Top 153 Quotes & Sayings by Steve Young - Page 2

Obviously, I love the idea of athletic quarterbacks.

At the time I retired I was kind of known for it, as one of the guys whose career ended technically as a result of a big hit.

I wish I could've met my wife earlier. I do the math and I want 30 more years. I wish I'd started having kids earlier.

I don't go out a lot. I do go to a lot of movies.

You can be an astronaut, knowing it can be super dangerous but understand intuitively what the risk issues are. Not having the same usable knowledge about the risk of football, or any line of work, doesn't work.

There are a lot of places you can play quarterback and you won't know. You won't know if you're good or bad because there's just not a chance to find out.

If sports has anything to do for society, football plays a great role.

If you're going to run a lot of plays, you better score a lot of points.

I am the recipient of the best coaching that one person has ever had.

As a kid, I was fearless during the day. But at nighttime, I needed to be home.

Some of the great John Wayne hero things that have ever happened in football happened because people play hurt.

The great thing about football is that it's a game that involves so many people.

A lot of what you get done in the NFL is by perception. They perceive you as really talented, and they worry about you. You've got to come out of the locker room with something.

Just after I retired, Michael Vick came in. And just as background, I really thought the position had changed. I thought the dynamic pass-run, triple-threat quarterback was going to take over the league. And guys like Michael Vick and others would follow and that's what we'd do. But I learned the truth with Peyton Manning and Tom Brady.

People always want to grab the negative, but that's not my reality. It comes from my dad. He cracks me up the way he always says, 'Suck it up and be a big girl,' to my sister, or 'Suck it up and be a man,' to us guys. That's what I'm about.

Football's an intense game. I love that. It's awesome.

Playing football in San Francisco was almost a transcendental experience.

I have a photographic memory that enables me to visualize what everyone in the huddle is supposed to do on each of the hundreds of plays in our playbook.

People don't remember that Sid Gillman was my coach. He was an old crotchety guy, but he was the first one to basically say, 'You can't just run around'... I remember, he literally tied my feet up.

Bill Walsh was a genius in many ways.

I can hit the whiskers on a cat with a football from a distance of forty yards.

Something like speed of play can be a big deal.

I'm a positive person.

I don't think my experience with professional football has been what you'd call normal but I don't regret it.

As the story about CTE got more real, it became more clear that players are playing that without a full understanding of the risks they face, and the long-term effects.

Golf is one of those games that I want my kids to know and learn so that they can play it all of their lives.

I think I always wanted to be quarterback so I could call the play.

It's hard to explain anxiety to those who don't experience it.

My generation, people who played with me, they're suffering from football.

Staying connected to the game and working for ESPN are very meaningful to me.

Call me a quarterback, not a running quarterback.

I believe there will be players who, instead of playing eight years, will play six. Who will closely watch how they feel. It will shorten careers.

I've come to a real understanding of the enormity of what owner entrepreneurs do in founding great businesses. They are rare and a thing of art in many ways.

When it's all over I might be able to say I've had the strangest career in pro football history.

Peyton Manning, you look at his physical abilities, there are a lot of things that are middle of the road. But his mastery of the data allows him to be ahead. I love watching him because he throws the ball so proactively.

Golf is important to me. I love the game.

Most veterans detested training camp, but not me. I loved having a dorm room and a little fridge with snacks, and I looked forward to goofing around in the meetings.

When fans showed up at Candlestick, there was a great sense of anticipation that they would watch not only winning football, but also artistry. Our offense was that sublime.

For me, football is a quest. Quests entail overcoming hardship, trials of adversity in the pursuit of true joy.

Fundamentally, if the league is going to have a no-tolerance policy for domestic abuse, if we're going to be a global organization that's going to have this as a perspective, we've got to back it up. We can't be backed into it with a video with more coming out. We have to make an affirmative stand on it.

Everything you do in life is up to you. Part of life is realizing you have much more potential and ability than you'd ever know, but it's up to you to face the fears and unleash that which really drives you.

I'd rather work with guys that have time to live with you, and let it gel.

I may yet move [from Nashville], and where would I move if not Texas or New Mexico? I couldn't afford a home in California. I need to travel out of there occasionally.

A running quarterback, to me, is safer. Because, once I got out [of the pocket], I didn?t run where there were a lot of people. I ran where there was nobody.

I was made to go to church and I heard the gospel songs, and every now then somebody would come through with a guitar and that was a thrill!

There are a lot of guys kind of on the bubble that can either be that sort who turn into journeyman kind of guys that will find a new spot or guys that can make a claim to be in one place for a long time. You can name a lot of names this year, an unusual number. And I think that most of them will be OK.

Music saved my life a few times because I could play the stuff rednecks loved. They thought I was great and they wondered why I didn't do that all the time.

I will be a missionary in a remote village at some point.

I saw all that [white trash] growing up in Alabama and Georgia. I had a group of country cousins and we'd go visit them when I was a kid. They lived on a red dirt Georgia back road, in a shack, with twelve kids. Farmers. No electricity, they had a well on their back porch, but they had nothing, yet they were the happiest, freest people I'd ever met. I loved to visit them. Great sense of humor, and they kept up with all the latest music, country, rockabilly, that stuff. Great food they grew in the fields and canned. Happy people.

My dad, like any coach, has always stressed the fundamentals. He taught me responsibility, accountability, and the importance of hard work.

I was a young folk singer, or wanted to be. I really wanted to be a New England folk singer, but they never would accept me. I was always hard to categorize, and people wouldn't know what to make of it.

When you're an elite athlete, it's a very special moment in time and you don't want it to end.

Perception is reality. If you are perceived to be something, you might as well be it because that's the truth in people's minds.

I always felt like hanging around the pocket was trouble, but the truth is, the great players take the beatings in the pocket and expose themselves -- and that is the real risk.

The wins and losses are over for Rice, the football player, who leaves with 38 NFL records. He was the easiest guy in the world to throw the football to, ... You always knew where he was headed.

I had admired Waylon [ Jennings], but I never expected to meet him and get to know him. When I finally moved to Nashville years later, one night I went to a Harlan Howard Guitar Pull thing, and there was Waylon. He started talking about how much he loved my work and how great I was, and I couldn't even get a word in.

The principle is competing against yourself. It's about self-improvement, about being better than you were the day before.

First of all, I wish everyone who loved football could stand in the quarterback's shoes just for a play, because I think it would be tremendously humbling to anyone who loved the game to say, "I didn't -- I had no idea." You can think about what it would be like, and the cameras are getting better at giving that perspective, that one that the skycam comes down and you get a sense of it, but you just -- you don't know.

No one can keep their word. Everyone's in hurry and jumping to the next opportunity. There's something missing.

My goal--and this is kind of my own little secret--but when I get married, just to head out and finish football and, and, and be a missionary around the world. Places where Steve Young--not that it's big really that many places--but places where they have no idea about football.