Joe Paterno Quotes

I still haven't gotten that little something out of my system that I'm still not a kid going to a football game. I'm excited.

Success and excellence are not the same. Excellence grows within a person, is largely within that person's control, and its meaning lasts. Success is measured externally, by comparison to others, is often outside our control, and is perishable.

In every life, there have to be some shadows. Look at me. My life has been filled with sunshine. A beautiful and caring wife. Five healthy children. I got to do what I loved. How many people are that lucky?

You have to perform at a consistently higher level than others. That's the mark of a true professional.

Keep hustling, something good will happen,

We have to realize a kid will love us one day and hate us the next. That cannot change who we are and what we are about.

Besides pride, loyalty, discipline, heart, and mind, confidence is the key to all the locks.

Success without honor is an unseasoned dish; it will satisfy your hunger, but it won't taste good.

Losing a game is heartbreaking. Losing your sense of excellence or worth is a tragedy.

The name on the front of the jersey is what really matters, not the name on the back.

There's never been a greater game than football.

There are many people, particularly in sports, who think that success and excellence are the same thing. They are not the same thing. Excellence is something that is lasting and dependable and largely within a person's control. In contrast, success is perishable and is often outside our control. If you strive for excellence, you will probably be successful eventually. People who put excellence in the first place have the patience to end up with success. An additional burden for the victim of the success mentality is that he is threatened by the success of others and he resents real excellence. In contrast, the person that is fascinated by quality is excited when he sees it in others.

To teach an academic subject is certainly not easy, but compared to coaching, it is. We can say 'two plus two is four' to every kid and be sure that we are right. But in coaching, we have to literally get to the soul of the people we are dealing with.

We need people who influence their peers and who cannot be detoured from their convictions by peers who do not have the courage to have any convictions.

My father said about money: 'You have to have some. But you don't have to have all of it. Just be honest with yourself.'

I'm not as concerned about me. What's happened to me has been great. I got five great kids. Seventeen grandchildren.

My name, I have spent my whole life trying to make that name mean something. And now it's gone.

What is a coach? We are teachers. Educators. We have the same obligations as all teachers, except we probably have more influence over young people than anybody but their families. And, in a lot of cases, more than their families.

The minute you think you've got it made, disaster is just around the corner.

Everybody likes to win. It sure beats the devil out of losing.

When a team outgrows individual performance and learns team confidence, excellence becomes a reality.

If I had to do it over again, I'd probably play the game the same way.

Mostly I want to talk positive; I wanna talk about a bunch of great kids that I coached and made me look good and the university that I've seen grow from a cow college, which it was, only 12,000 people, and when I came here, we weren't at Pennsylvania State University, we were at Penn State College.

They ask me what I'd like written about me when I'm gone. I hope they write I made Penn State a better place, not just that I was a good football coach.

I don't think it's fair to 12-, 13- and 14-year-olds to say 'Show us you're a winner right now!' Winning isn't everything. I'll never buy that thing that if a boy loses a football game, he's a loser in life.

Act like you expect to get into the end zone.

A hard-fought, well-fought, hairline-close game is as classical in sports as tragedy is in the theater. Victory is contained within defeat, and defeat is contained within victory. That's the way it is in the best of games. What counts in sports is not the victory, but the magnificence of the struggle.

I don't think I deviated from what I'm all about and what I thought was important. Whether you want to call that a legacy, or whatever you want to call it.

Believe down deep in your heart that you are ddestined for somethung greatt!

Believe deep down in your heart that you're destined to do great things.

SMU: 'It's unbelievable to think that kind of corruption came right from the top of the power structure. The NCAA did what it had to do' in canceling SMU's 1988 football season.

Here, I have an opportunity to affect the lives of a lot of young people - and not just on my football team. I'm not kidding myself that that would be true at the professional level.

Its the name on the front of the jersey that matters most, not the one on the back.

I had a great bunch of kids. They all hung with us. The coaching staff hung with us. And we played tough every game. If you've got kids that want to play and react to you, it's fun. I'm having a good time.

Sport is a product of human culture. America seems to need football at this state of our social development. When you get ninety million people watching a single game on television, it ... shows you that people need something to identify with.

Coaches have got to be given rank within the university so that you can't fire a coach unless you go through an academic committee, just as you would with a professor. If coaches are to have any stability and security, they need to be treated like an English professor.

Right now I'm trying to figure out what I'm gonna do, 'cause I don't want to sit around on my backside all day. If I'm gonna do that I'll be a newspaper reporter.

My thing was play as hard as you can, don't be stupid, pay attention to details, and have enough guts in the clutch that you're not afraid to make a play. Some things I thought were important for a young man to know.