Vince Lombardi Quotes…
Vince Lombardi (Vincent Thomas Lombardi)(June 11, 1913 – September 3, 1970) was an American football coach and executive in the National Football League (NFL). He is best known as the head coach of the Green Bay Packers during the 1960s, where he led the team to three straight and five total NFL Championships in seven years, in addition to winning the first two Super Bowls at the conclusion of the 1966 and 1967 NFL seasons.
Lombardi was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1913. He went on to study at Fordham University and played college football while there. After college, Lombardi coached high school and college football, until 1954 when he became a coach for the New York Giants.
Lombardi began his coaching career as an assistant and later as a head coach at St. Cecilia High School in Englewood, New Jersey. He was an assistant coach at Fordham, the United States Military Academy and the New York Giants before becoming head coach of the Green Bay Packers from 1959 to 1967 and the Washington Redskins in 1969.
When Lombardi took over as the coach for the Green Bay Packers in 1959, the team was not winning. Lombardi pushed them to work hard and persevere, and his tactics eventually paid off with their many victories.
Lombardi is considered by many to be the greatest coach in football history, and he is recognized as one of the greatest coaches and leaders in the history of all American sports. The year after his sudden death from cancer in 1970, he was enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and the NFL Super Bowl trophy was named in his honor.
Lombardi passed away in 1970, but his dedication and his work ethic continues to define the sport of football.
Here are Vince Lombardi quotes to celebrate winning, excellence, and dedication.
Vince Lombardi Quotes
Once you learn to quit, it becomes a habit.
“Winners never quit and quitters never win.”
“Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.”
“We didn’t lose the game; we just ran out of time.”
“The harder you work, the harder it is to surrender.”
“Confidence is contagious. So is lack of confidence.”
“It’s not whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you get up.”
“The measure of who we are is what we do with what we have.”
“Practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect.”
“The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary.”
“If it doesn’t matter who wins or loses, then why do they keep score?”
Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.”
“The greatest accomplishment is not in never falling, but in rising again after you fall.”
“We would accomplish many more things if we did not think of them as impossible.”
Mental toughness is spartanism with qualities of sacrifice, self-denial, dedication. It is fearlessness, and it is love.
“Individual commitment to a group effort – that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.”
The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand.
It’s easy to have faith in yourself and have discipline when you’re a winner, when you’re number one. What you got to have is faith and discipline when you’re not a winner.
Once you agree upon the price you and your family must pay for success, it enables you to ignore the minor hurts, the opponent’s pressure, and the temporary failures.
There is no room for second place. There is only one place in my game and that is first place. I have finished second twice in my time at Green Bay and I never want to finish second again.
“Winning is not a sometime thing; it’s an all the time thing. You don’t win once in a while… you don’t do things right once in a while… you do them right all the time. Winning is a habit. Unfortunately so is losing.”
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.
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.
Every time a football player goes to ply his trade he’s got to play from the ground up — from the soles of his feet right up to his head. Every inch of him has to play. Some guys play with their heads. That’s OK You’ve got to be smart to be number one in any business. But more importantly, you’ve got to play with your heart, with every fiber of your body. 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.
