“A champion is afraid of losing. Everyone else is afraid of winning.” Billie Jean King

Coaches Hot Seat Quotes of the Day – Sunday, April 30, 2023 – Audie Murphy

“Seems to me that if you’re afraid or living with some big fear, you’re not really living. You’re only half alive. I don’t care if it’s the boss you’re scared of or a lot of people in a room or diving off of a dinky little board, you gotta get rid of it. You owe it to yourself. Makes sort of a zombie out of you being afraid. I mean you want to be free, don’t you? And how can you if you are scared? That’s prison. Fear’s a jailer. Mind now, I’m not a professor on the subject. I just found it out for myself. But that’s what I think.”

And

“If you’re afraid of anything, why not take a chance and do the thing you fear. Sometimes it’s the only way to get over being afraid.”

And

“Let each man hear his own music and live by it. The drums roll one way for one man, I guess, and another way for another. You have to listen to your own.”

And

“In life quality is what counts, not quantity.”

And

“Audacity is a tactical weapon. Nine times out ten it will throw the enemy off-balance and confuse him.”

And

“The true meaning of America, you ask? It’s in a Texas rodeo, in a policeman’s badge, in the sound of laughing children, in a political rally, in a newspaper… In all these things, and many more, you’ll find America. In all these things, you’ll find freedom. And freedom is what America means to the world. And to me.”

And

“Lead from the front.”

Wikipedia Page: Audie Murphy

Coaches Hot Seat Quotes of the Day – Saturday, April 29, 2023 – John Madden

“Coaches have to watch for what they don’t want to see and listen to what they don’t want to hear.”

And

“Don’t worry about the horse being blind, just load the wagon.”

And

“If you see a defense team with dirt and mud on their backs they’ve had a bad day.”

And

“Self-praise is for losers. Be a winner. Stand for something. Always have class, and be humble.”

And

“The fewer rules a coach has, the fewer rules there are for players to break.”

And

“The only yardstick for success our society has is being a champion. No one remembers anything else.”

And

“The road to Easy Street goes through the sewer.”

And

“When your arm gets hit, the ball is not going to go where you want it to.”

And

“A team should never practice on a field that is not lined. Your players have to become aware of the field’s boundaries.”

And

“You can’t win games if you can’t get first downs.”

And

“You can’t win games if the offense can’t score.”

Wikipedia:  John Madden

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Coaches Hot Seat Quotes of the Day – Friday, April 28, 2023 – Peter Drucker

“A manager is responsible for the application and performance of knowledge.”

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“Checking the results of a decision against its expectations shows executives what their strengths are, where they need to improve, and where they lack knowledge or information.”

And

“Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes.”

And

“Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.”

And

“Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes.”

And

“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.”

And

“People who don’t take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year.”

And

“The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.”

And

“The only thing we know about the future is that it will be different.”

And

“Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed.”

And

“Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes; but no plans.”

And

“Management by objective works – if you know the objectives. Ninety percent of the time you don’t.”

And

“Never mind your happiness; do your duty.”

And

“The best way to predict the future is to create it.”

And

“We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn.”

And

“Morale in an organization does not mean that “people get along together”; the test is performance not conformance.”

And

“A man should never be appointed into a managerial position if his vision focuses on people’s weaknesses rather than on their strengths.” The Practice of Management (1954)

And

“It does not matter whether the worker wants responsibility or not, …The enterprise must demand it of him.” The Practice of Management (1954)

And

“The postwar [WWII] GI Bill of Rights–and the enthusiastic response to it on the part of America’s veterans–signaled the shift to the knowledge society. Future historians may consider it the most important event of the twentieth century. We are clearly in the midst of this transformation; indeed, if history is any guide, it will not be completed until 2010 or 2020. But already it has changed the political, economic and moral landscape of the world.” Managing in a Time of Great Change (1995)

And

“Most discussions of decision making assume that only senior executives make decisions or that only senior executives’ decisions matter. This is a dangerous mistake.”

And

“Never mind your happiness; do your duty.”

And

“Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility.”

And

“Management by objective works – if you know the objectives. Ninety percent of the time you don’t.”

And

“Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes.”

And

“We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn.”

And

“No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings.”

And

“The best way to predict the future is to create it.”

And

“Business, that’s easily defined – it’s other people’s money.”

And

“Trying to predict the future is like trying to drive down a country road at night with no lights while looking out the back window.”

And

“The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.”

And

“Making good decisions is a crucial skill at every level.”

And

‘Today knowledge has power. It controls access to opportunity and advancement.”

And

“Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.”

And

“The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.”

And

“The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say ‘I’. And that’s not because they have trained themselves not to say ‘I’. They don’t think ‘I’. They think ‘we’; they think ‘team’. They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don’t sidestep it, but ‘we’ gets the credit…. This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done.”

Wikipedia:  Peter Drucker

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Coaches Hot Seat Quotes of the Day – Thursday, April 27, 2023 – Paul Newman

“I had no natural gift to be anything — not an athlete, not an actor, not a writer, not a director, a painter of garden porches — not anything. So I’ve worked really hard, because nothing ever came easily to me.”

And

“Study your craft and know who you are and what’s special about you. Find out what everyone does on a film set, ask questions and listen. Make sure you live life, which means don’t do things where you court celebrity, and give something positive back to our society.”

And

“A man with no enemies is a man with no character.”

And

“Money won is twice as sweet as money earned.”

And

“Newman’s first law: It is useless to put on your brakes when you’re upside down.”

And

“Newman’s second law: Just when things look darkest, they go black.”

And

“If you’re playing a poker game and you look around the table and and can’t tell who the sucker is, it’s you.”

And

“Every time I get a script it’s a matter of trying to know what I could do with it. I see colors, imagery. It has to have a smell. It’s like falling in love. You can’t give a reason why.”

And

“The embarrassing thing is that the salad dressing is outgrossing my films.”

And

“You gotta have two things to win.  You gotta have brains and you gotta have balls.  Now, you got too much of one and not enough of the other.”  Paul Newman as Eddie Felson, The Color of Money, 1986

Wikipedia Page:  Paul Newman

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Coaches Hot Seat Quotes of the Day – Wednesday, April 26, 2023 – Babe Ruth

“Don’t let the fear of striking out hold you back.”

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“The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don’t play together, the club won’t be worth a dime.”

And

“Baseball was, is and always will be to me the best game in the world.”

And

“Yesterday’s home runs don’t win today’s games.”

And

“As soon as I got out there I felt a strange relationship with the pitcher’s mound. It was as if I’d been born out there. Pitching just felt like the most natural thing in the world. Striking out batters was easy.”

And

“Who is richer? The man who is seen, but cannot see? Or the man who is not being seen, but can see?”

And

“You just can’t beat the person who never gives up.”

And

“I had only one superstition. I made sure to touch all the bases when I hit a home run.”

And

“I didn’t mean to hit the umpire with the dirt, but I did mean to hit that bastard in the stands.”

And

“If it wasn’t for baseball, I’d be in either the penitentiary or the cemetery.”

And

“I said I’m going to hit the next one right over the flagpole. God must have been with me.”

And

““How to hit home runs: I swing as hard as I can, and I try to swing right through the ball… The harder you grip the bat, the more you can swing it through the ball, and the farther the ball will go. I swing big, with everything I’ve got. I hit big or I miss big. I like to live as big as I can.”

And

“You know this baseball game of ours comes up from the youth – that means the boys. And after you’ve been a boy, and grow up to know how to play ball, then you come to the boys you see representing themselves today in our national pastime.”

And

“I know, but I had a better year than Hoover.”
– Reported reply when a reporter objected that the salary Ruth was demanding ($80,000) was more than that of President Herbert Hoover’s ($75,000)

And

“I’d give a year of my life if I could hit a homerun on opening day of this great new park.”
– April 18, 1923, about the newly built Yankee Stadium

And

“To my sick little pal. I will try to knock you another homer, maybe two today.”

Wikipedia:  Babe Ruth

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Coaches Hot Seat Quotes of the Day – Tuesday, April 25, 2023 – Joseph Campbell

“A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.”

And

“Find a place inside where there’s joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.”

And

“Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls.”

And

“I don’t believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.”

And

“Is the system going to flatten you out and deny you your humanity, or are you going to be able to make use of the system to the attainment of human purposes?”

And

“It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.”

And

“Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning.”

And

“Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging.”

And

“The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure.”

And

“The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.”

And

“The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.”

And

“We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.”

And

“When we quit thinking primarily about ourselves and our own self-preservation, we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness.”

And

“When you make the sacrifice in marriage, you’re sacrificing not to each other but to unity in a relationship.”

And

“Your life is the fruit of your own doing. You have no one to blame but yourself.”

And

“Your sacred space is where you can find yourself again and again.”

And

“It’s only when a man tames his own demons that he becomes the king of himself if not of the world.”

And

“The achievement of the hero is one that he is ready for and it’s really a manifestation of his character.”

And

“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonance within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive. That’s what it’s all finally about.”

And

“One thing that comes out in myths is that at the bottom of the abyss comes the voice of salvation. The black moment is the moment when the real message of transformation is going to come. At the darkest moment comes the light.”

And

“The way to find out about your happiness is to keep your mind on those moments when you feel most happy, when you really are happy-not excited, not just thrilled, but deeply happy. This requires a little bit of self analysis. What is it that makes you happy? Stay with it, no matter what people tell you. This is what I call “following your bliss.”

And

“The happy ending of the fairy tale, the myth, and the divine comedy of the soul, is to be read, not as a contradiction, but as a transcendence of the universal tragedy of man. …Tragedy is the shattering of the forms and of our attachment to the forms… the two are the terms of a single mythological theme… the down-going and the up-coming (kathados and anodos), which together constitute the totality of the revelation that is life, and which the individual must know and love if he is to be purged (katharsis=purgatorio) of the contagion of sin (disobedience to the divine will) and death (identification with the mortal form). “All things are changing; nothing dies…”

And

“Eternity isn’t some later time. Eternity isn’t a long time. Eternity has nothing to do with time. Eternity is that dimension of here and now which thinking and time cuts out. This is it. And if you don’t get it here, you won’t get it anywhere. And the experience of eternity right here and now is the function of life. There’s a wonderful formula that the Buddhists have for the Bodhisattva, the one whose being (sattva) is illumination (bodhi), who realizes his identity with eternity and at the same time his participation in time. And the attitude is not to withdraw from the world when you realize how horrible it is, but to realize that this horror is simply the foreground of a wonder and to come back and participate in it. “All life is sorrowful” is the first Buddhist saying, and it is. It wouldn’t be life if there were not temporality involved which is sorrow. Loss, loss, loss.”

And

“Follow your bliss.”

And

“Bill Moyers: Unlike heroes such as Prometheus or Jesus, we’re not going on our journey to save the world but to save ourselves.
Joseph Campbell: But in doing that you save the world. The influence of a vital person vitalizes, there’s no doubt about it. The world without spirit is a wasteland. People have the notion of saving the world by shifting things around, changing the rules, and who’s on top, and so forth. No, no! Any world is a valid world if it’s alive. The thing to do is to bring life to it, and the only way to do that is to find in your own case where the life is and become alive yourself.”

And

“Marx teaches us to blame society for our frailties, Freud teaches us to blame our parents, and astrology teaches us to blame the universe. The only place to look for blame is within: you didn’t have the guts to bring up your full moon and live the life that was your potential.”

Wikipedia:  Joseph Campbell

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Coaches Hot Seat Quotes of the Day – Monday, April 24, 2023 – John McKay

“The most successful coaches on any level teach the fundamentals.”

And

“No coach, no matter how successful, ever completely escapes the pressure of winning.”

And

“You don’t beat people with surprises, but with execution.”

And

“It bothers me that they (the national media) have picked us to be the worst team in football. Because what they are doing now is challenging your physical and your mental capacity and my ability to coach you. Now, this hurts me. Second worst team, I could stand it. But not the worst team.”

And

“Kickers are like horse manure. They’re all over the place.”

And

“Intensity is a lot of guys that run fast.”

And

“Emotion is highly overrated in football. My wife Corky is emotional as hell but can’t play football worth a damn.”

And

On his team’s blocking strategy: “Hold when you’re at home and don’t hold when you’re on the road.”

And

“If you have everyone back from a team that lost ten games, experience isn’t too important.”

And

On how coaching an expansion team is a religious experience: “You do a lot of praying, but most of the time the answer is ‘no.’ “

And

On the play of Joe Namath in the Jets 34-0 victory over Tampa Bay, “Namath is still Namath, but I must say that our guys were nice to him. I noticed when they knocked him down, they helped him to his feet. That was gentlemanly. I thought one stood around long enough to get his autograph.”

And

“I told our players that there were 700 million Chinese people in the world who didn’t even know the game was played. The next week, I got five letters from China asking “What happened?””

And

“Behind every fired football coach stands a college president.”

And

“Nobody becomes great without self-doubt. But you can’t let it consume you.”

And

“We didn’t tackle well today, but we made up for it by not blocking”.

And

“Three or four plane crashes and we’re in the playoffs.”

And

* On the execution of the Bucs offense: “I think it’s a good idea.”

And

“On the Bucs early games: “Every time I look up, it seems we’re punting.”

Wikipedia: John McKay

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Coaches Hot Seat Quotes of the Day – Sunday, April 23, 2023 – James Dean

“Dream as if you’ll live forever. Live as if you’ll die today.”

And

“There is no way to be truly great in this world. We are all impaled on the crook of conditioning.”

And

“Being an actor is the loneliest thing in the world. You are all alone with your concentration and imagination, and that’s all you have.”

And

“Only the gentle are ever really strong.”

And

“Being a good actor isn’t easy. Being a man is even harder. I want to be both before I’m done.”

And

“When an actor plays a scene exactly the way a director orders, it isn’t acting. It’s following instructions. Anyone with the physical qualifications can do that.”

And

“If a man can bridge the gap between life and death, if he can live on after he’s dead, then maybe he was a great man.”

And

“To grasp the full significance of life is the actor’s duty; to interpret it is his problem; and to express it is his dedication.”

And

“The gratification comes in the doing, not in the results.”

And

“The only greatness for man is immortality.”

And

“I also became close to nature, and am now able to appreciate the beauty with which this world is endowed.”

Wikipedia: James Dean

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Coaches Hot Seat Quotes of the Day – Saturday, April 22, 2023 – Epictetus

“If anyone tells you that a certain person speaks ill of you, do not make excuses about what is said of you but answer, “He was ignorant of my other faults, else he would not have mentioned these alone.”

And

“There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power or our will. ”

And

“Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.”

And

“Don’t explain your philosophy. Embody it.”

And

“First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.”

And

“If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.”

And

“The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.”

And

“Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems”

And

“Other people’s views and troubles can be contagious. Don’t sabotage yourself by unwittingly adopting negative, unproductive attitudes through your associations with others.”

And

“It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.”

And

“Any person capable of angering you becomes your master; he can anger you only when you permit yourself to be disturbed by him.”

And

“He who laughs at himself never runs out of things to laugh at.”

And

“All religions must be tolerated… for every man must get to heaven in his own way.”

And

“People are not disturbed by things, but by the views they take of them.”

And

“First learn the meaning of what you say, and then speak.”

And

“Only the educated are free.”

And

“To accuse others for one’s own misfortune is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one’s education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one’s education is complete.”

And

“The greater the difficulty, the more glory in surmounting it. Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests. ”

And

“Circumstances don’t make the man, they only reveal him to himself.”

And

“Attach yourself to what is spiritually superior, regardless of what other people think or do. Hold to your true aspirations no matter what is going on around you.”

And

“It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.”

And

“He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has. ”

And

“You are a little soul carrying around a corpse”

And

“Seek not the good in external things; seek it in yourselves.”

And

“Caretake this moment. Immerse yourself in its particulars. Respond to this person, this challenge, this deed. Quit evasions. Stop giving yourself needless trouble. It is time to really live; to fully inhabit the situation you happen to be in now.”

And

“If evil be said of thee, and if it be true, correct thyself; if it be a lie, laugh at it.”

And

“Do not try to seem wise to others. ”

And

“Don’t seek to have events happen as you wish, but wish them to happen as they do happen, and all will be well with you.”

And

“No man is free who is not master of himself.”

And

“If you would be a reader, read; if a writer, write.”

And

“Difficulty shows what men are. Therefore when a difficulty falls upon you, remember that God, like a trainer of wrestlers, has matched you with a rough young man. Why? So that you may become an Olympic conqueror; but it is not accomplished without sweat.”

And

“Nature hath given men one tongue but two ears, that we may hear from others twice as much as we speak.”

And

“In a word, neither death, nor exile, nor pain, nor anything of this kind is the real cause of our doing or not doing any action, but our inward opinions and principles.”

And

“Reason is not measured by size or height, but by principle.”

And

“Practice yourself, for heaven’s sake, in little things; and thence proceed to greater.”

Wikipedia:  Epictetus

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Coaches Hot Seat Quotes of the Day – Friday, April 21, 2023 – Chuck Yeager

“If you want to grow old as a pilot, you’ve got to know when to push it, and when to back off.”

And

“Later, I realized that the mission had to end in a let-down because the real barrier wasn’t in the sky but in our knowledge and experience of supersonic flight.”

And

“Most pilots learn, when they pin on their wings and go out and get in a fighter, especially, that one thing you don’t do, you don’t believe anything anybody tells you about an airplane.”

And

“Never wait for trouble.”

And

“Rules are made for people who aren’t willing to make up their own.”

And

“You do what you can for as long as you can, and when you finally can’t, you do the next best thing. You back up but you don’t give up.”

And

“You don’t concentrate on risks. You concentrate on results. No risk is too great to prevent the necessary job from getting done.”

And

“Unfortunately, many people do not consider fun an important item on their daily agenda. For me, that was always high priority in whatever I was doing.”

Wikipedia:  Chuck Yeager

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