Joe Paterno
Believe deep down in your heart that you're destined to do great things.Collection: Great
Success without honor is an unseasoned dish; it will satisfy your hunger, but it won't taste good.Collection: Success
The will to win is important, but the will to prepare is vital.
Its the name on the front of the jersey that matters most, not the one on the back.
We shall act with good intentions, but at times we will be wrong. When we are, let us admit it and try to right the situation.
When a team outgrows individual performance and learns team confidence, excellence becomes a reality.
The name on the front of the jersey is what really matters, not the name on the back.
It doesn't matter what people think of me. I've lived my life.
My thing was play as hard as you can, don't be stupid, pay attention to details, and have enough guts in the clutch that you're not afraid to make a play. Some things I thought were important for a young man to know.
Besides pride, loyalty, discipline, heart, and mind, confidence is the key to all the locks.
Losing a game is heartbreaking. Losing your sense of excellence or worth is a tragedy.
You have to perform at a consistently higher level than others. That's the mark of a true professional.
You need to play with supreme confidence, or else you'll lose again, and then losing becomes a habit.
Publicity is like poison; it doesn't hurt unless you swallow it.
The minute you think you've got it made, disaster is just around the corner.
Mostly I want to talk positive; I wanna talk about a bunch of great kids that I coached and made me look good and the university that I've seen grow from a cow college, which it was, only 12,000 people, and when I came here, we weren't at Pennsylvania State University, we were at Penn State College.
I'm not as concerned about me. What's happened to me has been great. I got five great kids. Seventeen grandchildren.
I've had a wonderful experience here at Penn State.
I really enjoyed coaching.
I don't think I deviated from what I'm all about and what I thought was important. Whether you want to call that a legacy, or whatever you want to call it.
In every life, there have to be some shadows. Look at me. My life has been filled with sunshine. A beautiful and caring wife. Five healthy children. I got to do what I loved. How many people are that lucky?
What is a coach? We are teachers. Educators. We have the same obligations as all teachers, except we probably have more influence over young people than anybody but their families. And, in a lot of cases, more than their families.
To teach an academic subject is certainly not easy, but compared to coaching, it is. We can say 'two plus two is four' to every kid and be sure that we are right. But in coaching, we have to literally get to the soul of the people we are dealing with.
You must relate athletic experiences to life.
We have to realize a kid will love us one day and hate us the next. That cannot change who we are and what we are about.
Here, I have an opportunity to affect the lives of a lot of young people - and not just on my football team. I'm not kidding myself that that would be true at the professional level.
When a kid plays football games before he attends a class, something is wrong.
I don't think it's fair to 12-, 13- and 14-year-olds to say 'Show us you're a winner right now!' Winning isn't everything. I'll never buy that thing that if a boy loses a football game, he's a loser in life.
Coaches have got to be given rank within the university so that you can't fire a coach unless you go through an academic committee, just as you would with a professor. If coaches are to have any stability and security, they need to be treated like an English professor.
Today, you've got a decision to make. You're gonna get better or you're gonna get worse, but you're not gonna stay the same. Which will it be?Collection: Nfl
Success and excellence are not the same. Excellence grows within a person, is largely within that person's control, and its meaning lasts. Success is measured externally, by comparison to others, is often outside our control, and is perishable.Collection: Sports
Keep hustling, something good will happen.Collection: Hustle
A hard-fought, well-fought, hairline-close game is as classical in sports as tragedy is in the theater. Victory is contained within defeat, and defeat is contained within victory. That's the way it is in the best of games. What counts in sports is not the victory, but the magnificence of the struggle.Collection: Sports
They ask me what I'd like written about me when I'm gone. I hope they write I made Penn State a better place, not just that I was a good football coach.Collection: Football
Failure is not getting beat. Failure is when you don't do a good job preparing.Collection: Jobs
We need people who influence their peers and who cannot be detoured from their convictions by peers who do not have the courage to have any convictions.Collection: Leadership
What counts in sports is not the victory, but the magnificence of the struggle.Collection: Sports
My name, I have spent my whole life trying to make that name mean something. And now it's gone.Collection: Mean
Don't just stand back and play the way you're coached. A great player must rise to the occasion and turn the game around on his own.Collection: Leadership
What is a coach? We are teachers. Educators. We have the same obligations as all teachers, except we probably have more influence than anybody but their families. And, in a lot of cases, more than their families.Collection: Teacher
If I had to do it over again, I'd probably play the game the same way.Collection: Games
We play with enthusiasm and recklessness. We aren't afraid to lose. If we win, great; but win or lose, it is the competition that gives us pleasure.Collection: Leadership
To teach an academic subject is certainly not easy, but compared to coaching, it is. We can say two plus two is four to every kid and be sure that we are right. But in coaching, we have to literally get to the soul of the people we are dealing with.Collection: Kids
Sport is a product of human culture. America seems to need football at this state of our social development. When you get ninety million people watching a single game on television, it ... shows you that people need something to identify with.Collection: Sports
Success is best measured by the achiever.Collection: Achiever
I had a great bunch of kids. They all hung with us. The coaching staff hung with us. And we played tough every game. If you've got kids that want to play and react to you, it's fun. I'm having a good time.Collection: Fun
Right now I'm trying to figure out what I'm gonna do, 'cause I don't want to sit around on my backside all day. If I'm gonna do that I'll be a newspaper reporter.Collection: Trying
You can't have a great university without a great library.Collection: Library
You're only as happy as your least happy child.Collection: Children
In hindsight, I wish I had done more.Collection: Wish