Quotes from Vince Lombardi

We run to win, not just to be in the race.

The will to win is the only thing.

If you can shrug off a loss, you can't be a winner.

Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing.

Winning is habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.

If it doesn't matter who wins or loses, then why do they keep score?

Go back through football, and you will see that the team with the best defense wins.

If you can't accept losing you can't win.

Mental toughness is spartanism with qualities of sacrifice, self-denial, dedication. It is fearlessness, and it is love.

We don't pray to win. We pray to play the best we can, and to keep us free from injury. And the prayer we say after the game is one of thanksgiving.

It is time for us all to stand and cheer for the doer, the achiever - the one who recognizes the challenges and does something about it.

Second place is meaningless. You can't always be first, but you have to believe that you should have been - that you were never beaten - that time just ran out on you.

Battles are won in the hearts of men.

Character is just another word for having a perfectly disciplined and educated will. A person can make his own character by blending these elements with an intense desire to achieve excellence. Everyone is different in what I will call magnitude, but the capacity to achieve character is still the same.

Inches make a champion.

If you're lucky enough to find a guy with a lot of head and a lot of heart, he's never going to come off the field second.

I firmly believe that any man's finest hour, the greatest fulfillment of all that he holds dear, is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle - victorious.

They may not love you at the time, but they will later.

In a game like football, where you have very little time to decide what you are going to do, you have to react almost instinctively, naturally.

Football is a great deal like life in that it teaches that work, sacrifice, perseverance, competitive drive, selflessness and respect for authority is the price that each and every one of us must pay to achieve any goal that is worthwhile.

We didn't lose the game we just ran out of time.

People who work together will win, whether it be against complex football defenses, or the problems of modern society.

Mental toughness is Spartanism, with all its qualities of self-denial, sacrifice, dedication, fearlessness, and love.

They'd better be physically tough when they start pulling on their football pants.