This collection of famous Vince Lombardi quotes is packed with wisdom from one of the greatest coaches and leaders in American sports history.
Vince Lombardi 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 never had a losing season as head coach in the NFL and is considered by many to be the greatest coach in football history.
It’s his attitude towards winning and success that made Lombardi such a special coach and you’ll often see Vince Lombardi quoted used by many of the great leaders today.
While he suffered a sudden death from cancer in 1970, his legacy still lives today.
The inspirational Vince Lombardi quotes below are his best on leadership, perfection, winning and success. Enjoy 🙂
Famous Vince Lombardi Quotes
1. “Life’s battles don’t always go to the stronger or faster man. But sooner or later, the man who wins is the man who thinks he can.” – Vince Lombardi
2. “If you aren’t fired up with enthusiasm, you’ll be fired with enthusiasm.” – Vince Lombardi
3. “A man can be as great as he wants to be. If you believe in yourself and have the courage, the determination, the dedication, the competitive drive, and if you are willing to sacrifice the little things in life and pay the price for the things that are worthwhile, it can be done.” – Vince Lombardi
4. “The greatest accomplishment is not in never falling, but in rising again after you fall.” – Vince Lombardi
5. “Show me a good loser, and I’ll show you a loser.” – Vince Lombardi
6. “In great attempts, it is glorious even to fail.” – Vince Lombardi
7. “The real glory is being knocked to your knees and then coming back. That’s real glory. That’s the essence of it.” – Vince Lombardi
8. “Some of us will do our jobs well and some will not, but we will be judged by only one thing — the result.” – Vince Lombardi
9. “The measure of who we are is what we do with what we have.” – Vince Lombardi
10. “It’s not whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you get up.” – Vince Lombardi
11. “Unless a man believes in himself and makes a total commitment to his career and puts everything he has into it – his mind, his body, his heart — what’s life worth to him?” – Vince Lombardi
12. “If you’ll not settle for anything less than your best, you will be amazed at what you can accomplish in your lives.” – Vince Lombardi
13. “Obstacles are what you see when you take your eyes off of the goal.” – Vince Lombardi
14. “Once you have established the goals you want and the price you’re willing to pay, you can ignore the minor hurts, the opponent’s pressure and the temporary failures.” – Vince Lombardi
15. “There is no substitute for work.” – Vince Lombardi
16. “When we place our dependence in God, we are unencumbered, and we have no worry. In fact, we may even be reckless, insofar as our part in the production is concerned. This confidence, this sureness of action, is both contagious and an aid to the perfect action. The rest is in the hands of God – and this is the same God, gentlemen, who has won all His battles up to now.” – Vince Lombardi
17. “I’ve never known a man worth his salt who, in the long run, deep down in his heart, didn’t appreciate the grind, the discipline.” – Vince Lombardi
18. “The good Lord gave you a body that can stand most anything. It’s your mind you have to convince.” – Vince Lombardi
19. “Mental toughness is many things and rather difficult to explain. Its qualities are sacrifice and self-denial. Also, most importantly, it is combined with a perfectly disciplined will that refuses to give in. It’s a state of mind – you could call it character in action.” – Vince Lombardi
20. “We would accomplish many more things if we did not think of them as impossible.” – Vince Lombardi
21. “You defeat defeatism with confidence.” – Vince Lombardi
22. “Individual commitment to a group effort – that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.” – Vince Lombardi
23. “Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!” – Vince Lombardi
24. “Don’t succumb to excuses. Go back to the job of making the corrections and forming the habits that will make your goal possible.” – Vince Lombardi
25. “A team that thinks it’s going to lose is going to lose.” – Vince Lombardi
26. “We know how rough the road will be, how heavy here the load will be, we know about the barricades that wait along the track, but we have see our soul ahead upon a certain goal ahead and nothing left from hell to sky shall ever turn us back.” – Vince Lombardi
27. “A man on top of the mountain didn’t just fall there.” – Vince Lombardi
28. “If you can’t get emotional about what you believe in your heart, you’re in the wrong business.” – Vince Lombardi
29. “Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow. Every job is a self portrait of the person who did it… Autograph your work with excellence.” – Vince Lombardi
30. “Want it; desire it; earn it; take it.” – Vince Lombardi
31. “Mistakes are the necessary steps in the learning process; once they have served their purpose, they should be forgotten and not repeated.” – Vince Lombardi
32. “What is defeat? Nothing but education nothing but the first step to getting better.” – Vince Lombardi
33. “Truth is knowing that your character is shaped by your everyday choices.” – Vince Lombardi
34. “If you are not making mistakes, you are not trying hard enough.” – Vince Lombardi
35. “Most people fail, not because of lack of desire, but, because of lack of commitment.” – Vince Lombardi
36. “If you really want something, you can have it if you’re willing to pay the price. And the price means you have to work better and harder than the next guy.” – Vince Lombardi
37. “If you cheat yourself in practice, you’ll cheat yourself in a game; and if you cheat in a game, you’ll cheat yourself for the rest of your life.” – Vince Lombardi
38. “Beat your opponent where he is strongest, and you demoralize him.” – Vince Lombardi
39. “As soon as error is corrected, it is important that the error be forgotten and only the successful attempts be remembered. Errors, mistakes, and humiliations are all necessary steps in the learning process. Once they have served their purpose, they should be forgotten. If we constantly dwell upon the errors, then the error or failure becomes the goal.” – Vince Lombardi
40. “Praise in public; criticize in private.” – Vince Lombardi
41. “When you are through trying to improve, you are through.” – Vince Lombardi
42. “One comes to believe whatever one repeats to oneself sufficiently often, whether the statement be true of false. It comes to be the dominating thought in one’s mind.” – Vince Lombardi
43. “The darkest moments of our lives are not to be buried and forgotten, rather they are a memory to be called upon for inspiration to remind us of the unrelenting human spirit and our capacity to overcome the intolerable.” – Vince Lombardi
44. “Nobody is hurt. Hurt is in the mind. If you can walk, you can run.” – Vince Lombardi
45. “I think good physical conditioning is essential to any occupation. A man who is physically fit performs better at any job. Fatigue makes cowards of us all.” – Vince Lombardi
46. “A man is known by the company he owns.” – Vince Lombardi
47. “Confidence is contagious; so is lack of confidence.” – Vince Lombardi
48. “Faithfulness and truth are the most sacred excellences and endowments of the human mind.” – Vince Lombardi
49. “Before I can embrace freedom, I should be aware of what duties I have.” – Vince Lombardi
50. “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.” – Vince Lombardi
51. “Once you learn to quit, it becomes a habit.” – Vince Lombardi
52. “Preparedness is the ultimate confidence builder.” – Vince Lombardi
53. “Champions make their own luck.” – Vince Lombardi
54. “The harder you work, the harder it is to surrender.” – Vince Lombardi
55. “Mental toughness is Spartanism, with all its qualities of self-denial, sacrifice, dedication, fearlessness, and love.” – Vince Lombardi
56. “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.” – Vince Lombardi
57. “Inches make champions.” – Vince Lombardi
Vince Lombardi Quotes On Winning
58. “Winning isn’t everything – It’s the only thing.” – Vince Lombardi
59. “Winners never quit and quitters never win.” – Vince Lombardi
60. “People who work together will win, whether it be against complex football defenses, or the problems of modern society.” – Vince Lombardi
61. “Winning is not a sometime thing; it’s an all 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 habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.” – Vince Lombardi
62. “Winning isn’t everything, but wanting to win is.” – Vince Lombardi
63. “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
64. “It’s easy to have faith in yourself and have discipline when you’re a winner, when you’re number one. What you’ve got to have is faith and discipline when you’re not yet a winner.” – Vince Lombardi
65. “I would say that the quality of each man’s life is the full measure of that man’s commitment of excellence and victory — whether it be football, whether it be business, whether it be politics or government or what have you.” – Vince Lombardi
66. “To the winner, there is 100-percent elation, 100-percent fun, 100-percent laughter; and yet the only thing left to the loser is resolution and determination.” – Vince Lombardi
67. “Winning is a habit. Watch your thoughts, they become your beliefs. Watch your beliefs, they become your words. Watch your words, they become your actions. Watch your actions, they become your habits. Watch your habits, they become your character.” – Vince Lombardi
68. “If you don’t think you’re a winner, you don’t belong here.” – Vince Lombardi
69. “All right Mister, let me tell you what winning means… You’re willing to go longer, work harder, give more than anyone else.” – Vince Lombardi
70. “We run to win, not just to be in the race.” – Vince Lombardi
71. “If it doesn’t matter who wins or loses, then why do they keep score?” – Vince Lombardi
72. “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing. If you can shrug off a loss, you can never be a winner!” – Vince Lombardi
73. “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.” – Vince Lombardi
Vince Lombardi Quotes On Leadership
74. “Leaders are made, they are not born. They are made by hard effort, which is the price which all of us must pay to achieve any goal that is worthwhile.” – Vince Lombardi
75. “They call it coaching but it is teaching. You do not just tell them… You show them the reasons.” – Vince Lombardi
76. “Teams do not go physically flat, they go mentally stale.” – Vince Lombardi
77. “Leadership is not just one quality, but rather a blend of many qualities; and while no one individual possesses all of the needed talents that go into leadership, each man can develop a combination to make him a leader.” – Vince Lombardi
78. “The leader can never close the gap between himself and the group. If he does, he is no longer what he must be. He must walk a tightrope between the consent he must win and the control he must exert.” – Vince Lombardi
79. “It is essential to understand that battles are primarily won in the hearts of men. Men respond to leadership in a most remarkable way and once you have won his heart, he will follow you anywhere.” – Vince Lombardi
80. “One must not hesitate to innovate and change with the times. The leader who stands still is not progressing, and he will not remain a leader for long.” – Vince Lombardi
81. “To me, a leader is a visionary that energizes others. This definition of leadership has two key dimensions: a) creating the vision of the future, and b) inspiring others to make the vision a reality.” – Vince Lombardi
82. “Leadership rests not only upon ability, not only upon capacity; having the capacity to lead is not enough. The leader must be willing to use it. His leadership is then based on truth and character. There must be truth in the purpose and will power in the character.” – Vince Lombardi
83. “No leader, however great, can long continue unless he wins battles. The battle decides all.” – Vince Lombardi
84. “Leadership is based on a spiritual quality; the power to inspire, the power to inspire others to follow.” – Vince Lombardi
85. “Coaches who can outline plays on a black board are a dime a dozen. The ones who win get inside their player and motivate.” – Vince Lombardi
Vince Lombardi Quotes About Perfection & Excellence
86. “We will be relentless in our pursuit for perfection. We won’t ever be perfect – but in the process we will achieve greatness.” – Vince Lombardi
87. “Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect.” – Vince Lombardi
88. “Choose to achieve perfection. We won’t achieve it because perfection is impossible. But by pursuing perfection, we will achieve excellence.” – Vince Lombardi
89. “The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor.” – Vince Lombardi
90. “Most important of all, to be successful in life demands that a man make a personal commitment to excellence and to victory, even though the ultimate victory can never be completely won. Yet that victory might be pursued and wooed with every fiber of our body, with every bit of our might and all our effort. And each week, there is a new encounter; each day, there is a new challenge.” – Vince Lombardi
Vince Lombardi Success Quotes
91. “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
92. “To achieve success, whatever the job we have, we must pay a price.” – Vince Lombardi
93. “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.” – Vince Lombardi
94. “The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary.” – Vince Lombardi
95. “Once a man has made a commitment to a way of life, he puts the greatest strength in the world behind him. It’s something we call heart power. Once a man has made this commitment, nothing will stop him short of success.” – Vince Lombardi
96. “Success demands singleness of purpose.” – Vince Lombardi
97. “The successful man is himself. To be successful, you’ve got to be honest with yourself.” – Vince Lombardi
98. “One’s desire, not ability, determines success.” – Vince Lombardi
99. “There’s only one way to succeed in anything, and that is to give it everything. I do, and I demand that my players do.” – Vince Lombardi
100. “Mental toughness is essential to success.” – Vince Lombardi
101. “Success is like anything worthwhile. It has a price. You have to pay the price to win and you have to pay the price to get to the point where success is possible. Most important, you must pay the price to stay there.” – Vince Lombardi
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