Top 52 Joe Paterno Quotes
#1. When a kid plays football games before he attends a class, something is wrong.
Joe Paterno
#2. My name, I have spent my whole life trying to make that name mean something. And now it's gone.
Joe Paterno
#3. I had a great bunch of kids. They all hung with us. The coaching staff hung with us. And we played tough every game. If you've got kids that want to play and react to you, it's fun. I'm having a good time.
Joe Paterno
#4. Here, I have an opportunity to affect the lives of a lot of young people - and not just on my football team. I'm not kidding myself that that would be true at the professional level.
Joe Paterno
#5. My father said about money: 'You have to have some. But you don't have to have all of it. Just be honest with yourself.'
Joe Paterno
#6. We need people who influence their peers and who cannot be detoured from their convictions by peers who do not have the courage to have any convictions.
Joe Paterno
#7. Don't just stand back and play the way you're coached. A great player must rise to the occasion and turn the game around on his own.
Joe Paterno
#8. We shall act with good intentions, but at times we will be wrong. When we are, let us admit it and try to right the situation.
Joe Paterno
#9. The will to win is important, but the will to prepare is vital.
Joe Paterno
#10. Losing a game is heartbreaking. Losing your sense of excellence or worth is a tragedy.
Joe Paterno
#11. Success without honor is an unseasoned dish; it will satisfy your hunger, but it won't taste good.
Joe Paterno
#12. The minute you think you've got it made, disaster is just around the corner.
Joe Paterno
#13. What is a coach? We are teachers. Educators. We have the same obligations as all teachers, except we probably have more influence over young people than anybody but their families. And, in a lot of cases, more than their families.
Joe Paterno
#14. Mostly I want to talk positive; I wanna talk about a bunch of great kids that I coached and made me look good and the university that I've seen grow from a cow college, which it was, only 12,000 people, and when I came here, we weren't at Pennsylvania State University, we were at Penn State College.
Joe Paterno
#15. Act like you expect to get into the end zone.
Joe Paterno
#16. We play with enthusiasm and recklessness. We aren't afraid to lose. If we win, great; but win or lose, it is the competition that gives us pleasure.
Joe Paterno
#17. All coaches are thinking men, or else they wouldn't survive.
Joe Paterno
#18. SMU: 'It's unbelievable to think that kind of corruption came right from the top of the power structure. The NCAA did what it had to do' in canceling SMU's 1988 football season.
Joe Paterno
#19. There's never been a greater game than football.
Joe Paterno
#21. I've had a wonderful experience here at Penn State.
Joe Paterno
#22. We have to realize a kid will love us one day and hate us the next. That cannot change who we are and what we are about.
Joe Paterno
#23. To teach an academic subject is certainly not easy, but compared to coaching, it is. We can say 'two plus two is four' to every kid and be sure that we are right. But in coaching, we have to literally get to the soul of the people we are dealing with.
Joe Paterno
#24. You need to play with supreme confidence, or else you'll lose again, and then losing becomes a habit.
Joe Paterno
#25. Coaches have got to be given rank within the university so that you can't fire a coach unless you go through an academic committee, just as you would with a professor. If coaches are to have any stability and security, they need to be treated like an English professor.
Joe Paterno
#26. Besides pride, loyalty, discipline, heart, and mind, confidence is the key to all the locks.
Joe Paterno
#27. They ask me what I'd like written about me when I'm gone. I hope they write I made Penn State a better place, not just that I was a good football coach.
Joe Paterno
#28. Publicity is like poison; it doesn't hurt unless you swallow it.
Joe Paterno
#29. The name on the front of the jersey is what really matters, not the name on the back.
Joe Paterno
#30. I don't think I deviated from what I'm all about and what I thought was important. Whether you want to call that a legacy, or whatever you want to call it.
Joe Paterno
#31. You can't have a great university without a great library.
Joe Paterno
#32. You have to perform at a consistently higher level than others. That's the mark of a true professional.
Joe Paterno
#33. It doesn't matter what people think of me. I've lived my life.
Joe Paterno
#34. The kids that were the victims ... I think we all ought to say a prayer for them,
Joe Paterno
#35. Everybody likes to win. It sure beats the devil out of losing.
Joe Paterno
#36. Its the name on the front of the jersey that matters most, not the one on the back.
Joe Paterno
#37. When a team outgrows individual performance and learns team confidence, excellence becomes a reality.
Joe Paterno
#38. 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
#39. My thing was play as hard as you can, don't be stupid, pay attention to details, and have enough guts in the clutch that you're not afraid to make a play. Some things I thought were important for a young man to know.
Joe Paterno
#40. I don't think it's fair to 12-, 13- and 14-year-olds to say 'Show us you're a winner right now!' Winning isn't everything. I'll never buy that thing that if a boy loses a football game, he's a loser in life.
Joe Paterno
#41. Success is best measured by the achiever.
Joe Paterno
#42. I'm not as concerned about me. What's happened to me has been great. I got five great kids. Seventeen grandchildren.
Joe Paterno
#43. Right now I'm trying to figure out what I'm gonna do, 'cause I don't want to sit around on my backside all day. If I'm gonna do that I'll be a newspaper reporter.
Joe Paterno
#44. Believe deep down in your heart that you're destined to do great things.
Joe Paterno
#45. Keep hustling, something good will happen,
Joe Paterno
#46. In every life, there have to be some shadows. Look at me. My life has been filled with sunshine. A beautiful and caring wife. Five healthy children. I got to do what I loved. How many people are that lucky?
Joe Paterno
#47. Sport is a product of human culture. America seems to need football at this state of our social development. When you get ninety million people watching a single game on television, it ... shows you that people need something to identify with.
Joe Paterno
#49. Success and excellence are not the same. Excellence grows within a person, is largely within that person's control, and its meaning lasts. Success is measured externally, by comparison to others, is often outside our control, and is perishable.
Joe Paterno
#50. You must relate athletic experiences to life.
Joe Paterno
#51. If I had to do it over again, I'd probably play the game the same way.
Joe Paterno
#52. I still haven't gotten that little something out of my system that I'm still not a kid going to a football game. I'm excited.
Joe Paterno
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