89 Inspirational Football Quotes to Fuel Your Motivation

"Football is like life. It requires perseverance, self-denial, hard work, sacrifice, dedication, and respect for authority."

- Vince Lombardi

"You can't win together if you don't work together."

- Nick Saban

"It's not the will to win that matters. It's the will to prepare to win that matters."

- Paul "Bear" Bryant

"Winners never quit and quitters never win."

- Vince Lombardi

"Without self-discipline, success is impossible. Period."

- Lou Holtz

"Your talent determines what you can do. Your motivation determines how much you are willing to do. Your attitude determines how well you do it."

- Lou Holtz

"Once you learn to quit, it becomes a habit."

- Vince Lombardi

"A champion is simply someone who did not give up when they wanted to."

- Tom Landry

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

- Vince Lombardi

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

- Jerry Rice

"There is only one way to succeed in anything…and that is to give it everything."

- Vince Lombardi

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

- Lou Holtz

"If you want to win, do the ordinary things better than anyone else does them day in and day out."

- Chuck Noll

"We would accomplish many more things if we did not think of them as impossible."

- Vince Lombardi

"There is no substitute for work."

- Vince Lombardi

"If you're not gonna go all the way, why go at all?"

- Joe Namath

"Those who stay will be champions."

- Bo Schembechler

"The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather in a lack of will."

- Vince Lombardi

"You can learn a line from a win and a book from defeat."

- Paul Brown

"When you're good at something, you'll tell everyone. When you're great at something, they'll tell you."

- Walter Payton

"Winning isn't getting ahead of others. It's getting ahead of yourself."

- Roger Staubach

"Stay hungry, remain humble, and get better today."

- Pete Carroll

"Don't give up at half time. Concentrate on winning the second half."

- Paul "Bear" Bryant

"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

"To me, football is so much about mental toughness, it's digging deep, it's doing whatever you need to do to help a team win and that comes in a lot of shapes and forms."

- Tom Brady

"The harder you work, the harder it is to surrender."

- Marv Levy

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

- Tom Landry

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

- J.J. Watt

"Self-praise is for losers. Be a winner. Stand for something. Always have class, and be humble."

- John Madden

"When you don't give up, you cannot fail."

- Adrian Peterson

"I may win and I may lose, but I will never be defeated."

- Emmitt Smith

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

- Gale Sayers

"How do you win? By getting average players to play good and good players to play great. That's how you win."

- Bum Phillips

"Today, you've got a decision to make. You're gonna get better or you're gonna get worse, but you're not gonna stay the same. Which will it be?"

- Joe Paterno

"The most valuable player is the one who makes the most players valuable."

- Peyton Manning

"Remember, once you set a goal, it's all about how hard you're willing to work, how much you're willing to sacrifice and how badly you truly want it."

- J.J. Watt

"Nobody who ever gave his best regretted it."

- George S. Halas

"No matter the circumstances you may be going through, just push through it."

- Ray Lewis

"It's not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size in the fight of the dog."

- Archie Griffin

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

- Lou Holtz

"When people told me I wasn't going to make it, I listened to the one person who told me I was: me."

- Shannon Sharpe

"If you do the bare minimum, expect bare minimum results. You want to be great, work to be great."

- J.J. Watt

"Winners, I am convinced, imagine their dreams first. They want it with all their heart and expect it to come true. There is, I believe, no other way to live."

- Joe Montana

"Trust that you can get back up and not give in. Ever."

- Patrick Willis

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

- Bum Phillips

"I think the thing about that was I was always willing to work; I was not the fastest or biggest player but I was determined to be the best football player I could be on the football field and I think I was able to accomplish that through hard work."

- Jerry Rice

"The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary."

- Vince Lombardi

"For every pass I caught in a game, I caught a thousand in practice."

- Don Hutson

"I learned that if you want to make it bad enough, no matter how bad it is, you can make it."

- Mike Ditka

"Success is not forever, and failure isn't fatal."

- Don Shula

"If you train hard, you'll not only be hard, you'll be hard to beat."

- Tony Dorsett

"Pressure is something you feel when you don't know what the hell you're doing."

- Peyton Manning

"The greatest mistake is to continue to practice a mistake."

- Bobby Bowden

"Coaching is not how much you know. It's how much you can get players to do."

- Bum Phillips

"Effort will never be questioned."

- Jalen Hurts

"If you work hard and you play well, all those critics quiet themselves pretty quickly."

- Peyton Manning

"When you've got something to prove, there's nothing greater than a challenge."

- Terry Bradshaw

"When you lose, talk little. When you win, talk less."

- Tom Brady

"Do you want to know what my favorite part of the game is? The opportunity to play."

- Mike Singletary

"I am going to outwork everybody because no one was going to give me anything."

- Dawson Knox

"Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it."

- Charles Swindoll

"Anyone who supports a team that is winning –it takes no courage. But to stand behind a team to defend a team when it is down and really needs you, that takes a lot of courage."

- Bart Starr

"Excuses are the tools of the incompetent."

- Mike Tomlin

"Every experience, good or bad, you have to learn from it."

- Patrick Mahomes

"The only discipline that lasts, is self discipline."

- Bum Phillips

"We'll fight 'em until hell freezes over, then we'll fight 'em on the ice."

- Dutch Meyer

"I expect to win out there."

- Drew Brees

"You have to perform at a consistently higher level than others. That's the mark of a true professional."

- Joe Paterno

"The man on top of the mountain didn't fall there."

- Vince Lombardi

"You cannot make progress with excuses."

- Cam Newton

"No one ever drowned in sweat."

- Lou Holtz

"It takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5 minutes to ruin it."

- Peyton Manning

"Football is a game of controlled anger. It is a game of retribution. It's about will."

- Brian Dawkins

"Good things come to those who work!"

- Greg Dortch

"Remember, tomorrow is promised to no one."

- Walter Payton

"Work isn't work unless you would rather be doing something else."

- Don Shula

"I've always tried to coach people the way I would like to be coached; positively and encouragingly rather than with criticism and fear…I've tried to be as fair as possible."

- Tony Dungy

"It doesn't matter what people say about me. I weather the storm."

- Terrell Owens

"To do things you've never done before, you have to do things you've never done before."

- Sean Payton

"I have yet to be in a game where luck was involved."

- Urban Meyer

"To the young: work, work, work, and then work some more."

- Ed Reed

"Football is an incredible game. Sometimes it's so incredible, it's unbelievable."

- Tom Landry

"Every day is an opportunity disguised as a challenge."

- Tiki Barber

"Success isn't measured by money or power or social rank. Success is measured by your discipline and inner peace."

- Mike Ditka

"Embrace the new, no matter how uncomfortable, and make it work for you."

- Alex Smith

"If you are afraid of confrontation, you are not going to do very well."

- Bill Parcells

"In order to win the game, you must first not lose it."

- Chuck Noll

"If you're not in the parade, you watch the parade. That's life."

- Mike Ditka

"I don't expect to win enough games to be put on NCAA probation. I just want to win enough to warrant an investigation."

- Bob Devaney