Inspirational Football Quotes

I hope you enjoy this collection of inspirational football quotes. Learn insider secrets from the best on how to play football and win at the game of life.

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Football Quotes Index

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About Football

Football is like life -- it requires perseverance, self-denial, hard work, sacrifice, dedication and respect for authority.
~ Vince Lombardi

Football is all very well a good game for rough girls, but not for delicate boys.
~ Oscar Wilde

All that I know most surely about morality and obligations I owe to football.
~ Albert Camus

Football is an incredible game. Sometimes it's so incredible, it's unbelievable.
~ Tom Landry

Football is an honest game.
It’s true to life. It’s a game about sharing.
Football is a team game. So is life.
~ Joe Namath

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Baseball vs. Football

Baseball is what we were. Football is what we have become.
~ Mary McGrory

Baseball is fathers and sons. Football is brothers beating each other up in the backyard.
~ Donald Hall, Fathers Playing Catch with Sons

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Character

The spirit, the will to win, and the will to excel are the things that endure. These qualities are so much more important than the events that occur.
~ Vince Lombardi

Football doesn't build character, it reveals character!
~ Marv Levy

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College Football

College football is a sport that bears the same relation to education that bullfighting does to agriculture.
~ Elbert Hubbard

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Confidence

What’s the worst thing that can happen to a quarterback? He loses his confidence.
~ Terry Bradshaw

Confidence doesn't come out of nowhere. It's a result of something... hours and days and weeks and years of constant work and dedication.
~ Roger Staubach

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Did You Know?

Forasmuch as there is great noise in the city caused by hustling over large balls, from which many evils may arise, which God forbid, we command and forbid on behalf of the king, on pain of imprisonment, such game to be used in the city in future.
~ Edward II, Royal proclamation banning football from the streets of London, 1314.

I had pro offers from the Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers, who were pretty hard up for linemen in those days. If I had gone into professional football, the name Jerry Ford might have been a household world today.
~ Gerald R. Ford

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Excellence

I want to be remembered as the guy
who gave his all whenever he was on the field.
~ Walter Payton

Nobody who ever gave his best regretted it.
~ George Halas

You have to perform at a consistently higher level than others.
That's the mark of a true professional.
~ Joe Paterno

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Funny

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“Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.” ― Victor Borge

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Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.
~ Erma Bombeck

The Green Bay Packers never lost a football game.
They just ran out of time.
~ Vince Lombardi

The reason women don't play football is because eleven of them would never wear the same outfit in public.
~ Phyllis Diller

The NFL draft is going to be this Thursday. That's a huge night for college players. That's the night they start being paid over the table.
~ Jay Leno, The Tonight Show, Apr. 24, 2012

If a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared legally dead.
~ Erma Bombeck

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

Sharks are as tough as those football fans who take their shirts off during games in Chicago in January, only more intelligent.
~ Dave Barry

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Good Advice

Set your goals high, and don't stop till you get there.
~ Bo Jackson

Build up your weaknesses until they become your strong points.
~ Knute Rockne

Do right. Do your best. Treat others as you want to be treated.
~ Lou Holtz

The principle is competing against yourself.
It's about self-improvement,
about being better than you were the day before.
~ Steve Young

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How to Play Football

You have to play this game like somebody just hit your mother with a two-by-four.
~ Dan Birdwell

If my mother put on a helmet and shoulder pads and a uniform that wasn't the same as the one I was wearing, I'd run over her if she was in my way. And I love my mother.
~ Bo Jackson

When in doubt, punt!
~ John Heisman

Speed is not your fastest, but your slowest man. No back can run faster than his interference.
~ Jock Sutherland

It's not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog!
~ Archie Griffin

When I played pro football, I never set out to hurt anyone deliberately - unless it was, you know, important, like a league game or something.
~ Dick Butkus

At the base of it was the urge, if you wanted to play football, to knock someone down, that was what the sport was all about, the will to win closely linked with contact.
~ George Plimpton

You need to play with supreme confidence, or else you'll lose again, and then losing becomes a habit.
Joe Paterno

Gentlemen, it is better to have died a small boy than to fumble this football.
~ John Heisman

Football is easy if you're crazy as hell.
~ Bo Jackson

I like linebackers. I collect 'em. You can't have too many good ones.
~ Bill Parcells

No talking. Talking doesn't play football,
talking isn't going to make you practice harder or play harder.
~ Ken Simonton

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Insightful

The only place you can win a football game is on the field, the only place you can lose it is in your hearts.
~ Darrell Royal

The function of football, soccer, basketball and other passion-sports in modern industrial society is the transference of boredom, frustration, anger and rage into socially acceptable forms of combat. A temporary subsitute for war; for nationalism; identification with something bigger than the self.
~ Edward Abbey

We are inclined to think that if we watch a football game or a baseball game, we have taken part in it.
~ John F. Kennedy

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It’s a Tough Sport

Football combines two of the worst things in American life. It is violence punctuated by committee meetings.
~ George Will

I like to believe that my best hits border on felonious assault.
~ Jack Tatum

This is a dirty business, that is why I go out and play with my heart. I feel like football players are overworked and underpaid compared to any other sports. This is like a nine to five. No guaranteed contracts, and that is the worst thing about it.
~ Terrell Owens, interview, Jul. 8, 2004

What's the toughest thing in a professional football game? It's being the mother of the quarterback -- toughest thing.
~ John Madden, MNF Football promo, Sept. 7, 2006

Rugby is a beastly game played by gentlemen, soccer is a gentlemen's game played by beasts and US football is a beastly game played by beasts.
~ Henry Blaha

If you're mad at your kid, you can either raise him to be a nose tackle or send him out to play on the freeway. It's about the same.
~ Bob Golic

I give so much of myself on Sunday. I drain all the life out of myself out there. I get paid to play, to win, to give the city pride, so maybe everybody can forget for a little while how hard life is.
~ Randall Cunningham

Violent ground-acquisition games such as football are in fact a crypto-fascist metaphor for nuclear war.
~ Robert Downey, Jr.

Pro football is like nuclear warfare. There are no winners, only survivors.
~ Frank Gifford

Football, wherein is nothing but beastly fury, and extreme violence, whereof proceedeth hurt, and consequently rancour and malice do remain with them that be wounded.
~ Thomas Elyot (1531)

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Leadership

If anything goes bad, I did it. If anything goes semi-good, we did it. If anything goes really good, then you did it. That's all it takes to get people to win football games for you.
~ Paul Bear Bryant

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Losing

I don't like to lose,
and that isn't so much because it is just a football game,
but because defeat means the failure to reach your objective.
~ Knute Rockne

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Motivation

Sometime, Rock, when the team's up against it, when things are going wrong and the breaks are beating the boys, tell them to go in there with all they've got and win just one for the Gipper. I don't know where I'll be then, Rock, but I'll know about it, and I'll be happy.
~ George Gipp, Whispered remark to his coach Knute Rockne as he lay dying from a viral throat infection.

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Perseverance

It's not whether you get knocked down, it's whether you get back up.
~ Vince Lombardi

Don’t give up at half time.
Concentrate on winning the second half.
~ Paul Bear Bryant

When you're playing against a stacked deck, compete even harder.
Show the world how much you'll fight for the winners circle.
If you do, someday the cellophane will crackle off a fresh pack,
one that belongs to you, and the cards will be stacked in your favor.
~ Pat Riley

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Positive Mental Attitude

There is no defense against a perfect pass. I can throw the perfect pass.
~ Dan Marino

Sure, the home-field is an advantage -- but so is having a lot of talent.
~ Dan Marino

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Practice

Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect.
~ Vince Lombardi

If you train hard, you'll not only be hard,
you'll be hard to beat.
~ Herschel Walker

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Sarcasm

He's a nice guy, but he played too much football with his helmet off.
~ Lyndon Baines Johnson (About Gerald Ford)

When it's third and ten, you can take the milk drinkers and I'll take the whiskey drinkers every time.
~ Max McGee

In Montana, they renamed a town after an all-time great, Joe Montana. Well, a town in Massachusetts changed their name to honor my guy Terry Bradshaw--Marblehead.
~ Howie Long

Hey, Warren, the Raiders signed you to a seven-year deal. I guess Bill Callahan was right --- they are the dumbest team in America.
~ Tom Arnold (On Warren Sapp)

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Say What?

I may be dumb, but I'm not stupid.
~ Terry Bradshaw

I've been big ever since I was little.
~ William "The Refrigerator" Perry

I didn't quit football because I failed a drug test, I failed a test because I was ready to quite football.
~ Rickey Williams

I want to rush for 1,000 or 1,500 yards, whichever comes first.
~ RB George Rogers

Hawaii doesn't win many games in the United States.
~ Lee Corso

I don't know whether I prefer Astroturf to grass. I never smoked Astroturf.
~ Joe Namath

We can't run. We can't pass. We can't stop the run. We can't stop the pass. We can't kick. Other than that, we're just not a very good football team right now.
~ Bruce Coslet

Nobody in football should be called a genius. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein.
~ Joe Theisman

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Self-Discipline

Without self-discipline, success is impossible, period.
~ Lou Holtz

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Sportsmanship

One man practicing sportsmanship is far better than fifty preaching it.
~ Knute Rockne

Show class, have pride, and display character.
If you do, winning takes care of itself.
~ Paul "Bear" Bryant

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Success

The only yardstick for success our society has is being a champion. No one remembers anything else.
~ John Madden

I learned that if you want to make it bad enough, no matter how bad it is, you can make it.
~ Gale Sayers

The road to Easy Street goes through the sewer.
~ John Madden

The difference between a successful person
and others is not a lack of strength,
not a lack of knowledge,
but rather in a lack of will.
~ Vince Lombardi

To succeed...
You need to find something to hold on to,
something to motivate you,
something to inspire you.
~ Tony Dorsett

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Success and Failure

Success is not forever and failure isn't fatal.
~ Don Shula

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Super Bowl

Men, I want you just thinking of one word all season. One word and one word only: Super Bowl.
~ Bill Peterson

I've got news for you. We're gonna win the game. I guarantee it.
~ Joe Namath, (Prior to Superbowl III)

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Teamwork

Individual commitment to a group effort - that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.
~ Vince Lombardi

If a team is to reach its potential,
each player must be willing to subordinate his personal goals
to the good of the team.
~ Bud Wilkinson

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Thoughts about the Coach

He's fair. He treats us all the same - like dogs.
~ Henry Jordan, about his football coach, Vince Lombardi, affectionately recalled on Lombardi's death.

God, as some cynic has said, is always on the side which has the best football coach.
~ Heywood Broun

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Winning

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

When you win, nothing hurts.
~ Joe Namath

If you can believe it, the mind can achieve it.
~ Ronnie Lott

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