Famous Sports Quotes

Born Cassius Clay, Muhammad Ali stung like a bee not only with his punches, but with his words and from time to time his words would also float like a butterfly. Famous quotes from the greatest fighter the sport of boxing has ever known

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I’m so fast that last night I turned off the light switch in my hotel room and was in bed before the room was dark.
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I’m the most recognized and loved man that ever lived cuz there weren’t no satellites when Jesus and Moses were around, so people far away in the villages didn’t know about them.
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If they can make penicillin out of moldy bread, they can sure make something out of you.
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If you even dream of beating me you’d better wake up and apologize.
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It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe.
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It’s hard to be humble, when you’re as great as I am.
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It’s just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up.
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It’s lack of faith that makes people afraid of meeting challenges, and I believed in myself.
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It’s not bragging if you can back it up.
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It’s the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief. And once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen.
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Life is a gamble. You can get hurt, but people die in plane crashes, lose their arms and legs in car accidents; people die every day. Same with fighters: some die, some get hurt, some go on. You just don’t let yourself believe it will happen to you.
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My toughest fight was with my first wife.
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My way of joking is to tell the truth. That’s the funniest joke in the world.
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No one knows what to say in the loser’s locker room.
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Old age is just a record of one’s whole life.
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Only a man who knows what it is like to be defeated can reach down to the bottom of his soul and come up with the extra ounce of power it takes to win when the match is even.
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Rivers, ponds, lakes and streams - they all have different names, but they all contain water. Just as religions do - they all contain truths.
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Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.
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Silence is golden when you can’t think of a good answer.
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Superman don’t need no seat belt.
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Quotes about tennis

The serve was invented so that the net could play.  ~Bill Cosby

 
Though your game is hardly the best
You can fray your opponent’s nerves
By methodically bouncing the ball
At least ten times before your serves.
~Arnold J. Zarett

 
Why has slamming a ball with a racquet become so obsessive a pleasure for so many of us?  It seems clear to me that a primary attraction of the sport is the opportunity it gives to release aggression physically without being arrested for felonious assault.  ~Nat Hentoff

 
But that won’t give me a free hand to hold the beer.  ~Billy Carter, while being taught a two-handed shot.

 
The primary conception of tennis is to get the ball over the net and at the same time to keep it within bounds of the court; failing this, within the borders of the neighborhood.  ~Elliot Chaze

 
A perfect combination of violent action taking place in an atmosphere of total tranquility.  ~Billie Jean King,

 
Tennis begins with love.  ~Author Unknown

 
What a polite game tennis is.  The chief word in it seems to be “sorry” and admiration of each other’s play crosses the net as frequently as the ball.  ~J.M. Barrie

 
Tennis is not a gentle game.  Psychologically, it is vicious.  That people are only just beginning to come to terms with this fact illustrates just how big a con trick has been perpetrated on the non-playing tennis public - and even a few players, usually losing players - for decades.  ~Richard Evans

 
The cunning competitor plays on the other party’s guilt.  Continuously praise your opponent’s shots, and you’ll notice how he begins to press.  Self-beratement also serves to balance a guilty conscience for being successful and makes your opponent disturbed for upsetting you so.  If on occasion you call one of your opponent’s “out” shots “in,” then later on you can innocently call an “in” shot “out” on a crucial play.  Practice saying “Good try,” sincerely; then you can call a lot of close shots “out” and get away with it.  ~Theodor Saretsky

 
Speed in tennis is a strange mixture of intuition, guesswork, footwork and hair-trigger reflexes.  Many of the players famed for quickness on court would finish dead last in a field of schoolgirls in a race over any distance more than ten yards.  ~Eugene Scott

 
In tennis the addict moves about a hard rectangle and seeks to ambush a fuzzy ball with a modified snow-shoe.  ~Elliot Chaze

 
It’s difficult for most people to imagine the creative process in tennis.  Seemingly it’s just an athletic matter of hitting the ball consistently well within the boundaries of the court.  That analysis is just as specious as thinking that the difficulty in portraying King Lear on stage is learning all the lines.  ~Virginia Wade

 
It’s one-on-one out there, man.  There ain’t no hiding.  I can’t pass the ball.  ~Pete Sampras

Tennis belongs to the individualistic past - a hero, or at most a pair of friends or lovers, against the world.  ~Jacques Barzun

 
I have always considered tennis as a combat in an arena between two gladiators who have their racquets and their courage as their weapons.  ~Yannick Noah

 
Love is nothing in tennis, but in life it’s everything.  ~Author Unknown

 
Tennis is an addiction that once it has truly hooked a man will not let him go.  ~Russell Lynes

 
Ladies, here’s a hint.  If you’re up against a girl with big boobs, bring her to the net and make her hit backhand volleys.  That’s the hardest shot for the well-endowed.  ~Billie Jean King

 
Good shot, bad luck, and hell are the five basic words to be used in a game of tennis, though these, of course, can be slightly amplified.  ~Virginia Graham, Say Please, 1949

 
When I was 40, my doctor advised me that a man in his 40s shouldn’t play tennis.  I heeded his advice carefully and could hardly wait until I reached 50 to start again.  ~Hugo L. Black

 
An otherwise happily married couple may turn a mixed doubles game into a scene from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.  ~Rod Laver

Coaching inspiration like no other. Herb Brooks Quotes

Legs feed the wolf.
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If you give 99 percent, you will make my job very easy.
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And maybe I’m a little smarter now than I was before for all the stupid things I’ve done.
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Everything goes in cycles, to a degree.
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Great moments are born from great oppurtunities.
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I’m a dreamer.
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If I’d have went on the ice when this thing happened, someone would have speared me or something. It’s a great feeling of accomplishment and pride. They had to do it; it was their moment.
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Maybe I’m sort of like the players - there’s still a lot of little boy in me.
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If I’d have went on the ice when this thing happened, someone would have speared me or something. It’s a great feeling of accomplishment and pride. They had to do it; it was their moment.
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You know, Willie Wonka said it best: We are the makers of dreams, the dreamers of dreams. We should be dreaming. We grew up as kids having dreams, but now we’re too sophisticated as adults, as a nation. We stopped dreaming. We should always have dreams. I’m a dreamer.
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You’re looking for players whose name on the front of the sweater is more important than the one on the back. I look for these players to play hard, to play smart and to represent their country.
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Nine out of ten time we play this team, the would beat us. But not tonight because tonight is our night, tonight we win.”
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This is your moment. You’re meant to be here.
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We should be dreaming. We grew up as kids having dreams, but now we’re too sophisticated as adults, as a nation. We stopped dreaming. We should always have dreams.
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You’re playing worse and worse every day and right now you’re playing like it’s next month.

Mark Twain said, “Golf is a good walk spoiled.”
Golf Phenom Tiger Woods is walking and laughing all the way to the bank. I think he likes his long walks.

Quotes by Tiger Woods:

I get to play golf for a living. What more can you ask for - getting paid for doing what you love.
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I love to play golf, and that’s my arena. And you can characterize it and describe it however you want, but I have a love and a passion for getting that ball in the hole and beating those guys.
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I want to be what I’ve always wanted to be: dominant.
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I’m addicted. I’m addicted to golf.
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I’m aware if I’m playing at my best I’m tough to beat. And I enjoy that.
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I’m not as far along as Jack Nicklaus was at this age, but I’m trying.
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If money titles meant anything, I’d play more tournaments. The only thing that means a lot to me is winning. If I have more wins than anybody else and win more majors than anybody else in the same year, then it’s been a good year.
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If you are given a chance to be a role model, I think you should always take it because you can influence a person’s life in a positive light, and that’s what I want to do. That’s what it’s all about.
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It will always be the ball and me.
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Michael left because of the Bulls’ management, not because he’d lost his love of playing the game.
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My main focus is on my game.
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You can always become better.
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And I don’t cook, either. Not as long as they still deliver pizza.
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As a kid, I might have been psycho, I guess, but I used to throw golf balls in the trees and try and somehow make par from them. I thought that was fun.
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Don’t force your kids into sports. I never was. To this day, my dad has never asked me to go play golf. I ask him. It’s the child’s desire to play that matters, not the parent’s desire to have the child play. Fun. Keep it fun.
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Green and black go well together, don’t they?
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Hockey is a sport for white men. Basketball is a sport for black men. Golf is a sport for white men dressed like black pimps.
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I did envisage being this successful as a player, but not all the hysteria around it off the golf course.

Jackie Robinson changed the game of baseball forever and in that changed the lives of all of us. Some of what Jackie Robinson had to say follows

“I’m not concerned with your liking or disliking me… All I ask is that you respect me as a human being.”

“It kills me to lose. If I’m a troublemaker, and I don’t think that my temper makes me one, then it’s because I can’t stand losing. That’s the way I am about winning, all I ever wanted to do was finish first.”

“I’ve been riding on cloud nine since the election (HOF), and I don’t think I’ll ever come down. Today, everything is complete.”

“Life is not a spectator sport. If you’re going to spend your whole life in the grandstand just watching what goes on, in my opinion you’re wasting your life.”

“Pop flies, in a sense, are just a diversion for a second baseman. Grounders are his stock trade.”

“There’s not an American in this country free until every one of us is free.”

“The right of every American to first-class citizenship is the most important issue of our time.”

“The way I figured it, I was even with baseball and baseball with me. The game had done much for me, and I had done much for it.”

“You’re going to be a great player, kid (to Mickey Mantle).”

“When he (Richard Nixon) took the oath of office, he pledged to be the president for 100% of the people, and I challenge the president to prove that he is being the president for 100% of the people.”
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Famous Quotes about hockey by players, coaches and fans.

A puck is a hard rubber disc that hockey players strike when they can’t hit one another.
- Jimmy Cannon

PLANNING VS REACTING: How organized are you? Could your life be called a ballet or is it a hockey game (or a pin-ball machine)? However, even in a hockey game, good hockey player learn to skate to where the puck WILL BE.
- Anonymous

Hockey is a tough game. With all the talk and everything that’s going on right now, it frightens me a little bit that we are giving our players an excuse not to hit. I just hope that we don’t take that out of our game at the pro level.
- Bobby Orr

Certainly we’re not satisfied with just winning games. We’ve been playing some pretty good hockey, but we think we can play much better.
- François de la Rochefoucauld

Street hockey is great for kids.It’s energetic, competitive, and skilful.And best of all it keeps them off the street.
- Author Unknown

I don’t like my hockey sticks touching other sticks, and I don’t like them crossing one another, and I kind of have them hidden in the corner. I put baby powder on the ends. I think it’s essentially a matter of taking care of what takes care of you.
- Wayne Gretzky

Basketball, hockey and track meets are action heaped upon action, climax upon climax, until the onlooker’s responses become deadened. Baseball is for the leisurely afternoons of summer and for the unchanging dreams.
- Roger Kahn

When I was shooting Drive Me Crazy, I wanted to go out with the rest of the cast and stay up late and play air hockey. I just wanted to have fun.
- Melissa Joan Hart

Hockey players have fire in their hearts and ice in their veins.
- Anonymous

In terms of soccer, it wasn’t really a thing that girls did. In England it more kind of Net Ball and Hockey and stuff like that in athletics. It’s to each their own, really.
- Parminder Nagra

Hockey players wear numbers because you can’t always identify the body with dental records.
- Anonymous

Hockey captures the essence of Canadian experience in the New World. In a land so inescapably and inhospitably cold, hockey is the chance of life, and an affirmation that despite the deathly chill of winter we are alive.
- Stephen Leacock

Hockey is a sport for white men. Basketball is a sport for black men. Golf is a sport for white men dressed like black pimps.
- Tiger Woods

Hockey belongs to the Cartoon Network, where a person can be pancaked by an ACME anvil, then expanded - accordion-style - back to full stature, without any lasting side effect.
- Steve Rushin

I went to a fight the other night and a hockey game broke out.
- Rodney Dangerfield

All hockey players are bilingual. They know English and profanity.
- Gordie Howe

Hockey captures the essence of Canadian experience in the New World. In a land so inescapably and inhospitably cold, hockey is the chance of life, and an affirmation that despite the deathly chill of winter we are alive.
- Stephen Leacock

A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.
- Wayne Gretzky

Ice hockey is a form of disorderly conduct in which the score is kept.
- Doug Larson

Baseball happens to be a game of cumulative tension but football, basketball and hockey are played with hand grenades and machine guns.
- John Leonard

High sticking, tripping, slashing, spearing, charging, hooking, fighting, unsportsmanlike conduct, interference, roughing… everything else is just figure skating.
- Anonymous

Hockey is probably one of the most expensive sports. You have to have a place to play. You have to have the proper equipment. You have to have the transportation to get there.
- Mark Wahlberg

Hockey is the original extreme sport.
- Tom Ward

Playing hockey, there were a lot of guys bigger than me, so I knew I was going to get hit and have to deal with it. Gotta hit back.
- Mike Weir

I had a hockey puck and stick-the only ones in town. I definitely would have played hockey ahead of football, had it been available.
- Merlin Olsen

When you think of hockey, when you think of Canada, you think of Wayne Gretzky.
- Joe Sakic

By the age of 18, the average American has witnessed 200,000 acts of violence on television, most of them occurring during Game 1 of the NHL playoff series.
Steve Rushin

Half the game is mental; the other half is being mental.
Jim McKenny

Hockey is murder on ice.
Jim Murray

Quotes by former NBA star and current NY Knicks coach, Isiah Thomas

My first choice was to work it out with Larry Brown. I needed Larry and I gave him 50 million bucks. This is asituation that I’m in and I’ll handle it and I’ll make it work.
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My greatest gift that I have in life is basketball.
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My thought has always been completion. Maybe you have to rebound better, shoot better, hit free throws, handle the ball, defend better. You have to do all those things in the course of a game.
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One word is passion. They are passionate about their team. We win we’re great, lose and we’re the worst. But you can’t overreact to the fans.
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That challenge of working through it, keeping guys motivated, keeping the group together, overcoming obstacles, all of that; I really got into it.
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The biggest difference is in the leadership. It was better for us. We had more coaches and mentors to help us. A lot of the younger players today suffer from a lack of direction.
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The type of athletes we draft still need types of versatility on the defense side of the ball, run the offense. You should still be concerned on the offense side of the ball.
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There is not a player on this roster now, who doesn’t understand or believe that if he is not performing, I don’t have problems getting rid of them.
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We decided to either try trades or just go with older players. If you do that and let contracts expire you can be in the lottery for about four or five years and expect your fans to be patient.
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We decided to go the way of trading and getting younger players.
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We needed Larry Brown. Me more so than anyone. I wanted Larry to do a great job for us and I thought he would and I thought he could.
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We were going to have to experiment, and we needed to develop our younger players. And a lot of the changes were because of injuries. But that’s where I give a lot of credit to the group in terms of being able to maintain things.
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Where we sit now, I don’t think we have the luxury of the 20 teams before us. I think we are going after the best players we can get on the board.
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You have to develop your whole game to completion.
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You’re always at war with the guy on the other bench. You pick up their patterns. That’s what I got the most out of this year. I know what other coaches like to do.
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All of those things had been talked about, suggested, rumored, as a manager and as a member of the Knicks organization, I couldn’t allow myself to think that way or believe that.
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Everybody wants to be perfect.
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How can I tell the eighth or ninth man on the team that I want you to work hard every day and I want you to improve and get better, but while you’re doing that you’re not going to get any minutes?
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I believe in the players and what I’ve put together and we’ll make it work.
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I can’t think of any NBA team over the last few years that lost three starters. And we replaced them basically with three guys who really haven’t played in this league.
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I love what I’m doing.
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I want to see if the player communicates with his teammates and how he responds to coaching. Another thing to remember is players’ bodies can develop better than their skills.
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I would still like to get more athletic and have players that can really cover what’s going on in the game.
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I’ll continue to try to make changes to better improve the team.
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I’ve been in pressure situations before. All my life it’s been about pressure and having to get it done. Just because you say it publicly, it does not make me afraid of it or make me shy away from it.
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If all I’m remembered for is being a good basketball player, then I’ve done a bad job with the rest of my life.
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If it fills a need, if it fills a rebuilding situation. And my goal is to fill and rebuild and I am not going to be shortsighted.
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If you want consistency, then you perform. This is a performance job. You get paid to perform. Your money is guaranteed, but your minutes are not.
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Instead of me telling them what they need to work on, I wanted to hear from them what they needed to work on.
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It was important to me to believe, because if I don’t believe, how can I expect them to believe?
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It wasn’t about the X’s and the O’s and the strategy; it was more about keeping 12 guys focused and committed to a task. That group dynamic, and then helping them to grow as people and basketball players.
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It’s been made clear to all of us that a player should never leave the playing field and go into the stands.
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It’s hard to get people to overcome the thought that they have to take care of themselves first. It’s hard to get players to give in to the group and become selfless as opposed to selfish.
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Larry Brown thought Steve Francis was a Larry Brown type of player.
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Most players in this league say they want consistency.
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Casey Stengel Quotes

“Lefthanders have more enthusiasm for life. They sleep on the wrong side of the bed and their head gets more stagnant on that side.”

“The way our luck has been lately, our fellas have been getting hurt on their days off.”

“We are in such a slump that even the ones that are drinkin’ aren’t hittin’.”

“You look up and down the bench and you have to say to yourself, ‘Can’t anybody here play this game?’”

“There comes a time in every man’s life and I’ve had plenty of them.”

“I don’t know if he throws a spitball, but he sure spits on the ball.”

“A shave, please, but don’t cut my throat. I may want to do it later myself.”

“Look at him. He doesn’t drink, he doesn’t smoke, he doesn’t chew and he doesn’t stay out late — and he still can’t hit.”

“Now there’s three things you can do in a baseball game: You can win or you can lose or it can rain.”

“Bobby Brown reminds me of a fellow who’s been hitting for 12 years and fielding one.”

“See that fella over there? He’s 20 years old. In 10 years, he’s got a chance to be a star. Now that fella over there, he’s 20 years old, too. In 10 years he’s got a chance to be 30.”

“I stayed up last night and watched the Republican Convention all night long. I watched all of them talk, and listened to them and seen them and I’m not interested in politics. If you watch them and listen to them you can find out why.”

“You gotta lose ‘em some of the time. When you do, lose ‘em right.”

Casey Stengel on Wikipedia

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“It ain’t over till it’s over.” and 49 other Yogi Berra Quotes
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You got to be careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there.
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You got to be very careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there.
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You should always go to other people’s funerals, otherwise, they won’t come to yours.
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You wouldn’t have won if we’d beaten you.
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You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you are going, because you might not get there.
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You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there.
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I never said most of the things I said.
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I think Little League is wonderful. It keeps the kids out of the house.
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I wish I had an answer to that because I’m tired of answering that question.
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I’m a lucky guy and I’m happy to be with the Yankees. And I want to thank everyone for making this night necessary.
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I’m not going to buy my kids an encyclopedia. Let them walk to school like I did.
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If people don’t want to come out to the ball park, nobody’s gonna stop ‘em.
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If the world was perfect, it wouldn’t be.
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If you ask me anything I don’t know, I’m not going to answer.
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If you come to a fork in the road, take it.
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If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.
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In baseball, you don’t know nothing.
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In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.
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It ain’t the heat, it’s the humility.
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It gets late early out there.
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It was impossible to get a conversation going, everybody was talking too much.
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It’s like deja-vu, all over again.
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It’s pretty far, but it doesn’t seem like it.
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Little League baseball is a very good thing because it keeps the parents off the streets.
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Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.
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Slump? I ain’t in no slump… I just ain’t hitting.
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So I’m ugly. So what? I never saw anyone hit with his face.
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Quotes about volleyball by atheltes and coaches.  Check out April’s Beach Volleyball Log for volleyball news updates.
My dream was to be either a volleyball player or a veterinarian.
- Gisele

Give it your all on the sprawl, Drop a pancake and keep it clean, Find the target, put ‘em on the hook then dish it up, flare and catch some air, Check the set, bring some heat and watch them bail!

Volleyball is 20 percent luck and 80 percent style.

If volleyball was easy it would be called football.

VolleyBall Life :
1. we can get it up in any position
2. our shorts are tighter than our game
3. we can handle a little floor burn every now and then
4. we’re always gonna hit it hard
5. we’ll play with you indoors or outdors
6. balls never hit the floor and we’ll get a touch on all of them that come our way
7. we can play with 2 or 6 other people
8. we’ve got quick feet and quick hands
9. we like it quick hard and fast
10. and no matter what we gonna beat you up
…because volleyball is more than just a sport, it’s a way of life

Once I got past my anger toward my mother, I began to excel in volleyball and modelling.
- Gabrielle Reece

I played varsity on all of them for four years. I’m 5′9 and that’s not that tall for a center so I was a forward. I loved playing volleyball and basketball and track I was good at, but it stressed me out.
- Bridgette Wilson

I’ve worked too hard and too long to let anything stand in the way of my goals. I will not let my teammates down and I will not let myself down.
- Mia Hamm

I grew up on the beach and played side-out scoring all my life, but rally scoring is better for our sport. There is pressure on every play. You can’t make a mistake, but that also means your opponent can’t make a mistake. It makes the matches more exciting to watch.
- Holly McPeak

You touch every other ball and, if you screw up, you only have one more person to back you up. You can’t go hide in the corner.
- Kerri Walsh

Anyone can support a team that is winning - it takes no courage. But to stand behind a team to defend a team when it is down and really needs you, that takes a lot of courage.
- Bart Starr

I got the nickname Spitfire for a reason. I burned inside to play volleyball. I loved the competition of it.
- Summer Altice

Volleyball is a dandy game and more besides.
- Peter Wardale
Volleyball is a Jewish sport. It’s fun, and nobody can get hurt.
- Gail Parent

Volleyball is my life, everything else is just details.

A mere forty years ago, beach volleyball was just beginning. No bureaucrat would have invented it, and that’s what freedom is all about.
- Newt Gingrich

It takes a lot of hard work and dedication just like any pro sport. Especially for beach volleyball you don’t have to be tall or as fast as other sports. You just have to have the skills.
- Misty May

Volleyball is the sport through which I am able to express my God-given talents of being an athlete. It is a sport which involves relating, pushing, and encouraging your teammates.

Volleyball anchored me at a time in my life when I needed it. It gave me a reason for being this big, big girl.
- Gabrielle Reece