After the first day of practice, there’s not one guy who’s playing at 100 percent or who feels great. Sometimes, getting up in the morning and brushing your teeth is the hardest part of the day – it just hurts.

Football coaches don’t have real problems.

Success is counted sweetest by those who never succeed.

About the time we can make the ends meet, somebody moves the ends.

If you made me the national commissioner of football, I’d tell you one thing that I would mandate. The second Saturday in September, we’re going to have conference day. Everybody from the SEC plays a Big 12 team. Everybody from the Big Ten is going to play the ACC. Everybody from the Big East is going to play the Pac-10.

God tries you in certain, certain ways. Some people are rich, and they believe in God. They lose the money, things get hard, they get weak and quit going to church. Quit serving God like they did.

Do what nobody else can do for you. Omit to do anything else.

I was a very average player and became a trainer in Germany with a special club.

If you can’t sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there worrying. It’s the worry that gets you, not the lack of sleep.

The men who have succeeded are men who have chosen one line and stuck to it.

Flaming enthusiasm, backed up by horse sense and persistence, is the quality that most frequently makes for success.

If you look at space companies, they’ve failed either because they’ve had a technical solution where success was not a possible outcome, they were unable to attract a critical mass of talent, or they just ran out of money. The finish line is usually a lot further away than you think.

I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage.

You see, God helps only people who work hard. That principle is very clear.

No untroubled day has ever dawned for me.

Everybody asks if putting is like shooting free throws. It has a very similar kind of mindset. And it’s just you, the ball, and the target.

It’s not because things are difficult that we dare not venture. It’s because we dare not venture that they are difficult.

If I said I would knock out Sonny Liston in 1 minute and 49 seconds of the first round, that would hurt the gate.

From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.

A dream doesn’t become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work.

It’s not called quitting if you quit while you ahead. It’s about being aware and being strategic enough to know that you got to get out the pool at some point. You got to put your clothes back on and dry off.

There’s no substitute for the practice of meditation.

Personal beauty is a greater recommendation than any letter of reference.

I’m tender on the inside.

Fortitude is the marshal of thought, the armor of the will, and the fort of reason.

In any profession it gets to be a grind.

Beauty is the promise of happiness.

I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right.

I never read one hateful thing said about me by some 12 year old. So I got to live an actual life. And I’ve kept that mentality. Just because there’s a hurricane going on around you doesn’t mean you have to open the window and look at it.

I am confident that nobody… will accuse me of selfishness if I ask to spend time, while I am still in good health, with my family, my friends and also with myself.

There is one thing that gets you out of bed in the morning, and that is discipline. Because your dreams and your goals are not there waking up for you in the morning.

Even the best teams can fail. Celebrities can fade. There is only One in whom your faith is always safe, and that is in the Lord Jesus Christ. And you need to let your faith show!

You gotta water your plants. Nobody can water them for you.

You have to put in many, many, many tiny efforts that nobody sees or appreciates before you achieve anything worthwhile.

Seventy percent of success in life is showing up.

I’m an early riser. I get up between five and six, have coffee, and read for a couple of hours before everyone else gets up.

When a person is going through hell, and she encounters someone who went through hellish hell and survived, then she can say, ‚Mine is not so bad as all that. She came through, and so can I.‘

It doesn’t take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause.

I’m focusing on me. I’m focusing on my family’s security, my family’s financial security, so that’s all I can do.

When I was young, I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. So I did ten times more work.

Begin – to begin is half the work, let half still remain; again begin this, and thou wilt have finished.

Guilt is perhaps the most painful companion of death.

Every noble work is at first impossible.

If you want a love message to be heard, it has got to be sent out. To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it.

If you try to fight the course, it will beat you.

Even when folks are hitting you over the head, you can’t stop marching. Even when they’re turning the hoses on you, you can’t stop.

Don’t swap horses in crossing a stream.

It is important to remember yourself.

My mother was determined to make us independent. When I was four years old, she stopped the car a few miles from our house and made me find my own way home across the fields. I got hopelessly lost.

Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.

When you go to an oasis, you go there to supply yourself with the vital things you are missing, things that you need.

What a great day for football, all we need is some green grass and a ball.

My attitude has always been, if you fall flat on your face, at least you’re moving forward. All you have to do is get back up and try again.

The Bible says to ‚fear not,‘ but this doesn’t mean you should never feel scared. It means when you do feel fear, keep going forward and do what you are supposed to do. Or as I like to say, do it afraid.

The best way out is always through.

Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen, few in pursuit of the goal.

I try to encourage all my teammates, and I sure hope that some day all athletes – my kids, high school kids – get the same level of care I get. Because you can play for a long period of time without having knee replacements, without having all the major head trauma that people are dealing with.

In spite of everything I shall rise again: I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing.

If four things are followed – having a great aim, acquiring knowledge, hard work, and perseverance – then anything can be achieved.

As a professional athlete a lot is going to be said about you – but I just try to move forward and try to achieve my goals.

I feel like people can relate to me because we all go through wins and roadblocks and passion and pain, and it’s a vibe.