The League Quotes

#1. I never was brought into the league thinking as far as, you know, statistics, things like that. We were really brought into the league in a team concept. Everything was focused around winning.

Mark Messier

#2. When I first came in the league, I thought Jack Clark and Steve Garvey were big. Then all of sudden it seemed like everyone was that big.

John Kruk

#3. If Roman Abramovich helped me out in training we would be bottom of the league and if I had to work in his world of big business, we would be bankrupt!

Jose Mourinho

#4. I think it's important for fans to be involved in all aspects of the game. We saw the league certainly make that move towards involving fans with pro bowl voting, I'm not sure that fan voting will ever be a part of the Hall of Fame, but it is always interesting to get the perspective of the fans.

Howie Long

#5. I came in the league as not a shooter, not a scorer. My game was to play defense and make my teammates better. The most important stat to me was that left column - winning. Nothing else matters.

Jason Kidd

#6. The FA Cup means a lot. There is a real passion here for the competition which you don't get elsewhere. It's a love affair. It's part and parcel of living up here. People might think I'm daft, but I'm not wrong; I'd rather win the Cup than the League.

Alan Shearer

#7. We're the most experienced team in the league. I think we got a little too happy, running our mouths, jumping up and down, looking at the Heat dancers and all of that stuff. We had to step it up and show them what we're all about.

Shaquille O'Neal

#8. Doesn't know much, but leads the league in nostril hair.

Josh Billings

#9. Brandon Rush is not just one of the best freshmen in the league, he's one of the best players.

Kelvin Sampson

#10. BenJarvus Green-Ellis was great to me. He's the type of person that you want to learn from because he understands the game and he's been in the league for a while. He's a great role model to a lot of guys on the team, including myself.

Giovani Bernard

#11. I blame Riley for my broken thumb, not Matt Geiger. That ain't defense Miami is playing. That's just chopping. I have no idea how his team gets away with it. I guess when you've been in the league 30 years you can do it. Respect, he gets it - he's like John Gotti.

Shaquille O'Neal

#12. I think the big thing I've had going for me in that regard has been the success of the league. I don't have quite as much control over things as people believe, so I frequently receive more credit than I deserve, and occasionally more criticism as well.

Pete Rozelle

#13. If you go around the league, anybody with the last name 'vich' is a great shooter. Radmanovic, Vujacic ... all those 'iches.

Shaquille O'Neal

#14. Bryzgalov isn't just a running comedy act. He's one of the league's most thoughtful players and the fact that he offers the insight he does in his second language is something he'll never get enough credit for.

Ilya Bryzgalov

#15. The League academy would be horrified to find out that one woman's tears could undo all their expensive programs. No wonder they kept their assassins locked down.
-Nykyrian's thoughts

Sherrilyn Kenyon

#16. It hurt me a great deal. It put a lot of pressure on me because I was at a young age and the writers around here and throughout the league starting comparing me to Cobb. It put a lot of pressure on me.

Al Kaline

#17. By the 1880s, baseball was entrenched in the Cape's sandy soil. Semipro teams, commonplace before World War I, were organized into the first Cape Cod League in 1923 - Orleans joined the four original teams five years later. By 1940, the league had foundered on financial shoals and disbanded.

Jane Leavy

#18. When I first came into the league, I was with Tim Dwight in San Diego, and a guy named Eric Parker, who really showed me the work ethic it takes to be an NFL receiver, and I've really tried to keep that with me.

Wes Welker

#19. This means that the search for a formula of European cooperation in connection with the League of Nations, far from weakening the authority of this latter must and can only tend to strengthen it, for it is closely connected with its aims.

Aristide Briand

#20. If Arsenal played like this all the time they could win the league

Owen Hargreaves

#21. I've addressed this before, and I'll say it again: The league has to take a long, hard look at full-time officials. The officiating has been inconsistent all season long.

Ron Jaworski

#22. It's the price on the ticket and emphasizes the pressure every manager is under weather you are at the top or bottom of the league.

Graeme Souness

#23. I feel as though I've proved myself these last five years that I can be one of the top players in the league.

Kevin Durant

#24. The Madden NFL franchise holds a special place in popular culture and the cover is a coveted position for players all over the league. I'm honored to be the first cover athlete chosen by Madden NFL fans and it's a great way to cap off an amazing year for the Saints and the city of New Orleans.

Drew Brees

#25. Behind the concept of woman's strangeness is the idea that a woman may do anything: she is below society, not bound by its law, unpredictable; an attribute given to every member of the league of the unfortunate.

Christina Stead

#26. The first condition of success for the League of Nations is, therefore, a firm understanding between the British Empire and the United States of America and France and Italy that there will be no competitive building up of fleets or armies between them.

Arthur Henderson

#27. You can pick any game and there are two or three plays that determine whether you win or lose, going either way. That's the beauty of the league, man. Every game counts, no matter who you're playing or what their record is.

Derrick Brooks

#28. When we move the ball, we're one of the best teams in the league.

Tyson Chandler

#29. For years the league has thought I've been on drugs. I would have burned out a long time ago if that was true.

Dennis Rodman

#30. Everything we talk about is about beating the Packers, the Bears and the Vikings. Obviously there are other teams in the league, but if you can dominate and be on top of your division you are always in the playoff hunt. It's time for us to win that thing.

Steve Mariucci

#31. George Bowering doesn't play fair. Baseball Love is so good there is no memoir in the league that can go up against it. Bowering has a sense of story and an eye for detail that eliminate the possibility that he was a lousy second baseman. Reading a home run is fun.

Robert Kroetsch

#32. After all, every team in the league has the same goals so it's not your goals that will lead to your success but your commitment to the process, one game at a time, that will define your season.

Jon Gordon

#33. I have loved but one flag and I can not share that devotion and give affection to the mongrel banner invented for the League of Nations.

Henry Cabot Lodge

#34. I just felt all along that if I could get a certain amount of years in the league, have great years and still have my health when I walked away, that would be great.

Kevin Johnson

#35. A lot of players know I've been around 13 years and this is my second lockout. I got a lot of respect. I know what's going on both for the league and the union.

Paul Pierce

#36. If I were playing against Corey Perry, I'd probably want to hurt him in some painful and permanent way. And I think most of the rest of the league feels the same way.

Mike Milbury

#37. On paper we might be the best team in the league. We've got great players on this team who accomplished so much. We just couldn't put it together.

Amar'e Stoudemire

#38. When I play against someone that's new in the league, I make him respect me. They may have heard about me, but now you get to see me actually in front of you. That drives me.

Michael Jordan

#39. And the annual meetings of the League's Assembly are in effect official peace congresses binding on the participating states to an extent that most statesmen a quarter of a century ago would have regarded as utopian.

Hjalmar Branting

#40. Look at Tottenham. You spend over £100-odd million, you'd expect to be challenging for the league.

Brendan Rodgers

#41. After I made it to the NBA, I said that I didn't want to be the last player from Africa. After my rookie year, I went to the league and talked about this, and they embraced my idea and started conducting basketball clinics in Africa, and that's when I knew I wouldn't be the last African.

Dikembe Mutombo

#42. Like most of us, Joe Biden has had moments when he's led the league in mistakes or verbal gaffes. The difference is his were on a public stage where explanations are almost always made out by pundits to be excuses.

Mike Barnicle

#43. Serena grew angry. How could that representative worry about petty price tags, when the ultimate cost was so much higher? "We will all pay - in blood - if we do not do this. We must strengthen the League and the human species.

Brian Herbert

#44. When I've got nothing better to do, I look down the league table to see how Everton are getting along

Bill Shankly

#45. I think the (brawl) made the league and the players more conscious of our responsibility to the public.

Joe Dumars

#46. I consciously memorized the speed at which every pitcher in the league threw his fastball, curve, and slider. Then, I'd pick up the speed of the ball in the first 30 feet of its flight and knew how it would move once it has crossed the plate.

Stan Musial

#47. Well Terry, can you tell us where you are in the league, how far are you ahead of the second team?

Ian St. John

#48. On Saturday morning, one of the two teams still unbeaten in the Premiership occupied a modest seventh place. It is an illustration of the relentless pace being set at the top of the league in which every stumble is a serious fall and draws usually constitute two dropped points.

Pete Gill

#49. Steve Nash is the most unathletic player in the league.

Bill Walton

#50. I would say I'm more patient, way more patient than I was when I came in [to the league], before the injuries. But I think just going through everything, just maturing a little bit more, getting older, you start to see what it is and I'm good.

Derrick Rose

#51. Bettman is an asshole. A frikkin asshole. I think he's ruined the game of hockey. He's supposed to be impartial. He's supposed to speak for the good of the league, but in my opinion, he's strictly behind the owners. Those 1996 rule changes are a joke

Bob Probert

#52. In sixth grade, my basketball team made it to the league championships. In double overtime, with three seconds left, I rebounded the ball and passed it - to the wrong team! They scored at the buzzer and we lost the game. To this day, I still have nightmares!

Zac Efron

#53. I would say the league is viable as long as you have owners who want to continue funding losses. But it's not on the long term a sustainable business model that we're happy to be supporting. It needs to be reset.

David Stern

#54. Being there every week for my teammates is really important to me. It's about accountability. I hear stuff about the 'toughest quarterback in the league' and all that; what's that mean?

Peyton Manning

#55. I remember when I first got into the league, I thought how it would be nice to have a year when you were the best. That means your team is probably winning.

Peyton Manning

#56. But to cut off relations with an aggressor may often invite retaliation by armed action, and this would, in its turn, make necessary some form of collective self-defence by the loyal members of the League.

Arthur Henderson

#57. In 1919, at the Paris Peace Conference, Japan had put forward a proposal to guarantee racial equality at the League of Nations, but Woodrow Wilson overturned it in the face of majority support.

Pankaj Mishra

#58. What I find fascinating ... you have to give David Stern and the NBA a lot of credit ... ESPN pays the league, and then the league tells them what to do. It's more ESPN's problem. You gotta have no balls whatsoever to pay someone hundreds of millions of dollars and let them run your business.

Stan Van Gundy

#59. Let us return, however, to the League of Nations. To create an organization which is in a position to protect peace in this world of conflicting interests and egotistic wills is a frighteningly difficult task.

Hjalmar Branting

#60. Baseball players tend to have something like 20 good years in them and then around their mid-thirties they aren't in the same shape as the young guys in the league and kind of aren't worth as much. Then they retire before 40. And they are left floating adrift in the middle of the ocean.

Michael Cera

#61. [The NBA] used to be a small band of basketball groupies. Now there are a lot more corporate-type people working in the league.

Jerry West

#62. The League of Nations is the greatest humbug in history. They cannot even protect a little nation like Armenia. They do nothing but pass useless resolutions.

David Lloyd George

#63. Spanish football is very good but every year the same teams win the league.

Royston Drenthe

#64. I've been in the league 12 years. To sit on the bench and complain about the way things were, that doesn't get anything done. I don't know. I'm playing for a championship and trying to make the playoffs. My effort has never changed.

Chris Webber

#65. I really want to do everything I can to try to win a game or win on a play. You get fiery; you get chippy out there, but a lot of respect, I never have anybody, like, talk trash in my career in the league, or I don't talk trash. I think guys respect the fact that I'm coming.

Jon Beason

#66. The Saints are Louisiana's team and have been since the late '60s when my predecessor Pete Rozelle welcomed them to the league as New Orleans' team and Louisiana's team. Our focus continues to be on having the Saints in Louisiana.

Paul Tagliabue

#67. [Lloyd George] said that Harding 's speech on American naval aspirations made him feel that he would pawn his shirt rather than allow America to dominate the seas. If this was to be the outcome of the League of Nations propaganda, he was sorry for the world and in particular for America.

David Lloyd George

#68. Bob Goodenow will kill me, but if we're going to be realistic about things, probably 75 per cent of the league is overpaid. But we're not paying ourselves. There are people giving it to us and no one is putting a gun to their heads. Something has to be done if we're going to fix this.

Brett Hull

#69. In my 20 years in football, I was fortunate enough never to have experienced relegation. And while there is the pressure of expectations at the top of the league, at the bottom it comes in fear and trepidation, which is almost worse.

Gary Neville

#70. I hate dainty minds,' answered Marjorie. 'But a girl has to be dainty in person. If she looks like a million dollars she can talk about Russia, ping-pong, or the League of Nations and get away with it.

F Scott Fitzgerald

#71. You do not have to be convicted or even charged of a crime to be able to demonstrate that you've violated a personal conduct policy, and reflect poorly not only on themselves, but all of their teammates, every NFL player in the league, and everyone associated with the NFL.

Roger Goodell

#72. You always want to be able to convey items of interest, items that make the fan see what's happening, help them in their conversations of comparing teams or players and then be able to back it up to open his eyes to the history of the league.

Hubie Brown

#73. He also offered a novel and, to my mind, worthy suggestion, that the league could benefit from replacing some of the tired heavy metal that is pumped into arenas with a little old-school Michael Jackson. "That would get me fired up," he said.

Anonymous

#74. It had been a great career. I mean, how many guys can say they averaged two points a game in their careers? It's too bad he's retiring too soon. The league is going to miss him. The fans are going to miss him. A real classy person and a great guy.

Johnny Bucyk

#75. Sorry is the Kool-Aid of human emotions. It's what you say when you spill a cup of coffee or throw a gutter ball when you're bowling with the girls in the league. True sorrow is as rare as true love.

Stephen King

#76. I spent money, I slept with women around the league, but I always kept my mind on the game.

Dennis Rodman

#77. You know when I played, you had me and Kevin (McHale) and some others throughout the league. I think it's good for a fan base because as we all know the majority of the fans are white America. And if you just had a couple of white guys in there, you might get them a little excited.

Larry Bird

#78. L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling was recorded on tape making racist comments. He now has been banned from the league for life. Great, just where Sterling wanted to end up - the blacklist.

Jimmy Fallon

#79. Let the League of Nations say whatever it pleases, let America offer whatever interference, let China decry Japan's action at the top of her voice, but Japan must adhere to her course unswervingly.

Sadao Araki

#80. The people at the top of the league think they need to rein me in so I don't become another Michael Jordan, somebody they aren't able to mold and shape and make their puppet.

Dennis Rodman

#81. This year I'd rather lead the league in home runs, runs batted in and hitting.

Mickey Mantle

#82. If it happens that I score 50 goals, it'll be awesome. Any player in the league would like 50. But I don't keep thinking every day that I have to score in order to reach 50 goals .

Zach Parise

#83. We're the league of the guilty, after all, not the league of the shortly-to-become-good. We are a work in progress. We will always be a work in progress. We will always fail, and it will always matter.

Francis Spufford

#84. The sublimated idealism of the Enlightenment, the spirit of the League of Nations and of the United Nations Charter have not proved strong enough to control the aggressive dynamism of nationalism.

Christopher Dawson

#85. I know I probably never will win the league MVP or passing title. That is not why I play the game. I try to win football games and championships.

Ben Roethlisberger

#86. I could feel her wipe away something wet, but I refused to think she had made me cry as well as admit that I was a coward. The League of Men was going to come confiscate my balls at this rate. But it didn't matter. Trixie was worth it.

Jocelynn Drake

#87. Destroying white civilization is the inmost desire of the league of designated victims we call minorities.

Joseph Sobran

#88. I came into the League at 18-years-old. I didn't have a lot of experience in training the right way. I probably came into the league at 175 pounds; now I'm 190 ... It's all about training the right way and training for my needs.

Steven Stamkos

#89. It's hard to say if the NBA is hurt by the influx of younger players, but it's definitely impacted the league.

Michael Jordan

#90. When asked about which team is the toughest team in the league, responded with an answer that all volleyball players must comprehend. He said simply that it was, 'The team you are playing.'

Roy Campanella

#91. All this stuff is kind of surreal to me - Ididn't think I'd be in the league or none of that. It was making it to college. That's about it.

Kevin Durant

#92. I couldn't beat people with my strength; I don't have a hard shot; I'm not the quickest skater in the league. My eyes and my mind have to do most of the work.

Wayne Gretzky

#93. The past was irretrievable, the league of lonely men a fiction, the pursuit of the past a doomed attempt to run a hustle on mortality.

Michael Chabon

#94. You often see shocks in the League Cup, even when you don't expect them

Jan Molby

#95. When I came into the league, once a team drafted you, they owned you forever. If they didn't like the clothes you wore, or the car you drove, they could blackball you.

Oscar Robertson

#96. Peyton Manning is doing things that I think no other quarterback in the history of the league has done at the line of scrimmage ... I just think they are a team right now that's got a real chance to run the table.

Don Shula

#97. I think the Commissioner is taking the steps necessary to give the game back to the players and the fans and hopefully take the league to the next level.

Cobi Jones

#98. It is a commonplace that the League of Nations is not yet-what its most enthusiastic protagonists intended it to be.

Hjalmar Branting

#99. Everybody was calling. I think everybody called every player in the league. Thats history right there.

Dwyane Wade

#100. I didn't make any friends in New York by insisting on moving the league headquarters to Cincinnati. The fact was that my son Bill was in school. His mother had passed away, and I didn't want to take the boy away from his school and to a strange city.

Warren Giles