Football Quotes

Huge list of some great quotes from your favorite people, movies, and shows.

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Here are some great quotes for you to enjoy.

List of quotes to use from shows and movies

I love coming up with cheesy quotes from shows and movies to put in cards and emails. Life goes so quick but it is still a good idea to put together a nice quotes list. Here are some Football Quotes items I have now:

  • Whispered remark to his coach Knute Rockne as he lay dying from a viral throat infection.
  • “Today I will do what others won't, so tomorrow I can accomplish what others can't” 
  • God, as some cynic has said, is always on the side which has the best football coach. Heywood Broun
  • “Once you learn to quit, it becomes a habit.” 
  • Academe, n. An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught. Academy, n. (from academe) A modern school where football is taught. Ambrose Bierce
  • “It's not the SIZE of the dog in the fight, but the size of the FIGHT in the dog”. – Archie Griffin, Cincinnati Bengals
  • “Some people think football [soccer] is a matter of life and death. I don't like that attitude. I can assure them it is much more serious than that.” 
  • “Your talent determines what you can do. Your motivation determines how much you are willing to do. Your attitude determines how well you do it.” -  Lou Holtz
  • The GREATEST mistake is to continue to PRACTICE a mistake- Bobby Bowden, Florida State
  • Pro football is like nuclear warfare. There are no winners, only survivors. Frank Gifford
  • “The ball laughs, radiant, in the air. He brings her down, puts her to sleep, showers her with compliments, dances with her, and seeing such things never before seen his admirers pity their unborn grandchildren who will never see them.” -  Eduardo Galeano
  • Football doesn't build character, it reveals character! Marv Levy
  • “wouldn't you like to make sure all those millions you give to Uncle Sam went to schools and hospitals instead of nuclear warheads?'
  • I don't expect to WIN enough games to be put on NCAA probation. I just want to WIN enough to warrant an investigation.- Bob Devaney, University of Nebraska
  • We didn't lose the game; we just ran out of time. Vince Lombardi
  • “An atheist is a man who watches a Notre Dame - Southern Methodist University game and doesn't care who wins.” Dwight D. Eisenhower
  • “You get hit the hardest when trying to run or hide from a problem. Like the defense on a football field, putting all focus on evading only one defender is asking to be blindsided.” -  Criss Jami, Killosophy
  • “Bobby Tom told me he’s not afraid of the Chargers’ defense.”
  • Losing doesn't make me want to quit, it makes me want to FIGHT that much HARDER- Bear Bryant, University of Alabama
  • Show me a good and gracious loser and I’ll show you a failure. Knute Rockne
  • Sharks are as tough as those football fans who take their shirts off during games in Chicago in January, only more intelligent. Dave Barry
  • Football is all very well a good game for rough girls, but not for delicate boys. Oscar Wilde
  • “We want different things. Men want to have sex with a woman. Then they want to have sex with another woman. And then another. Then they want to eat cornflakes and sleep for a while, and then they want to have sex with another woman, and another, until they die. Women,’ and I thought I’d better pick my words carefully when describing a gender I didn’t belong to, ‘want a relationship. They may not get it, or they may sleep with a lot of men before they do get it, but ultimately that’s what they want. That’s the goal. Men do not have goals. Natural ones. So they invent them, and put them at either end of a football pitch. And then they invent football. Or they pick fights, or try and get rich, or start wars, or come up with any number of daft bloody things to make up for the fact that they have no real goals.’
  • We would ACCOMPLISH many more things if we did not think of them as IMPOSSIBLE.- Vince Lombardi
  • There is NO substitute for WORK.- Vince Lombardi
  • 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
  • Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence. Erma Bombeck
  • “We’ll FIGHT ‘em until hell freezes over, then we’ll FIGHT ‘em on the ice.”- Dutch Meyer, TCU
  • You need to play with supreme confidence, or else you'll lose again, and then losing becomes a habit. Joe Paterno
  • You can learn a line from a win and a book from a defeat. Paul Brown
  • Winning isn't getting ahead of OTHERS. It's getting ahead of YOURSELF.- Roger Staubach, Dallas Cowboys
  • “The problem with winter sports is that - follow me closely here - they generally take place in winter.” -  Dave Barry
  • When you're GOOD at something, you'll tell everyone. When you're GREAT at something, they'll tell you.- Walter Payton, Chicago Bears
  • “football is like life - it requires perserverance, self-denial, hard work, sacrifice, dedication and respect for authority.” 
  • Once you LEARN to quit, it becomes a HABIT."- Vince Lombardi
  • “Football is the ballet of the masses.” -  Dmitri Shostakovich
  • 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
  • “If a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared legally dead.” -  Erma Bombeck
  • “Anybody who watches three games of football in a row should be declared brain dead. ” -  Erma Bombeck
  • “Ability is what you're capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.” -  Lou Holtz
  • 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
  • “Success comes in a lot of ways, but it doesn't come with money and it doesn't come with fame. It comes from having a meaning in your life, doing what you love and being passionate
  • “Bobby Tom’ll tell you he’s not afraid of nuclear war, so I wouldn’t put too much stock in his opinion.” -  Susan Elizabeth Phillips, It Had to Be You
  • 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
  • If winning isn't everything, why do they keep score? Vince Lombardi
  • The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will. Vince Lombardi
  • It's not whether you get knocked DOWN, it's whether you get UP."- Vince Lombardi
  • It takes 20 YEARS to build a reputation and 5 MINUTES to ruin it.- Peyton Manning, Denver Broncos
  • If a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared legally dead. Erma Bombeck
  • “The Enemy of the best is the good. If you're always settling with what's good, you'll never be the best.” 
  • Football is like life - it requires perseverance, self-denial, hard work, sacrifice, dedication and respect for authority. Vince Lombardi
  • “[T]his readiness to assume the guilt for the threats to our environment is deceptively reassuring: We like to be guilty since, if we are guilty, it all depends on us. We pull the strings of the catastrophe, so we can also save ourselves simply by changing our lives. What is really hard for us (at least in the West) to accept is that we are reduced to the role of a passive observer who sits and watches what our fate will be. To avoid this impotence, we engage in frantic, obsessive activities. We recycle old paper, we buy organic food, we install long-lasting light bulbs—whatever—just so we can be sure that we are doing something. We make our individual contribution like the soccer fan who supports his team in front of a TV screen at home, shouting and jumping from his seat, in the belief that this will somehow influence the game's outcome.” -  Slavoj Žižek
  • Gentlemen, it is better to have died a small boy than to fumble this football. John Heisman
  • You FAIL all of the time. But you aren't a FAILURE until you start blaming someone else- Bum Phillips, Houston Texans
  • “Pressure is something you feel when you don't know what the hell you're doing.” 
  • 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
  • Nobody who ever gave his best regretted it. George Halas
  • If you're not gonna go ALL the way, why go at ALL?- Joe Namath, New York Jets
  • A CHAMPION is simply someone who did NOT give up when they wanted to.- Tom Landry, Dallas Cowboys
  • The harder you WORK, the harder it is to SURRENDER- Marv Levy, Buffalo Bills
  • 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
  • It's the name on the FRONT of the jersey that matters most, not the one on the BACK.- Joe Paterno, Penn State
  • It's not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog! Archie Griffin
  • Today I will do what other WON'T, so tomorrow I can accomplish what others CAN'T – Jerry Rice, San Francisco 49ers
  • Your TALENT determines what you can do. Your MOTIVATION determines how much you are willing to do. Your ATTITUDE determines how well you do it.- Lou Holtz
  • If you want to WIN, do the ordinary things BETTER than anyone else does them day in and day out.- Chuck Noll, Pittsburgh Steelers
  • “In football everything is complicated by the presence of the opposite team.” -  Jean-Paul Sartre
  • If it doesn't matter who WINS or loses, then why do they keep SCORE.- Vince Lombardi, Green Bay Packers
  • “The same boys who got detention in elementary school for beating the crap out of people are now rewarded for it. They call it football.” -  Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak
  • For EVERY pass I caught in a game, I caught a THOUSAND in practice.- Don Hutson, Green Bay Packers
  • Violent ground-acquisition games such as football are in fact a crypto-fascist metaphor for nuclear war. Robert Downey, Jr.
  • If you can believe it, the mind can achieve it. Ronnie Lott
  • “Football: A sport that bears the same relation to education that bullfighting does to agriculture.” -  Elbert Hubbard
  • 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
  • Today, you've got a DECISION to make. You're gonna get BETTER or you're gonna get worse, but you're not gonna stay the same. Which will it BE?- Joe Paterno
  • Royal proclamation banning football from the streets of London, 1314.
  • “You're the only one that can put pressure on yourself... No one else can put pressure on you. It's self-inflicted. For me, I just want to go out and play football.” 
  • Football is easy if you're crazy as hell. Bo Jackson
  • 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
  • In order to WIN the game, you must first not LOSE it.- Chuck Noll
  • WINNING is not everything- but making the EFFORT to win is- Vince Lombardi
  • "If you're not IN the parade, you WATCH the parade. That's life.- Mike Ditka, Chicago Bears
  • Football is like life - it requires perseverance, self-denial, hard work, sacrifice, dedication and respect for authority. Vince Lombardi
  • All that I know most surely about morality and obligations I owe to football. Albert Camus
  • We (San Francisco) have football weather during baseball season, and baseball weather during football season. Herb Caen
  • Remember, TOMORROW is promised to no ONE.- Walter Payton
  • “I like football. I find its an exciting strategic game. Its a great way to avoid conversation with your family at Thanksgiving.” -  Craig Ferguson
  • “You got one guy going boom, one guy going whack, and one guy not getting in the endzone.” 
  • The man who complains about the way the ball BOUNCES is likely the one who DROPPED it. – Lou Holtz
  • “I didn’t answer. We were not buddies. We could not chat about the proximity of our offices, or football, or forgiveness.” -  Kimberly Novosel, Loved
  • The ONLY discipline that lasts, is SELF discipline""- Bum Phillips"
  • Work isn't WORK unless you would rather be DOING something else,- Don Shula, Miami Dolphins
  • 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
  • Aim for the sky and you’ll reach the ceiling. Aim for the ceiling and you’ll stay on the floor. Bill Shankly
  • “Anyone who's just driven 90 yards against huge men trying to kill them has earned the right to do Jazz hands. ” -  Craig Ferguson
  • “The thing about football - the important thing about football - is that it is not just about football.” -  Terry Pratchett, Unseen Academicals
  • In life, as in football,you won’t go far unless you know where the goalposts are. Arnold H. Glasow
  • If what you did YESTERDAY seems big, you haven't done anything TODAY.- Lou Holtz, Notre Dame
  • “Football combines two of the worst things in American life. It is violence punctuated by committee meetings.” -  George F. Will
  • How do you WIN? By getting average players to play good and good players to play great. That's how you WIN.- Bum Phillips
  • “Coaching is not how much you KNOW. It’s how much you can get players to DO.” - Bum Phillips
  • ‘That, of course, is the other main difference.” -  Hugh Laurie, The Gun Seller
  • 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
  • If any thing 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
  • Life is TEN percent what happens to you, and NINETY percent how you respond to it. – Lou Holtz

Football Quotes

Post of the list - Football Quotes