Words matter. These are the best Lou Holtz Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
I think everyone should experience defeat at least once during their career. You learn a lot from it.
In the successful organization, no detail is too small to escape close attention.
The problem with having a sense of humor is often that people you use it on aren’t in a very good mood.
I was raised in a religious environment, and my wife is one of the more religious people that I have ever known.
If Tiger Woods had played football, he would have been a quarterback.
I don’t exercise.
I have no desire at all to become the winningest coach at Notre Dame. The record belongs to Knute Rockne or some other coach in the future.
When I left the University of Notre Dame, I honestly felt I would never coach again.
No one has ever drowned in sweat.
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.
Whenever you give up something, you must replace it with something.
In the nineties, everybody wants to talk about their rights and privileges. Twenty-five years ago, people talked about their obligations and responsibilities.
We were at a beach one summer, and I had a bathing suit on. My wife looked at me and said: ‘Boy, you are skinny, aren’t you?’ I said: ‘Honey, I’d like to remind you that it was minor defects like this that kept me from getting a better wife.’
I feel that God wants me to coach; otherwise, he wouldn’t have put the desire in me.
My wife doesn’t even want to spend 2 hours with me.
Don’t run if you can walk. Don’t walk if you can stand. Don’t stand if you can sit. Don’t sit if you can lie down.
Successful people will always tell you you can do something. It’s the people who have never accomplished anything who will always discourage you from trying to achieve excellent things.
A lifetime contract for a coach means if you’re ahead in the third quarter and moving the ball, they can’t fire you.
I think life is a matter of choices and that wherever we are, good or bad, is because of choices we make.
I truly believe the things Notre Dame stands for.
It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it.
Do right. Do your best. Treat others as you want to be treated.
I used to pray that God would make me a great athlete, and He never did.
I don’t drink water, haven’t drank water in 40 years.
You’re never as good as everyone tells you when you win, and you’re never as bad as they say when you lose.
Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it.
If he’s got golf clubs in his truck or a camper in his driveway, I don’t hire him.
You aren’t going to find anybody that’s going to be successful without making a sacrifice and without perseverance.
In golf, the player, coach and official are rolled into one, and they overlap completely. Golf really is the best microcosm of life – or at least the way life should be.
When people need love and understanding and support the most is when they deserve it the least.
I believe that having a spiritual life is so important in everybody’s life.
I’m proud to be part of the Dr. Pepper Scholarship Giveaway. It’s a great program that gives me the chance to brighten the day for some lucky college students with free tuition.
All an agent is going to do is buy things for a player, damage his eligibility, and make the player dependent on them.
The University of Notre Dame does not redshirt, and I endorse that policy completely. I am very much in favor of redshirting, but not at Notre Dame. But there’s no doubt about it. It puts us at a huge disadvantage.
I won’t accept anything less than the best a player’s capable of doing… and he has the right to expect the best that I can do for him and the team!
ESPN is a great organization to work for.
An agent won’t help you get drafted higher, won’t make you win more games, and won’t make you faster or stronger.
My wife told me if there is any rumors about me, it better be about politics and not about my social life.
When I die, and people realize that I will not be resurrected in three days, they will forget me. That is the way it should be.
Everyone goes through adversity in life, but what matters is how you learn from it.
I think that everybody needs four things in life. Everybody needs something to do regardless of age. Everybody needs someone to love. Everybody needs something to hope for, and, of course, everybody needs someone to believe in.
As a coach, one thing that used to frustrate me was one player would make a bad decision, and that’s all you would read about in the papers all over the country. We have so many athletes do so many wonderful things for other people, and you never read about it.
If you burn your neighbors house down, it doesn’t make your house look any better.
You’ll never get ahead of anyone as long as you try to get even with him.
I don’t think there’s been anything in the game of football in my lifetime that has changed college football more than redshirting.
My first assistant-coaching job in football was at William & Mary in 1961.
I believe in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
The key to winning is choosing to do God’s will and loving others with all you’ve got.
It is a fine thing to have ability, but the ability to discover ability in others is the true test.
I never learn anything talking. I only learn things when I ask questions.
God looks after children, animals and idiots.
How you respond to the challenge in the second half will determine what you become after the game, whether you are a winner or a loser.
I’ll assure you this: I will have nothing to do with politics.
I’m an old man, and all my life I’ve said that Notre Dame should remain independent because it’s a national school.
Motivation is simple. You eliminate those who are not motivated.
Football coaches don’t have real problems.
On this team, we’re all united in a common goal: to keep my job.
We have an obligation to help people that cannot help themselves. The mentally retarded, the physically retarded, et cetera.
Notre Dame is the one school that has a national recruiting base, from Florida to Texas to California.
Had I been a great athlete, I’m not sure I would have even gone into coaching. I may have turned out feeling that my life ended when my athletic career ended, as happens so many times with various athletes.
If you’re bored with life – you don’t get up every morning with a burning desire to do things – you don’t have enough goals.
At home I have a copy of the April 21, 1986, issue of ‘Sports Illustrated.’ I’m on the cover with the blurb, ‘Can Lou Do It?’ I’d just arrived at Notre Dame, and with spring football underway, I was the focal point of that week’s coverage.
The man who complains about the way the ball bounces is likely the one who dropped it.
My first assistant-coaching job in football was at William & Mary in 1961. The pay wasn’t much, so to get $300 more per year, I agreed to coach the golf team. I didn’t even know how to keep score, and really, my main job was not to wreck the van on the way to tournaments.
I have to admit, I sometimes wonder how much more successful I would have been as a coach had it not been for my spending summers on the golf course. I could have watched more film, that’s for sure. One advantage Joe Paterno had over me was that he didn’t play golf.
For victory in life, we’ve got to keep focused on the goal, and the goal is Heaven.
On this team, we’re all united in a common goal: to keep my job.
All my life, I’ve been trying to make a hole-in-one. The closest I’ve come is a bogey.
I just have an enthusiasm for life.
If you look at the history of Notre Dame, if you hire a coach who’s been successful at another college program, they’re going to be ultra successful at Notre Dame because the talent will always be there.
I was born January 6, 1937, eight years after Wall Street crashed and two years before John Steinbeck published The Grapes of Wrath, his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about the plight of a family during the Great Depression.
After winning, most teams become individuals; most teams become complacent.
When the bank asks me about my assets, I include my friendship with Regis Philbin.
God answers prayers, but he doesn’t always answer it your way.
To win a national championship, you’ve got to be a little lucky.
Our cellar home had a kitchen and a combination bedroom and half bath, which meant we had a sink next to the bed. We had no refrigerator, no shower or tub, and no privacy. My parents shared the bedroom with my sister and me.
If you try to fight the course, it will beat you.
