The Ultimate Collection of Inspiring Football Quotes to Motivate and Empower

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

- Vince Lombardi

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

- Vince Lombardi

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

- Vince Lombardi

"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

"Football, like life, is filled with ups and downs, and the most important thing is to keep moving forward and never give up."

- Diego Maradona

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

- Bo Jackson

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

- Peyton Manning

"Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice, and most of all, love of what you are doing or learning to do."

- Pelé

"You have to fight to reach your dream. You have to sacrifice and work hard for it."

- Lionel Messi

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

- Vince Lombardi

"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

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

- Tom Landry

"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

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

- Jerry Rice

"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

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

- Gale Sayers

"Winners never quit and quitters never win."

- Vince Lombardi

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

- Paul Bear Bryant

"You cannot make progress with excuses."

- Cam Newton

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

- Roger Staubach

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

- Paul Brown

"Anyone can support 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

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

- Paul Bear Bryant

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

- Tom Landry

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

- John Madden

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

- Bum Phillips

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

- Mike Singletary

"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

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

- Patrick Mahomes

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

- Joe Paterno

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

- J.J. Watt

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

- Vince Lombardi

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

- Joe Paterno

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

- Ed Reed

"Good things come to those who work!"

- Greg Dortch

"Nobody who ever gave his best regretted it."

- George S. Halas

"No one ever drowned in sweat."

- Lou Holtz

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

- Ray Lewis

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

- Terry Bradshaw

"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

"Effort will never be questioned."

- Jalen Hurts

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

- Peyton Manning

"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

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

- Tom Brady

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

- Lou Holtz

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

- Patrick Willis

"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

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

- Dawson Knox

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

- Terrell Owens

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

- Charles Swindoll

"Football is a game of mistakes. Whoever makes the fewest mistakes wins."

- Johan Cruyff

"I am not a perfectionist, but I like to feel that things are done well. More important than that, I feel an endless need to learn, to improve, to evolve, not only to please the coach and the fans but also to feel satisfied with myself."

- Cristiano Ronaldo

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

- Pele

"The secret is to believe in your dreams; in your potential that you can be like your star, keep searching, keep believing, and don't lose faith in yourself."

- Neymar Jr.

"Play for the badge on the front of the shirt and they'll remember the name on the back."

- Tony Adams

"I am constantly being asked about individuals. The only way to win is as a team."

- Pelé

"If you do not believe you can do it, then you have no chance at all."

- Arsene Wenger

"In football, the result is an impostor. You can do things really, really well but not win. There's something greater than the result, more lasting - a legacy."

- Xavi

"In football, the greatest satisfaction is winning when they say you can’t."

- Paul Gascoigne

"I've worked too hard and too long to let anything stand in the way of my goals. I will not let my teammates down, and I will not let myself down."

- Tim Howard

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

- Joe Namath

"The Enemy of the best is the good. If you're always settling with what's good, you'll never be the best."

- Jerry Rice

"When you have confidence, you can have a lot of fun. And when you have fun, you can do amazing things."

- Joe Namath

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

- Pete Carroll

"I am constantly being asked about individuals. The only way to win is as a team. Football is not about one or two or three star players."

- Pele

"Football is an honest game. It's true to life. It's a game about sharing. Football is a team game, and everyone has to work together."

- Joe Namath

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

- Marv Levy

"The greatest game you can win is won within."

- Lou Holtz

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

- Marv Levy

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

- Lou Holtz

"When you win, nothing hurts."

- Joe Namath

"Behind every kick of a ball, there has to be a thought."

- Romelu Lukaku

"Football is played with your head. Your feet are just the tools."

- Andrea Pirlo

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

- Mike Ditka

"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's not just about the money, it's about what you achieve on the pitch."

- Ronaldinho

"Excuses are the tools of the incompetent."

- Mike Tomlin

"I’ve never played for a draw in my life."

- Alex Ferguson

"I spent my life trying not to be arrogant. But when you're the best, you start telling it."

- Zlatan Ibrahimovic

"Some people believe football is a matter of life and death, I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that."

- Bill Shankly

"The first 90 minutes are the most important."

- Bobby Robson

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

- Walter Payton

"In football, the worst blindness is only seeing the ball."

- Sir Bobby Charlton

"The difference between the impossible and the possible lies in a person's determination."

- Tommy Lasorda

"There is no pressure when you're making a dream come true."

- Neymar Jr.

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

- Mike Ditka

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts."

- Winston Churchill

"Football is unconditional love."

- Tom Brady

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

- Brian Dawkins

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

- Alex Smith

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

- Archie Griffin

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

- Tiki Barber

"If you're not playing with passion, then you're not playing football."

- Thierry Henry

"Dreaming means 'rehearsing' what you see, playing it over and over in your mind until it becomes as real to you as your life right now."

- Emmitt Smith

"Failure is the only opportunity to begin again more intelligently."

- Henry Ford

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

- Sean Payton

"I learned all about life with a ball at my feet."

- Ronaldinho

"When it's too hard for them it's just right for us!"

- Marv Levy

"You're the only one that can put pressure on yourself... No one else can put pressure on you. It's self-inflicted. For me, I just want to go out and play football."

- Maurice Jones-Drew

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

- Bill Parcells

"The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees difficulty in every difficulty."

- Winston Churchill

"The ball is round, the game lasts ninety minutes, and everything else is just theory."

- Sepp Herberger

"We don’t want our players to be monks. We want them to be better football players because a monk does not play football at this level."

- Bobby Robson

"We didn't underestimate them. They were just a lot better than we thought"

- Bobby Robson

"First, I went left; he did too. Then I went right, and he did, too. Then I went left again, and he went to buy a hot dog."

- Zlatan Ibrahimovic

"That lad must have been born offside"

- Alex Ferguson

"It’s getting tickly now – squeaky-bum time, I call it."

- Alex Ferguson

"I want to talk about facts."

- Rafa Benitez

"So, when you are in the Premier League, you are the tail of the lion, and some people are happy being the tail of the lion; some prefer to be the head of the mouse."

- Rafa Benitez

"Only the paranoid survive."

- Andy Grove

"The thing about football - the important thing about football - is that it is not just about football."

- Terry Pratchett

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

- Urban Meyer

"You got one guy going boom, one guy going whack, and one guy not getting in the endzone."

- John Madden

"You have to remember one thing: Football is entertainment; it's not life or death. Once the game is over, you're already talking about next year and the draft. It's just entertainment."

- Bud Grant

"You get hit the hardest when trying to run or hide from a problem. Like the defense on a football field, putting all focus on evading only one defender is asking to be blindsided."

- Criss Jami

"I don't believe skill was or ever will be, the result of coaches. It is a result of a love affair between the child and the ball."

- Roy Keane

"The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why."

- Mark Twain

"Football is a simple game; 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes, and at the end, the Germans always win."

- Gary Lineker

"Anyone who's just driven 90 yards against huge men trying to kill them has earned the right to do Jazz hands."

- Craig Ferguson

"In football everything is complicated by the presence of the opposite team."

- Jean-Paul Sartre