Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

All Quotes by author - Mike Krzyzewski

" A basketball team is like the five fingers on your hand. If you can get them all together, you have a fist. That's how I want you to play. "

" Actually, the Kentucky moment was better than winning the two National Championships, because it was the epitome of what I try to get from a team in a crisis situation. "

" Basketball was not my main sport in grade school, or even the first year of high school. "

" Each group and each youngster is different. As a leader or coach, you get to know what they need. "

" Even though we want huge individual egos, our collective ego is unbelievable. "

" Everybody wants to take responsibility when you win, but when you fail, all these fingers are pointing. "

" First of all, what happens is, when you're good at something, you spend a lot of time with it. People identify you with that sport, so it becomes part of your identity. "

" Fun is to experience things you would not have been able to experience in any other setting. "

" I always wanted to teach. "

" I always won in my imagination. I always hit the game-winning shot, or I hit the free throw. Or if I missed, there was a lane violation, and I was given another one. "

" If you win a National Championship, or you win two, people think you have not only seen the Holy Grail, but you've embraced it. Basically, I do what a lot of people do, but I've been able to win. "

" I had a really bad temper, when I was growing up. Sport helped me channel that temper into more positive acts. "

" I hated to lose. "

" I have a rule on my team: when we talk to one another, we look each other right in the eye, because I think it's tough to lie to somebody. You give respect to somebody. "

" Imagination has a great deal to do with winning. "

" I'm fortunate now that I coach at Duke University and we've won a lot. I have some kids who haven't failed that much. But when they get to college, they're going to fail some time. That's a thing that I can help them the most with. "

" I'm still not a great reader, but my wife is and my daughters are, and I envy them. I think I got into a bad habit of trying to do something all the time, instead of trying to sit down and take my time a little bit. "

" In high school, in sport, I had a coach who told me I was much better than I thought I was, and would make me do more in a positive sense. He was the first person who taught me not to be afraid of failure. "

" I think some parents now look at a youngster failing as the final thing. It's a process, and failure is part of the process. I would like it if the teacher and the parents would connect more. I think that used to be, but we're losing a little bit of that right now. "

" I think you're not a human being unless you have doubts and fears. "

" It is the ultimate honor for a coach to be his country's coach. "

" It's always an honor to be ranked high, but whatever is said about you, you take it and then take a realistic look at yourself and who you are. "

" I've been so fortunate in my life that my family has never been jealous of my success. They have shown true love and commitment to me by being supportive. They shared in it. "

" I've tried to handle winning well, so that maybe we'll win again, but I've also tried to handle failure well. If those serve as good examples for teachers and kids, then I hope that would be a contribution I have made to sport. Not just basketball, but to sport. "

" Leadership is an ever-evolving position. "

" My ambition in high school was to be a high school coach and teacher, and that's still what I do: teach. "

" My parents didn't really understand too much about sport. At that time, we were in a Polish community in the inner city of Chicago, and I was the youngest of a bunch of cousins. Polish families are real big, with cousins and aunts and uncles. "

" Once you win a National Championship, how do you do that again? How do you get the passion to do that again? We won it again right away, the next year. A lot of it had to do with the fact that I didn't give myself an opportunity to enjoy the first one. "

" Parents can really help, but they can also really hinder the development of their youngsters. "

" Playing sport was somewhat frivolous, but I liked it. I rebelled a little bit, and wouldn't go to music lessons and things like that, but I would go and play ball. My parents learned to love it because they saw how much I got out of it. "

Check our other websites: