Knute Rockne Quotes

“Build up your weaknesses until they become your strong points.”

— Knute Rockne

Show me a good and gracious loser and I will show you a failure.

— Knute Rockne

“On the road we're somebody else's guests and we play in a way that they're
not going to forget we visited them.”

— Knute Rockne

“Four years of football are calculated to breed in the average man more of the ingredients of success in life than almost any academic course he takes.
-Knute Rockne”

— Knute Rockne

“One man practicing sportsmanship is far better than a hundred teaching it.”

— Knute Rockne

“Make the present good, and the past will take care of itself.”

— Knute Rockne

“Now I'm going to tell you something I've kept to myself for years. None of you ever knew George Gipp. He was long before your time, but you all know what a tradition he is at Notre Dame. And the last thing he said to me, "Rock," he said, "sometime when the team is up against it and the breaks are beating the boys, tell them to go out there with all they've got and win just one for the Gipper. I don't know where I'll be then, Rock," he said, "but I'll know about it and I'll be happy."
”

— Knute Rockne

“Drink the first. Sip the second slowly. Skip the third.”

— Knute Rockne

“Let's win one for the Gipper.”

— Knute Rockne

“At home we're the hosts, and I never liked the idea of being embarrased in front of our friends.”

— Knute Rockne

“I enjoy talking to my football men and my chemistry classes and I feel sure that they are quite interested in what I have to say.”

— Knute Rockne

“Win or lose, do it fairly.”

— Knute Rockne

“The essence of football was blocking, tackling, and execution based on timing, rhythm and deception.”

— Knute Rockne

When you were riding on the crest of a wave, youwere most likely to be missing out on something.

— Knute Rockne

“We count on winning. And if we lose, don't beef. And the best way to prevent beefing is - don't lose.”

— Knute Rockne

“The secret is to work less as individuals and more as a team. As a coach, I play not my eleven best, but my best eleven.”

— Knute Rockne

“I'm getting sick and tired of doing anything half-way.”

— Knute Rockne

“Generalities don't count and won't help you in football.”

— Knute Rockne

“I've found that prayers work best when you have big players.”

— Knute Rockne

“Football is a game played with arms, legs and shoulders but mostly from the neck up.”

— Knute Rockne

“Yes, I now that you feel you are not strong enough. That's what the enemy thinks too. But we're gonna fool them.”

— Knute Rockne

“One loss is good for the soul, Too many losses is not good for the coach.”

— Knute Rockne

“A coach's greatest asset is his sense of responsibility - the reliance placed on him by his players.”

— Knute Rockne

“Play like you're positive on the victory, even though they're leading big now.”

— Knute Rockne

Win one for the Gipper.

— Knute Rockne

“It isn't necessary to see a good tackle. You can hear it.”

— Knute Rockne

“There is no need for me continuing unless I'm able to improve.”

— Knute Rockne

Winning to often is as disastrous as losing too often. Both get the same results, the falling off of the public's enthusiasm.

— Knute Rockne

“If we're a hit, let 'em say anything they want.”

— Knute Rockne

“You know, I've been attending so many banquets that I know what they're going to serve before I get there.”

— Knute Rockne

Courage means being afraid to do something, but still doing it.

— Knute Rockne

“I don't like to lose, and that isn't so much because it is just a football game, but because defeat means the failure to reach your objective. I don't want a football player who doesn't take defeat to heart, who laughs it off with the thought, "Oh, well, there's another Saturday." The trouble in American life today, in business as well as in sports, is that too many people are afraid of competition. The result is that in some circles people have come to sneer at success if it costs hard work and training and sacrifice.”

— Knute Rockne

“If winning isn't everything why bother to keep the score?”

— Knute Rockne

“Show me a gracious loser and I'll show you a failure.”

— Knute Rockne

“The morning we left South Bend, every student and professor was out of bed long before breakfast and marched downtown accompanying the team to the railroad station. It was the first time I'd seen anything like this mass hysteria generated on the Notre Dame campus over a football game.”

— Knute Rockne

“There is not economy in getting cheap service or equipment. Buy the best and cry only once.”

— Knute Rockne

“An automobile goes nowhere efficiently unless it has a quick, hot spark to ignite things, to set the cogs of the machine in motion. So I try to make every player on my team feel he's the spark keeping our machine in motion.”

— Knute Rockne

“Leaders are like eagles ... they don't flock. You'll find them one at a time.”

— Knute Rockne

“The only qualifications for a lineman are to be big and dumb. To be a back, you only have to be dumb.”

— Knute Rockne

The best thing I ever learned in life was that things have to be worked for. A lot of people seem to think there is some sort of magic in making a winning football team. There isn't, but there's plenty of work.

— Knute Rockne

“Never tell 'em how many lettermen you've got coming back. Tell 'em how many you lost.”

— Knute Rockne

The secret of winning is working more as a team, less as individuals.

— Knute Rockne

“If the coach insists upon hard play, but clean play, the team will do likewise.”

— Knute Rockne

“No star playing, just football.”

— Knute Rockne