Top 96 Quotes About Sports Motivation
#1. I think competing is more important than winning. There have been a lot of times when I've teed it up and I didn't win but I felt like I competed. I felt like this was not my day, but I never gave up, and I tried on every shot, and then next week I'd go get them.
Juli Inkster
#2. For example, the ancient Japanese had onna-zumo (women's wrestling), but as the sports historian Allen Guttmann writes, "The debased motivation for this activity is suggested by the names of the wrestlers: 'Big Boobs,' 'Deep Crevice,' and 'Holder of the Balls.
Jonathan Gottschall
#3. Some pitchers want to be known as the fastest throwers that ever lived. Some want to win 30 games in one season. Some want to pitch a no-hitter. All I want to do is the best I can, day after day. In other words, I want to prove I am the best.
Tom Seaver
#4. I will never sacrifice my morals and ethics for anyone or any win.
Mike Candrea
#5. Being gifted intellectually is only a small part of the equation of success. Concentrate on the factors you have control over: persistence, self-discipline, confidence. Far more failures are due to lack of will than lack of ability.
Terry Bradshaw
#6. Sports can do so much. It's given me confidence, self-esteem, discipline, and motivation.
Mia Hamm
#7. I'd rather have more heart than talent any day.
Allen Iverson
#8. The artful pitcher must take the inevitable peaks and valleys of pitching in stride and never give in to the batters or lose sight of his/her own strengths.
Tom Seaver
#9. I think that there's only one nationality and one language in the sport, and you call it performance.
Wladimir Klitschko
#10. I drew my strength from fear. Fear of losing. I don't remember the games I won, only the games I lost.
Boris Becker
#11. My advice is that going to the Olympics and winning a gold medal are great goals, but the real goal should be to be the best that you can be.
Debi Thomas
#12. Single-mindedness. I hate to say it because I don't think it's the best thing for developing a person, but the single-mindedness - just concentrating in the one area - that's what it takes to be a champion.
Chris Evert
#13. I don't know nothing about the sport. Just tune in August 28th and y'all find out how much I know about the sport.
James Toney
#14. As a general man I tried watching movies, playing sports, going to picnics and other entertainments but I still got bored, then I tried heroism and now I am hero, and I never get bored.
Amit Kalantri
#15. I don't like to get hit, who likes it? I probably wouldn't do this sport if I was getting hit that much.
Wladimir Klitschko
#16. To be successful in anything, a person must always want to be better, not only than your opponent but better than your last performance. Done correctly, being competitive is a wonderful way to always try to be a better person by learning from your mistakes and capitalizing on your successes.
Hale Irwin
#17. To a winner, complacency and overconfidence can be destructive. To losers, desperation and despondency are just as harmful.
Bill Walsh
#18. The team with the best athletes doesn't usually win. It's the team with the athletes who play best together.
Lisa Fernandez
#20. The key is that I control my life; my life doesn't control me.
Gabrielle Reece
#21. Attitude is the whole thing in football. Every team has the talent and the coaching. Motivation makes the difference. The teams that win stay healthy and interested.
Sid Gillman
#22. My coach told me, "Larry, no matter how much you work at it, there's always someone out there who's working just a little harder - if you take 150 practice shots, he's taking 200." And that drove me.
Larry Bird
#23. It's the old story. You might be able to fool your coaches, or your teammates, or your opponents. But, you can never fool yourself in anything. I believe that the more critical you are of your own performance- the higher standards you have-the better you become at what you do.
Don Maynard
#25. Money was never the motivation. It never should be in sports.
Katarina Witt
#26. Things that aren't important, that have nothing to do with winning and losing, don't have to be a rule.
Peter Richmond
#27. Confidence comes from hard work. It comes from facing different situations and making putts. It comes from knowing you've worked on the right things, so when you get under the gun, you can execute what you've practiced.
David Duval
#28. Successful innovation is not a single breakthrough. It is not a sprint. It is not an event for the solo runner. Successful innovation is a team sport, it's a relay race.
Nguyen Quyen
#30. When everything seems worse, impossible to achieve, thinking about giving up, quitting? Remember why started first? Trust yourself, tap yourself and say if you cannot make it, no one is going to. Look back, the whole team believes in you, go for it and be a CHAMPION.
Vivek Thangaswamy
#31. No wrong in aiming or applauding the win but always agnize one's efforts.
Mohith Agadi
#32. Your longevity in the sport is governed by how you live in between the fights.
Carl Froch
#33. The most important thing about motivation is goal setting. You should always have a goal.
Francie Larrieu Smith
#34. The one strongest, most important part of my game is that I want to be the best. I won't accept anything less that that. My ability to concentrate and work toward hat goal has been my greatest asset.
Jack Nicklaus
#35. Nobody wanted me. Scouts told me to go to school, to forget baseball. Coaches said, 'You're never going to make it.' I appreciated their honesty, because I think when someone tells you something you may not like, you have to use that as fuel for motivation.
Mike Piazza
#37. I love pushing my body to the limit & seeing how far I can take it before it breaks.
Amy Van Dyken
#38. If you don't think like a winner, you're not going to be a winner.
Zak Kustok
#39. Having the chance to play sports growing up teaches you all kinds of life lessons. It gives young people confidence and instills in them motivation and drive to be the best one can be. It's absolutely invaluable,
April Ross
#40. Sports can do so much. They've given me a framework: meeting new people, confidence, self-esteem, discipline, motivation. All these things I learned, whether I knew I was learning them or not, through sports.
Mia Hamm
#41. The ones who are successful are the ones who really want it. You have to have that inner drive otherwise it's not going to work out.
Kerri Strug
#42. You're only as good as your last fight. It's just the way things are. It's the way that the sport is built.
Andre Ward
#43. It's one thing to have an eye for the sport, and it's another to have a feel for the sport. He has both.
Andre Ward
#44. Regardless of where you're pitching, regardless of what goes on before or after your game, you still have to be ready.
Greg Maddux
#45. It's not my job to motivate players. They bring extraordinary motivation to our program. It's my job not to de-motivate them.
Lou Holtz
#46. I'm not exceptionally fast or overly powerful. But I have a good work ethic, and I make up for it by using technique and trying to be smarter.
Dot Richardson
#47. As soon as you start focusing on the negative you're dead.
Libbie Hickman
#49. I don't want to give anyone an edge in my mind. Every time I walk out on the court, I have to feel I'm the best so I can compete well. A lot of times, my chief rival is just me.
Venus Williams
#50. You only fail if you don't finish the game. If you finish you win. You have to measure what you started out with by what you overcome.
Mike Webster
#51. I succeed on my own personal motivation, dedication, and commitment. My mindset is: If I'm not out there training, someone else is.
Lynn Jennings
#52. A pitcher never gets me out. I get myself out. That's no disrespect to the pitcher, but there should be no excuse for failure. You can't have an excuse to fail.
Mike Piazza
#53. It's not so much what you accomplish in life that really matters, but what you overcome that proves who you are, what you are, and whether you are a champion.
Johnny Miller
#54. Only three or four outs directly affect the outcome of any given game ... One of the greatest challenges of pitching is to recognize these critical situations and rise to the occasion with consistency and a competitive spirit.
Tom Seaver
#55. Competitive Skaters must be prepared for a lot of work, challenges, self-discipline, and motivation. The desire must be there, but more importantly, your love for the sport.
Oksana Baiul
#56. I hate to lose more than I like to win. I hate to see the happiness on their faces when they beat me!
Jimmy Connors
#57. For to keep at the top is harder almost than to get there
James Gibbons
#59. If you're not prepared, it's not pressure you feel, it's fear.
Bruce Bochy
#61. Everyone wants to win, but I think winners believe they deserve to win. They've made the commitment, they've followed the right path, and they've taken the right steps to be successful.
Amy Ruley
#62. What you do when no one else is looking will determine how good you'll be.
Anson Dorrance
#63. I don't think you ever will yourself to win. I think you prepare yourself the best you can, get yourself in the best mindset you can get in, and go after it.
Jack Nicklaus
#64. I am a winner. I just didn't win today.
Greg Norman
#65. You have people telling you how good you are and all of a sudden, you might start believing it and forget what it takes to be good.
Lou Lamoriello
#66. You have to have a lot of motivation, a lot of heart and be able to work hard. You can never be down on yourself because baseball is a sport that will bring you down [at times].
Bengie Molina
#67. You expect success, you respect failure.
Greg Norman
#68. I'm not afraid to take a step and if I fall, I fall. I pick myself up and move on. If we can all learn one thing in life, it's don't be afraid to take on something that you believe you're capable of achieving.
Michael Jordan
#69. People don't win because they're physically stronger. It's because they're stronger between the ears.
Alex Shaffer
#70. When I stood up there as a pinch hitter, I honestly believed I was the best hitter in the game. That's the only attitude to have.
Manny Mota
#71. You don't have to win to be a winner. If you give 100 percent, getting yourself mentally and physically prepared to play the game, if you look in the mirror and can say you give it everything to win, that's it. You're not going to win every time.
Duke Snider
#72. Getting more exercise isn't only good for your waistline. It's a natural anti-depressant, that leaves you in a great mood.
Auliq Ice
#73. You could be the world's best garbage man, the world's best model; it don't matter what you do if you're the best.
Muhammad Ali
#74. Years of concentration solely on work and individual success meant that in his retirement [Lyndon Johnson] could find no solace in family, in recreation, in sports or in hobbies. It was almost as if the hole in his heart was so large that even the love of a family, without work, could not fill it.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#75. We spend 8 hours a day, for 10 months a year, for nearly 17 years sending our kids to school to prepare them for life.
In all of that time there is never a course in overcoming adversity, goal setting, sacrifice, perseverance, teammates, or family.
I guess that's what wrestling is for.
JohnA Passaro
#76. Sports taught me that I can make a mistake one minute, let it go, and be brilliant the next.
Lynn Sherr
#77. Maintaining concentration depends on what I call tunnel vision; nothing else in the world exists but the catcher's target, the hitter and my perfect delivery.
Nolan Ryan
#78. I get over bad games right away. Sometimes I've let it go even before I've left the mound. That quick. Why? Because it's over. What can you do about it? Nothing. The only thing you can do is fight if you're still in the game. After that you can do nothing.
Mariano Rivera
#79. You can never meet everyone's expectations. It's hard enough to meet your own.
Andrea Jaeger
#80. The NBA has a voice that's why they have a lockout. The NFL has a voice that's why they had a lockout. Boxing is the only sport that's individually represented the individual people - Managers, Promoters and Boxers.
Bernard Hopkins
#82. Sometimes we get so afraid of hitting bad shots (making bad pitches), we don't let ourselves hit (pitch) good ones.
Butch Harmon
#83. A successful pitcher keeps the leadoff hitter from reaching first base and puts the first pitch over for a strike - the two most important rules of pitching.
Nolan Ryan
#85. Success shouldn't be measured by how much you have but by how much you give back.
Danny Villanueva
#86. A lot of times the expectations of you are so high that no matter what you do you are never going to be able to live up to those expectations. So you better go out and do the best you can and enjoy it.
John Elway
#87. Boxing is an all year round sport. You never know when they're going to call you, so you got to stay ready.
Adrien Broner
#88. After I knock out Randy Couture, I'll fight for the heavyweight title, the real heavyweight boxing title in October or November, come back and fight in the UFC in January or February. It doesn't matter, I'm a two sport athlete. The oldest man to ever do that.
James Toney
#89. Pressure bursts pipes. I thank God for giving me peace of mind to overcome pressure. The difference between winning and losing is when pressure hits.
Evander Holyfield
#90. Set goals for things you can control. In my case, I can't control the marks from the judges, but I can control how I train every day, and I can control my performance.
Claire Carver-Dias
#91. Everybody thinks this is a tough man's sport. This is not a tough man's sport. This is a thinking man's sport. A tough man is gonna get hurt real bad in this sport.
Mike Tyson
#92. You're going to make mistakes in life. It's what you do after the mistakes that counts.
Brandi Chastain
#93. A good coach must celebrate in private. He cannot gloat to the press after a victory or criticize heavily after defeat ... His game is of such motivation and strategy that only a few people understand his craft.
Bill Bradley
#94. A lot of people notice when you succeed, but they don't see what it takes to get there.
Dawn Staley
#95. Every single day I wake up and commit myself to becoming a better player. Some days it happens, and some days it doesn't. Sure, there are games I'm going to dominate and there are going to be games when I struggle. But it doesn't mean I give up.
Mia Hamm
#96. Have confidence in yourself and don't let people put you down or make you feel weak or worthless, because the more they put you down, the more you need to get back up and prove how wrong they are.
Layne Beachley
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