A Quote by John Wooden

Doing the best you are capable of doing is victory in itself, and less than that is defeat.

John Wooden

Quote Topics

Best Capable Defeat Doing Itself Less Than Victory

Quote Author

John Wooden
American - Coach
October 14, 1910 - June 4, 2010

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!

Lou Holtz

There is something that can happen to every athlete and every human being; the instinct to slack off, to give in to pain, to give less than your best; the instinct to hope you can win through luck or through your opponent not doing his best, instead of going to the limit and past your limit where victory is always found. Defeating those negative instincts that are out to defeat us, is the difference between winning and losing - and we all face that battle every day.

Jesse Owens

Defeat in doing right is nevertheless victory.

Frederick William Robertson

In every adversity there lies the seed of an equivalent advantage. In every defeat is a lesson showing you how to win the victory next time. [But you must know enough to realise this, lest you focus more on the defeat than finding the lesson you paid for with the defeat. With every defeat and mistake, you have the logical right to get excited about the future when you will understand and be able to apply the lessons and thereby turn defeat and temporary failure into victory and permanent success.]

Robert Collier

It's the people that ultimately are less talented or have less confidence in what they're doing that then try to micro-manage, which lends itself to a less than ideal film.

Ari Graynor

My command, less than ten thousand, had found the battle on the Plank road in retreat, little less than a panic. In a few hours we changed defeat to victory, the broken divisions of the Third Corps rallying in their rear.

James Longstreet

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.

Joe Paterno

Girls are capable of doing everything men are capable of doing. Sometimes they have more imagination than men.

Katherine Johnson

The problems of victory are more agreeable than those of defeat, but they are no less difficult.

Winston Churchill

The people of Ohio are not happy with what he's doing. I can tell you that. They're not happy with what he [John Kasich] is doing. But the Republican Party more than any other thing has to have a victory, a presidential victory, for one thing, if nothing else: Supreme Court justices.

Donald Trump

Somewhere in the world there is a defeat for everyone. Some are destroyed by defeat, and some made small and mean by victory. Greatness lives in one who triumphs equally over defeat and victory.

John Steinbeck

Commonly, people believe that defeat is characterized by a general bustle and a feverish rush. Bustle and rush are the signs of victory, not of defeat. Victory is a thing of action. It is a house in the act of being built. Every participant in victory sweats and puffs, carrying the stones for the building of the house. But defeat is a thing of weariness, of incoherence, of boredom. And above all of futility.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

I think I am capable of doing what any other elite receiver is capable of doing.

Demaryius Thomas

We fight for lost causes because we know that our defeat and dismay may be the preface to our successors' victory, though that victory itself will be temporary; we fight rather to keep something alive than in the expectation that anything will triumph.