Rick Pitino Sayings

#1. Pat Riley, Dave Checketts and Ernie Grunfeld - they brought the Knicks back to the glory days. It started with Rick Pitino. We took our first step with him, making the playoffs. When Pat came in we just kicked the door open.

Patrick Ewing

#2. I knew Rick Pitino was going to make them play that outbreak, monkey defense. He's been doing it all his life.

Shaquille O'Neal

#3. Ego is the greatest killer of one's potential

Rick Pitino

#4. He knew I enjoyed the relationships of college basketball. All along, he was the wise one.

Rick Pitino

#5. Learning what not to do is sometimes more important than learning what to do.

Rick Pitino

#6. Basketball has consumed me since the age of 7 or 8. I don't know what I would do without it.

Rick Pitino

#7. I'm at the stage of my career when it's not only about winning and developing players, it's about having fun. That's a void in your life right now, but it's something you're going to have here.

Rick Pitino

#8. I can say that hands down from being in this business 32 years; we're going to be much better than we were last year just because there's eight new players that now have experience and Palacios will be healthy.

Rick Pitino

#9. I try not to get too low. I fight adversity as hard as I can fight it, not to get too low. When good things happen, I don't really embrace it. I just say it's a lucky day.

Rick Pitino

#10. If you are not willing to work hard and establish discipline in your life, then all your dreams are merely pipe dreams.

Rick Pitino

#11. The only way to get people to like working hard is to motivate them. Today, people must understand why they're working hard. Every individual in an organization is motivated by something different.

Rick Pitino

#12. Success is determined by your daily choices and habits

Rick Pitino

#13. I am a slow walker," Lincoln said. "But I never walk backwards.

Rick Pitino

#14. When it comes to team dynamics - on a basketball court or in a corporate setting - maintaining a positive atmosphere is crucial.

Rick Pitino

#15. Set higher standards for your own performance than anyone else around you, and your only competition will be with yourself

Rick Pitino

#16. I'd learned how much happiness money can bring you. Very little.

Rick Pitino

#17. I give myself 24 hours after a loss. After that, I'm totally on to the next game. But for 24 hours, I'm not a happy man.

Rick Pitino

#18. I don't get into these petty things, Kentucky-Louisville. To me, it's nonsense ... There will be people at Kentucky that will have a nervous breakdown if they lose to us ... They've got to put the fences up on bridges. There will be people consumed by Louisville.

Rick Pitino

#19. The key to coaching is not what you do, but the way you do it. The intangibles, the motivational parts of the game are the most important facets of it.

Rick Pitino

#20. Lying makes a problem part of the future; truth makes a problem part of the past.

Rick Pitino

#21. Postponing action is only postponing achievement.

Rick Pitino

#22. Failure is good. It's fertilizer. Everything I've learned about coaching, I've learned from making mistakes.

Rick Pitino

#23. It's better to have a good player with the basketball in late game situations than to have plays.

Rick Pitino

#24. The one thing I've always said: Let your family and close friends be the judge of who you are as a person. Don't worry about being judged by others who don't know you, because your family and close friends know what you're all about, good and bad.

Rick Pitino

#25. Those who work the hardest are the last to surrender.

Rick Pitino

#26. Coaches are bridge builders. It's our job to build a bridge for our athletes to cross over.

Rick Pitino

#27. After September 11, I don't think people really believe things like this are all that important.

Rick Pitino

#28. Live in the precious present.

Rick Pitino

#29. I loved going to the Knicks because we won the Atlantic Division championship. We went from winning 21 games or 19 games to winning 52 games in a short period of time. I loved coaching Patrick Ewing and Charles Oakley and all those guys.

Rick Pitino

#30. If I didn't have a recruiting engagement, I was going to be here. I did everything possible to change the recruiting thing. I'm a very small part of this night, but I did want to be a part of it.

Rick Pitino

#31. Inferior guards play on the sidelines and great guards play in the middle. Isiah, Magic, Chris Paul, all get to the middle

Rick Pitino

#32. You are trying not only to reach your potential but to move beyond it. If you are not in the best shape you can be, these things simply become more difficult to achieve.

Rick Pitino

#33. Technology is a compulsive and addictive way to live. Verbal communication cannot be lost because of a lack of skill. The ability to listen and learn is key to mastering the art of communication. If you don't use your verbal skills and networking, it will disappear rapidly. Use technology wisely.

Rick Pitino

#34. Make incremental progress, change comes not by the yard, but by the inch.

Rick Pitino

#35. When you have a problem, if you tell the truth, the problem becomes part of your past. If you lie, it becomes part of your future.

Rick Pitino

#36. When you coach Russ Smith, you have a nervous breakdown on every possession. He's not from a different country. He's from a different planet.

Rick Pitino

#37. Never let anyone out work you or out hustle you. Ever.

Rick Pitino

#38. I'd tell any coach not to move for money ... Stay at your job if you're really happy.

Rick Pitino

#39. Set higher standards for you own performance than anyone around you, and it won't matter whether you have a tough boss or an easy one. It won't matter whether the competition is pushing you hard, because you'll be competing with yourself.

Rick Pitino

#40. The other guys just caught lightning in a bottle with a great game.

Rick Pitino

#41. Self-esteem is directly linked to deserving success. You must deserve victory to feel good about yourself.

Rick Pitino

#42. I plan to coach at University of Louisville for as long as I can maintain the passion I have for the game of basketball. I don't want to coach anywhere else. I don't believe in anything else as much as I believe in this university and this state. I want to coach as long as they will have me.

Rick Pitino

#43. I think I do regret leaving Kentucky because I took over a team with 15 wins banking everything on the Tim Duncan lottery, and once we didn't get Tim Duncan, I realized that leaving Kentucky was not a good move.

Rick Pitino

#44. Francisco Garcia could have been a high draft choice last year, probably in the 20s. He's the best wing player I've ever coached. But he's done it the right way. He knew he had to work on his body to become a good pro. When he goes into the pros, he'll be physically ready.

Rick Pitino

#45. People with high self esteem are risk takers, but more importantly, they are achievers.

Rick Pitino

#46. Learning to live in the present tense-one that's free from the failures of the past and the anxieties of the future-is a wonderful gift, and one you always should be striving for.

Rick Pitino

#47. Long term success is a direct result of what you achieve everyday. Goals provide your daily routine

Rick Pitino

#48. Working hard is not always fun - that's why it is called work.

Rick Pitino

#49. All good things have to come to an end, and the male cheerleader has come to an end

Rick Pitino

#50. Basketball is my passion, and I love it, and I love to see my players succeed. I'm here for them and my children. That's my passion.

Rick Pitino

#51. What I've found in my life with our children is that often you can give them advice and tell them to eat the right things, stay in shape and wear sunscreen, and they don't really want to listen. But then they hear it from someone else, and they do listen.

Rick Pitino

#52. Passion and hunger are the two ingredients that I look for in first making the judgment on - whether an athlete, an assistant coach, or a horse trainer or anybody I do business with.

Rick Pitino

#53. Tackle the difficult things first in the morning; make changes in the way you network. Treat everyone with respect and dignity. This stops you from cynicism and negativity. End your day with that same attitude you started. Renew your contract with a day well completed.

Rick Pitino

#54. One thing I've learned to do with my age, I really don't look ahead. For years, I've been preaching the precious present and having to always subscribe to it.

Rick Pitino

#55. Humility is what makes teams great. I've preached it for a long period of time.

Rick Pitino

#56. Dreamers are not content with being mediocre.

Rick Pitino

#57. A lot of people always use the term, 'I'm so blessed.' Most of it they believe is true.

Rick Pitino

#58. I learned quickly that motivating people would be the most important responsibility of my career.

Rick Pitino

#59. Nothing meaningful or lasting comes without working hard at it.

Rick Pitino

#60. I care what people think, but it doesn't change my opinion of how to do things.

Rick Pitino

#61. Doubt is one of the main paths on the highway to failure.

Rick Pitino

#62. It could happen to anyone when you get hired by a different president. There's a difference in philosophies. It happens. It's a change in CEOs. They have their own people, their own philosophies, and it's different than what Bob stands for.

Rick Pitino

#63. The basic premise of my system is to fatigue your opponents with constant pressure defensively and constant movement offensively.

Rick Pitino

#64. If I had one regret in life ... it's that I was not more humble at an earlier age.

Rick Pitino

#65. Excellence is the unlimited ability to improve the quality of what you have to offer.

Rick Pitino

#66. When you build bridges you can keep crossing them.

Rick Pitino

#67. True motivation is not getting people to play to their potential. It's getting people to play beyond their potential

Rick Pitino

#68. When you describe passion at any age, passion is derived from everything, from the people you work with to enjoying the last years.

Rick Pitino

#69. At Boston University, I motivated negatively, and I found that although it can work at first, by the end of the year everyone is dying for the year to end and you have lost them. The last two years at BU, I motivated positively and got much better results.

Rick Pitino

#70. When love and discipline come together you have great chemistry.

Rick Pitino

#71. I just don't deal with the negativity. I can't get involved in that side of it. I don't understand it, and you can't let it take away from your life and what you are trying to do.

Rick Pitino

#72. This is not the beginning of American civilization where we need guns because it's the Wild, Wild West ... There should not be guns in our society, and we all know that; politicians know that.

Rick Pitino

#73. The more you lose, the more positive you have to become. When you're winning, you can ride players harder because their self-esteem is high. If you are losing and you try to be tough, you're asking for dissension.

Rick Pitino

#74. I ignore the jealous, I ignore the malicious, I ignore the ignorant, and I ignore the paranoid. If the shoe fits anyone, wear it.

Rick Pitino

#75. Avoid cynical and negative people like the plague. They are killers of potential.

Rick Pitino