"You can't let praise or criticism get to you. It's a weakness to get caught up in either one."

"Being average means you are as close to the bottom as you are to the top."

"It has been said that you will be hurt occasionally if you trust too much. This may be true, but you will live in torment if you do not trust enough."

"A good banker isn't careless with pennies; a good leader isn't sloppy about details."

"If you stay intent and your ability warrants it, you will eventually reach the top of the mountain."

"Promise yourself to be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind."

"We don't control what the other team does to prepare. We can only control what we do to prepare."

"You can do more good by being good than any other way."

"No matter how fine a person is at anything, he can always improve. No one ever reaches maximal potential."

"We can agree to disagree, but we don't need to be disagreeable."

" A person must be interested in finding the best way, not in having their own way."

"Wining takes talent, to repeat takes character."

"There is a choice you have to make, in everything."

"The road to getting there is the most important part. Once you arrive, the journey is over."

"Don't let what you cannot do interfe with what you can do."

John Wooden stressed what he called "the four laws of learning": explanation, demonstraion, correction, and repetition.

"Cervantes said the journey's better than the end. Practices, to me, were the journey."

"A coach is someone who can give correction without causing resentment."

"The most important key to achieving great success is to decide upon your goal and launch, get started, take action, move."

"Promise to think only the best, to work only for the best, and to expect only the best from yourself and other."

"The true test of a man's character is what he does when no one is watching."

"There is no subsitute for hard work. If you're looking for the easy way, if you're looking for the trick, you might get by for a while, but you will not be developing the talents that lie within you. There is simply no substitute for work."

"Forget favors given: remember those received."

"When you come on the basketball floor each afternoon, for the next approximately two hours, you are a basketball player. That's all. I am looking at you and thinking of you as a basketball player. That is all. As soon as practice is over, you are not a basketball player. You are a student at UCLA."

"Be at your best when your best in needed."

"When you're through learning, you're through."

"I don't believe in praying to win. The prayer I'd like to hear beforehand is for nobody to get hurt and that you participate to the best of your own individual ability."

"A player who makes a team great is much more valuable than a great player."

Industriousness: "You can work without being industrious, but you can not be industrious without work."

"Coach believed the court was his classroom and basketball was a metaphor for life."
Steve Lavin - St. John's University

"It is most difficult, in my mind to separate any success, whether it be in your profession, your family, as in my case, in basketball from religion."

"If there's anything you could point out where I was a little different, it was the fact that I never mentioned winning."

"It's what you learn after you know it all that counts."

John Wooden's 12 Lessons in Leadership #4: Emotion is your enemy.

"Camaraderie is a spirit of goodwill that exists between individuals and members of a group- comrades-in-arms. Think of how much you'll given when asked to do so by someone you respect and with whom you shar camaraderie. You'll give plenty - everything you've got. Those under your leadership will do the same if you show them this part of yourself."

"The smallest good deed is better than the best intention."

"Don't let yesterday take up too much of today."

"Never try to be better than someone else. Learn from others, and try to be the best you can be. Success is the by-product of that preparation."

"Failing to plan is planning to fail."

"Promise to wear a cheerfull appearance at all time and give every person you meet a smile."

"Although there is no progress without change, not all change is progress."'

"Balance is one of the most important things in basketball and in life as well."

"Never make excuses. Your friends don't need them and your fooes won't believe them."

"Team spirit means you are willing to sacrifice personal considerations for the wellfare of all. That defines a team player."

Intentness: "Its the ability to resist temptation and stay the course, to concentrate on your objective with determination and resolve. Impatience is wanting too much too soon. Intentness doesn't involve wanting something. It involves doing something often for a very long time."

"Don't let making a living prevent you from making a life."

"Earn the right to be proud and confident."

"I say a coach has the greatest ally in the world if he isn't afraid to use it, and that's the bench."

"When everyone is thinking the same, no one is thinking."

"As long as you try your best, you are never a failure. That is, unless you blame others."

It takes 10 hands to make a basket.

"Motivating through fear may work in the short term to get people to do something, but over the long run I believe personal pride is a much greater motivator. It produces far better results that last for a much longer time."

"Teamwork is not a preference, it is a requirement."

"Beating an opponent is not a goal, but a by-product of success."

"Absolutely,...One of the things I used to say is there is absolutely no excuse for a good offensive man to not be a good defensive man. You have to be committed to it."

"People come up to me and say, 'Aren't you proud of all these players who who went pro?' I am, but no more so that those who played for me, didn't play pro ball and still made a success of themselves."

"It's not so important who starts the game, but who finished it."

"Control your "self" so others won't have to do it for you."

"Never mistake activity for achievement."

"The road to real achievement is usually bumpy and long, but you do not give up. You may have setbacks. You may have to start over. You may have to change your method. You may have to go around, or over, or under. You may have to back up and get another start. But you do not QUIT. You stay the course."

"Don't try to better than somebody else, but never cease trying to be the best you can be."

"Do not have one foot in yesterday and one foot in tomorrow. Keep both feet in today because that's how you get to tomorrow."

"If you're not making mistakes, then you're not doing anything. I'm positive that a doer makes mistakes."