Top 150 Quotes & Sayings by Nick Saban - Page 2

My wife gets so mad at me because I don't like to cook on the grill.

I don't Twitter. I don't text for those very reasons. I don't want anything to be misinterpreted. I would encourage our guys not to do that.

When I talk about a successful program, define that. It's not just winning the national championship every year because nobody can do that.

Probably the number one position that has the greatest number of players to choose from is receiver. When we're out there recruiting, there are a lot of receivers out there to recruit. It's harder to find defensive players.

We don't have rules that people can't use Twitter. We just want people to be responsible. We certainly don't want them to do anything that's going to affect themselves in an adverse way or affect our program, our university, or our team in an adverse way.

I don't try to sensationalize anybody. I'm not trying to entertain. I'm trying to give information and give access to me and tell about our program.

There needs to be a college football commissioner.

The thing I like about college football so much is you can affect these guys a lot more when they are 18-22, 23 years old in terms of people and having a chance to be more successful. They are still a value type development, where you have a chance to help them mature a bit and help them be a little more successful in life.

Our players get scrutinized pretty hard at Alabama.

I want what's best for people who want to improve the quality of their life. I hope whoever our leader is will do all that he can do to make our country safe and improve the quality of life for a lot of the people we have in our country, and I don't think I am qualified to determine who that should be.

One of the easiest shots in golf is chipping. It should be the easiest. It's like throwing a ball or pitching pennies. It's easy. And I struggle with that, and the struggle is all mental.

As a coach, when it comes to football players, we're trying to change their behavior and make them better. As people, we're trying to change their behavior and make them better.

Golf is a great example to me. Golf is a metaphor of life. I mean, every shot. You have this beautiful hole, this beautiful opportunity to get a good score.

I think people always assume that every team has great intangibles, and that's not necessarily right.

I played so long ago, I don't think anybody even knew you could transfer. I don't think they knew anything about it.

People talk about you won four national championships. Well, I feel like we've had good enough teams to win eight. So I feel like we failed four times. I feel like I failed four times.

I don't control what people say. I don't control what people put on dot-com or anything else.

If I were a high school coach, I would put my best players on offense. The best athletes on my team, I would give them the ball and score points. I wouldn't play them on defense. I would play them where they can get the ball and score points.

I said as soon as we had a playoff, we were going to minimize the importance of all the other bowl games. I'm not saying it's good or bad; it kind of is what it is.

I just want everybody to know that I'm opposed to an unauthorized biography on anybody.

I don't ever want the players to relax in a game.

I never want to discontinue giving kids opportunities.

I enjoyed the NFL. I respected the players. It was a great opportunity to learn a lot of things, but the challenges were a little different, and it didn't seem that you could control your own destiny, especially in terms of how you could bring players to the team.

I think the worst thing a player can do is just not be yourself.

It's a free country. I know we have a lot of regulations in the world right now in what we can and can't do. I would rather our people be responsible and not have to be regulated.

George Perles at Michigan State was the first coach that gave me responsibility as far as being a coordinator. I learned a lot from that experience.

It's great to see our players get some of their dreams come true.

I want what's best for our country. I'm not sure I can figure that out.

You wear your team out, and it's hard to get them back.

I don't want people to think I'm not happy when we win - I am. But there's a difference between being happy for the feeling of accomplishing something and being overjoyed and feeling, 'This is it - we conquered the world.' We didn't. We just won a game.

Rex Ryan does a lot of the same kind of stuff that we do in terms of how they play in the secondary and what they do.

You can control your own destiny a little bit better in college. It's hard to control all the variables, especially with the salary cap and things like that, in pro football. You can't keep your team together, and you are going to have more changes all the time. Personnel decisions aren't always made by you, especially who you bring to your team.

We create a standard for how we want to do things and everybody's got to buy into that standard or you really can't have any team chemistry. Mediocre people don't like high-achievers and high-achievers don't like mediocre people.

The more one emphasizes winning, the less he or she is able to concentrate on what actually causes success.

Discipline is not punishment. Discipline is changing someone’s behavior.

We're not going to talk about what we're going to accomplish, we're going to talk about how we're going to do it.

Anyone who doesn't win their conference has no business playing in the national championship game.

I don’t care what you did yesterday. If you’re happy with that, you have bigger problems.

The process is really what you have to do day in and day out to be successful, we try to define the standard that we want everybody to sort of work toward, adhere to, and do it on a consistent basis. And the things that I talked about before, being responsible for your own self-determination, having a positive attitude, having great work ethic, having discipline to be able to execute on a consistent basis, whatever it is you're trying to do, those are the things that we try to focus on, and we don't try to focus as much on the outcomes as we do on being all that you can be.

You can't win together if you don't work together.

Live by the creed that a strong work ethic, playing by the rules, and doing things the right way will bring about opportunities for success and, ultimately, happiness.

Success doesn't come from pie-in-the-sky thinking. It's the result of consciously doing something each day that will add to your overall excellence.

I think everybody should take the attitude that we're working to be a champion, that we want to be a champion in everything that we do. Every choice, every decision, everything that we do every day, we want to be a champion.

Mediocre people hate high achievers, and high achievers hate mediocre people.

Be all you can be in whatever you choose to do. The sky is the limit, so go for it. And do not create any self-imposed limitations.

Becoming a champion is not an easy process... It is done by focusing on what it takes to get there and not on getting there.

What happened yesterday is history. What happens tomorrow is a mystery. What we do today makes a difference - the precious present moment.

The formula for success is every guy can make a difference for the entire team in whatever his role is. And to do it right, to get it right, is a critical factor in being successful.

We have got to use every opportunity to improve individually so we can improve collectively.

There is no continuum for success. Focus on the progress, not the results.

I'm tired of hearing all this talk from people who don't understand the process of hard work-like little kids in the back seat asking 'Are we there yet?' Get where you're going 1 mile-marker at a time.

There are two pains in life. There is the pain of discipline and the pain of disappointment. If you can handle the pain of discipline, then you'll never have to deal with the pain of disappointment.

Be on time because it shows you care.

People who are role models for the principles and values of the organization, who buy in and understand the vision of what the organization is trying to accomplish, and have the personality to inspire other people to the vision. You know, that’s what team chemistry and leadership is all about.

It's not human nature to be great. It's human nature to survive, to be average and do what you have to do to get by. That is normal. When you have something good happen, it's the special people that can stay focused and keep paying attention to detail, working to get better and not being satisfied with what they have accomplished.

Your character is your accumulation of your thoughts, habits and priorities on a day-to-day basis.

Now, everybody always says there's no 'I' in team, but there is an 'I' in win, because the individuals make the team what it is, and how they think and what they do is important to the team. So when you act like the individual is not important, well, it is damn important who these people are and what they are.

Focus on the process of what it takes to be successful.

Eliminate the clutter and all the things that are going on outside and focus on the things that you can control with how you sort of go about and take care of your business. That's something that's ongoing, and it can never change.

We have three kinds of guys on our team. We have guys that get it; they play good; they understand how to play winning football. We have some guys that are trying to get it, and they are working hard every day? We are supporting them, and we want the guys that have it to support them. Then we have some guys that don't get it and don't know that they don't get it. We are trying to replace them. We only have a couple left.