin Sharma

"Great coaches use their expertise not to control but to inspire and empower their team to greatness."

- Vince Lombardi

"Coaching is unlocking a person’s potential to maximize their growth."

- John Whitmore

"The purpose of coaching is to close the gap between potential and performance."

- Keith Webb

"The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches, but reveal to them their own."

- Benjamin Disraeli

"The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team."

- Phil Jackson

"A team is not a group of people who work together. A team is a group of people who trust each other."

- Simon Sinek

""You don’t have to be great to get started but you have to get started to be great.""

- Les Brown

""You have exactly one life in which to do everything you’ll ever do. Act accordingly.""

- Colin Wright

""If your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough.""

- Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

""Strength comes from struggle. When you learn to see your struggles as opportunities to become stronger, better, wiser, then your thinking shifts from ‘I can’t do this’ to ‘I must do this’.""

- Toni Sorensen

""In a growth mindset, challenges are exciting rather than threatening.""

- Carol Dweck

""A bird sitting on a tree is never afraid of the branch breaking, because its trust is not on the branch, but on its own wings. Always believe in yourself.""

- Charlie Wardle

""Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.""

- Confucius

""It is fine to celebrate success, but it is more important to heed the lessons from failure.""

- Bill Gates

""Words are powerful. Words change lives; words and ideas change the world.""

- Bryant McGill

"You need to believe in yourself, and hands down, one of the biggest contributors to my self-confidence has been private coaching."

- Stephen Curry

"A coach is someone who tells you what you don’t want to hear, who has you see what you don’t want to see so you can be who you have always known you could be."

- Tom Landry

"You can have everything in life you want, if you just help enough other people get what they want."

- Zig Ziglar

"I can do things you cannot, you can do things I cannot: together, we can do great things."

- Mother Teresa

"You must expect great things of yourself before you can do them."

- Michael Jordan

"Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much."

- Helen Keller

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed. It is the only thing that ever has."

- Margaret Mead

"Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships."

- Michael Jordan

"You’re braver than you believe and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think."

- Christopher Robin, Winnie the Pooh

"Defeat is a state of mind; no one is ever defeated until defeat has been accepted as a reality."

- Bruce Lee

"If you can dream it, you can do it."

- Walt Disney

"Set your goals high, and don’t stop till you get there."

- Bo Jackson

"When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it."

- Henry Ford

"Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway."

- Earl Nightingale

"You cannot lead others until you have first learned to lead yourself."

- Robin Sharma

"Leadership is not about being in charge. It’s about taking care of those in your charge."

- Simon Sinek

"Coaching is a good profession for people who are genuinely devoted to making a difference in the lives of others."

- Rich Litvin

"A mentor is someone who sees more talent and ability within you, than you see in yourself, and helps bring it out of you."

- Bob Proctor

"True fulfillment in life doesn’t come from what we get, it comes from what we give."

- Marie Forleo

"We can change our loves. We can do, have, and be exactly what we wish."

- Tony Robbins

"Coaching is not just for problems but for the improvement of your best."

- Michael Bungay Stanier

"Coaching is the catalyst for transformation."

- Vikram Kapoor

"See the light in others, and treat them as if that is all you see."

- Dr. Wayne Dyer

"In a coaching culture, people understand that their success is interconnected with the success of others."

- David Clutterbuck

"A mentor is someone who allows you to see the hope inside yourself."

- Oprah Winfrey

"Personal development is the belief that you are worth the effort, time, and energy needed to develop yourself."

- Denis Waitley

"The art of coaching is knowing when to teach and when to inspire."

- David Rock

""Perfectionism is a lost cause. Focus your energy on being the best you can be.""

- Domonique Bertolucci

"Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground."

- Theodore Roosevelt

"A coach’s job is not to make decisions for the players but to guide and equip them to make the right decisions themselves."

- Greg Glassman

"Empowerment is the key to coaching."

- Sabine Haupt

"To build a strong team, you must see someone else’s strength as a complement to your weakness, and not a threat to your position or authority."

- Christine Caine

"If it doesn’t challenge you, it won’t change you."

- Fred Devito

"Life begins at the end of your comfort zone."

- Neale Donald Walsch

"The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers."

- Ralph Nader

"The best teams have chemistry. They communicate with each other and sacrifice personal glory for the common goal."

- Dave DeBusschere

"Leadership is a matter of having people look at you and gain confidence…if you’re in control, they’re in control."

- Tom Landry

"Coaching is the art of influencing people’s behavior to bring out the best in them."

- James Flaherty

""Simply put, Coaching is where you work with someone to connect with yourself, redesign your environment and your life, and then take action to implement it!""

- Emma-Louise Elsey

"Put your heart, mind, and soul into even your smallest acts. This is the secret of success."

- Swami Sivananda

"The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor, but without folly."

- Jim Rohn

"The delicate balance of mentoring someone is not creating them in your own image, but giving them the opportunity to create themselves."

- Steven Spielberg

"A mentor empowers a person to see a possible future, and believe it can be obtained."

- Shawn Hitchcock

"An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

""Coaching is about helping clients unlock the treasure-chest of their lives – worth bearing in mind then that diamonds are made from coal under pressure and it’s the grit in the oyster which creates the pearls.""

- Sarah Durrant

""A coach is someone who tells you what you don’t want to hear, who has you see what you don’t want to see, so you can be who you have always known you could be.""

- Tom Landry

"Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people."

- Steve Jobs

"It is the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) that those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed."

- Charles Darwin

""If it doesn’t challenge you, it won’t change you.""

- Fred Devito

"Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success."

- Henry Ford

"Individual commitment to a group effort – that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work."

- Vince Lombardi

"People thrive on positive reinforcement. They can take only a certain amount of criticism and you may lose them altogether if you criticize them in a personal way…you can make a point without being personal. Don’t insult or belittle your people. Instead of getting more out of them you will get less."

- Bill Walsh

"First, forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won’t. Habit is persistence in practice."

- Octavia Butler

"When you are enthusiastic about what you do, you feel this positive energy. It’s very simple."

- Paulo Coelho

"The achievements of an organization are the results of the combined effort of each individual."

- Vince Lombardi

"Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacles, discouragements, and impossibilities. It is this, that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak."

- Thomas Carlyle

""I absolutely believe that people, unless coached, never reach their maximum capabilities.""

- Bob Nardelli

""Coaching works because it’s all about you. When you connect with what you really want and why – and take action – magical things can happen.""

- Emma-Louise Elsey

""A life coach does for the rest of your life what a personal trainer does for your health and fitness.""

- Elaine MacDonald

""One of the most exciting things about coaching is the buzz you get when you push out of your comfort zone, come up with a plan and put it into action!""

- Emma-Louise Elsey

""Each person holds so much power within themselves that needs to be let out. Sometimes they just need a little nudge, a little direction, a little support, a little coaching, and the greatest things can happen.""

- Pete Carroll

""Coaching is unlocking people’s potential to maximise their own performance. It is more often helping them to learn rather than teaching them.""

- John Whitmore

""Coaching helps you to take responsibility for your life, let go of what others think and become your true self.""

- Emma-Louise Elsey

"Winning doesn’t always mean being first. Winning means you’re doing better than you’ve done before."

- Bonnie Claire

"Good coaching may be defined as the development of character, personality and habits of players, plus the teaching of fundamentals and team play."

- Claire Bee

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."

""During critical periods, a leader is not allowed to feel sorry for himself, to be down, to be angry, or to be weak. Leaders must beat back these emotions.""

- Unknown

""When you cleanse yourself of a big victory, you may open yourself up to the opportunity for an even bigger victory.""

- Unknown

""You have to work hard at staying in contact with your friends so that the relationships will continue and live on…""

- Unknown

""In our program, the truth is the basis of all that we do. There is nothing more important than the truth because there’s nothing more powerful than the truth.""

- Unknown

""Every leader needs to remember that a healthy respect for authority takes time to develop. It’s like building trust. You don’t instantly have trust, it has to be earned.""

- Unknown

""In leadership, there are no words more important than trust. In any organization, trust must be developed among every member of the team if success is going to be achieved.""

- Unknown

""Too many rules get in the way of leadership. They just put you in a box . . . . People set rules to keep from making decisions.""

- Unknown

""Mutual commitment helps overcome the fear of failure—especially when people are part of a team sharing and achieving goals.""

- Unknown

""When you first assemble a group, it’s not a team right off the bat. It’s only a collection of individuals.""

- Unknown

""Visualize a wagon wheel as a complete team. A leader might be the hub of the wheel at the center.""

- Unknown

""When a leader takes responsibility for his own actions and mistakes, he not only sets a good example, he shows a healthy respect for people on his team.""

- Unknown

""Discipline is doing what you are supposed to do in the best possible manner at the time you are supposed to do it.""

- Unknown

""Goals should be realistic, attainable, and shared among all members of the team.""

- Unknown

""There are five fundamental qualities that make every team great: communication, trust, collective responsibility, caring and pride.""

- Unknown

""You develop a team to achieve what one person cannot accomplish alone. All of us alone are weaker, by far, than if all of us are together.""

- Unknown

""Confidence shared is better than confidence only in yourself.""

- Unknown

""Two are better than one if two act as one.""

- Unknown

""A leader may be the most knowledgeable person in the world, but if the players on his team cannot translate that knowledge into action, it means nothing.""

- Unknown

""Erect no artificial walls that might limit potential, stifle creativity, or shackle innovation.""

- Unknown

""Leaders should be reliable without being predictable. They should be consistent without being anticipated.""

- Unknown

""A leader has to be positive about all things that happen to his team. Look at nothing in the past as failure.""

- Unknown

""Courage and confidence are what decision making is all about.""

- Unknown

""Leaders show respect for people by giving them time.""

- Unknown

""I believe God gave us crises for some reason—and it certainly wasn’t for us to say that everything about them is bad.""

- Unknown

""Encourage members of your team to take the initiative and act on their own.""

- Unknown

""People want to be on a team. They want to be part of something bigger than themselves.""

- Unknown

"Coaching is people management – getting people to do what you want them to do and like doing it."

""I get a group of people who are talented to commit to excellence and to work together as one. That’s where it starts. Different talents, same commitment.""

- Unknown

""There are things you can talk about and plan and then there are things that just happen. Sometimes players do things that bring out the best in each other?…?like when a group of talented musicians hits their groove.""

- Unknown

""We’ve created a jealous-free zone?… We look each other in the eye. We tell each other the truth. And we trust each other.""

- Unknown

""Don’t take your culture for granted. There needs to be a constant renewal of values that lead to camaraderie.""

- Unknown

""Everyone’s ideas should be heard. It doesn’t matter who gets credit. As long as you’re working towards the same mission and shared purpose.""

- Unknown

""Effective teamwork begins and ends with communication.""

- Unknown

""Communication does not always occur naturally, even among a tight-knit group of individuals. Communication must be taught and practiced in order to bring everyone together as one.""

- Unknown

""Making shots counts, but not as much as the people who make them.""

- Unknown

""I define passion as extreme emotion.""

- Unknown

""When you are passionate, you always have your destination in sight and you are not distracted by obstacles. Because you love what you are pursuing, things like rejection and setbacks will not hinder you in your pursuit. You believe that nothing can stop you!""

- Unknown

""I don’t look at myself as a basketball coach. I look at myself as a leader who happens to coach basketball.""

- Unknown

""Your heart has to be in whatever you lead. It became apparent that this decision was somewhat easier to make because you have to follow your heart and lead with it and Duke has always taken up my whole heart…""

- Unknown

""People have to be given the freedom to show the heart they possess. I think it’s a leader’s responsibility to provide that type of freedom. And I believe it can be done through relationships and family.""

- Unknown

""Confrontation simply means meeting the truth head-on.""

- Unknown

""Believe that the loose ball that you are chasing has your name on it.""

- Unknown

""It takes courage not only to make decisions, but to live with those decisions afterward.""

- Unknown