Knute Quotes

#1. I have no desire at all to become the winningest coach at Notre Dame. The record belongs to Knute Rockne or some other coach in the future.

Lou Holtz

#2. Four years of football are calculated to breed in the average man more of the ingredients of success in life than almost any academic course he takes.
-Knute Rockne

Knute Rockne

#3. There is not economy in getting cheap service or equipment. Buy the best and cry only once.

Knute Rockne

#4. No star playing, just football.

Knute Rockne

#5. Build up your weaknesses until they become your strong points.

Knute Rockne

#6. Generalities don't count and won't help you in football.

Knute Rockne

#7. What is best and most necessary usually happens.

Knute Nelson

#8. The morning we left South Bend, every student and professor was out of bed long before breakfast and marched downtown accompanying the team to the railroad station. It was the first time I'd seen anything like this mass hysteria generated on the Notre Dame campus over a football game.

Knute Rockne

#9. If the coach insists upon hard play, but clean play, the team will do likewise.

Knute Rockne

#10. Drink the first. Sip the second slowly. Skip the third.

Knute Rockne

#11. There is no need for me continuing unless I'm able to improve.

Knute Rockne

#12. The best thing I ever learned in life was that things have to be worked for. A lot of people seem to think there is some sort of magic in making a winning football team. There isn't, but there's plenty of work.

Knute Rockne

#13. That death was near, I suppose I believed, but I saw it only as a rest after the day's work.

Knute Nelson

#14. When you were riding on the crest of a wave, youwere most likely to be missing out on something.

Knute Rockne

#15. Mess is fairly good. It is like what is found in American hotels except for cake and pie.

Knute Nelson

#16. Gen. Banks has issued an order for the instruction of Negro children. Schoolhouses are to be built or rented and Teachers hired for this purpose, and the farmers and planters are to pay the Taxes in support of this.

Knute Nelson

#17. The secret of winning is working more as a team, less as individuals.

Knute Rockne

#18. Win one for the Gipper.

Knute Rockne

#19. Show me a gracious loser and I'll show you a failure.

Knute Rockne

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

Knute Rockne

#21. You must not forget that you have been given worldly means to use and employ against human arrogance and wrong.

Knute Nelson

#22. If we're a hit, let 'em say anything they want.

Knute Rockne

#23. We set the town on fire and burned down every house as a warning to other small towns along the river.

Knute Nelson

#24. It is with this as with religion: one usually believes what he has been taught.

Knute Nelson

#25. Winning to often is as disastrous as losing too often. Both get the same results, the falling off of the public's enthusiasm.

Knute Rockne

#26. Leaders are like eagles ... they don't flock. You'll find them one at a time.

Knute Rockne

#27. I've found that prayers work best when you have big players.

Knute Rockne

#28. I enjoy talking to my football men and my chemistry classes and I feel sure that they are quite interested in what I have to say.

Knute Rockne

#29. I know that money speaks more loudly than need.

Knute Nelson

#30. You say that your hope is in God, and he will, I am sure, stand by you. But you must not forget that you have been given worldly means to use and employ against human arrogance and wrong; it is necessary to see such things with a broad mind in order to oppose them.

Knute Nelson

#31. Football is a game played with arms, legs and shoulders but mostly from the neck up.

Knute Rockne

#32. An automobile goes nowhere efficiently unless it has a quick, hot spark to ignite things, to set the cogs of the machine in motion. So I try to make every player on my team feel he's the spark keeping our machine in motion.

Knute Rockne

#33. We count on winning. And if we lose, don't beef. And the best way to prevent beefing is - don't lose.

Knute Rockne

#34. One loss is good for the soul, Too many losses is not good for the coach.

Knute Rockne

#35. It isn't necessary to see a good tackle. You can hear it.

Knute Rockne

#36. The essence of football was blocking, tackling, and execution based on timing, rhythm and deception.

Knute Rockne

#37. Play like you're positive on the victory, even though they're leading big now.

Knute Rockne

#38. In the midst of these hard times it is our good health and good sleep that are enjoyable.

Knute Nelson

#39. Yes, I now that you feel you are not strong enough. That's what the enemy thinks too. But we're gonna fool them.

Knute Rockne

#40. I'm getting sick and tired of doing anything half-way.

Knute Rockne

#41. If winning isn't everything why bother to keep the score?

Knute Rockne

#42. Providence has given the United States the duty of extending Christian civilization. We come as ministering angels, not despots.

Knute Nelson

#43. The only qualifications for a lineman are to be big and dumb. To be a back, you only have to be dumb.

Knute Rockne

#44. The secret is to work less as individuals and more as a team. As a coach, I play not my eleven best, but my best eleven.

Knute Rockne

#45. On the road we're somebody else's guests and we play in a way that they're
not going to forget we visited them.

Knute Rockne

#46. Show me a good and gracious loser and I will show you a failure.

Knute Rockne

#47. Vicksburg lies on top of a bluff on the east side of a large tongue of land jutting out into the Mississippi.

Knute Nelson

#48. You know, I've been attending so many banquets that I know what they're going to serve before I get there.

Knute Rockne

#49. But it is neither cannon nor bayonet that will do the worst damage to this city. No, this place will remember the war against our government just as long as there are inhabitants here.

Knute Nelson

#50. At home we're the hosts, and I never liked the idea of being embarrased in front of our friends.

Knute Rockne

#51. Let's win one for the Gipper.

Knute Rockne

#52. I would prefer being in a hard battle; however, I will be satisfied with whatever happens to me in this war, if only the country comes out of this peril safe and to the satisfaction of the finest and best government on earth.

Knute Nelson

#53. Courage means being afraid to do something, but still doing it.

Knute Rockne

#54. Win or lose, do it fairly.

Knute Rockne

#55. Man is remembered by his deeds.

Knute Nelson

#56. The scene was not a happy one yet we looked upon it in the cold stoical spirit of a soldier; a slight chilling pang and then a return soul and body to the enemy before us.

Knute Nelson

#57. It is in Virginia and Georgia that the war now rages and where it will continue; for at these points - Richmond and Atlanta - the enemy's main strength is concentrated.

Knute Nelson

#58. Never tell 'em how many lettermen you've got coming back. Tell 'em how many you lost.

Knute Rockne

#59. A coach's greatest asset is his sense of responsibility - the reliance placed on him by his players.

Knute Rockne

#60. Make the present good, and the past will take care of itself.

Knute Rockne