A Quote by John Wooden

Somebody asked me - you know, how come it took you so long to win a national championship? And I said, 'I'm a slow learner; but you notice when I learn something, I have it down pretty good.'
What are you doing here? Tell me why you are here. If you are not here to win a national championship, you're in the wrong place. You boys are special. I don't want my players to be like other students. I want special people. You can learn a lot on the football field that isn't taught in the home, the church, or the classroom. There are going to be days when you think you've got no more to give and then you're going to give plenty more. You are going to have pride and class. You are going to be very special. You are going to win the national championship for Alabama.
When they [visitors to his studio:] learn about the six-week daily-strip deadline and the 12-week Sunday-page deadline, a visitor almost never fails to remark: "Gee, you could work real hard, couldn't you, and get several months ahead and then take the time off?" Being, as I said, a slow learner, it took me until last year to realize what an odd statement that really is. You don't work all of your life to do something so you don't have to do it.
Myron reached for the phone and dialed Win's number. After the eighth ring he began to hang up when a weak, distant voice coughed. "Hello?" Win?" Yeah." You okay?" Hello?" Win?" Yeah." What took you so long to answer the phone?" Hello?" Win?" Who is this?" Myron." Myron Bolitar?" How many other Myrons do you know?" Myron Bolitar?" No, Myron Rockefeller." Something's wrong," Win said. What?" Terribly wrong." What are you talking about?" Some asshole is calling me at seven in the morning pretending to be my best friend." Sorry, I forgot the time.
Our goal is to win the conference championship and go to the playoff and win the national championship and we recruit with that attitude.
I never even thought about being an actor. Somebody asked me if I'd like to learn the craft, and I said, 'Okay.' I was a gymnast in a show at that time, and somebody asked me afterwards one night. I performed as a gymnast for nine years, and then I did acting after that.
A long time ago, I took a walk down a street in Harlem in New York City. I came upon a man who asked me for a dollar. He had asked a few other people before me, but they only passed him by without glancing his way. I stopped and handed the man some money. As I began to turn away, he reached out and shook my hand. He looked me in the eyes and said, "I will bless you." Now, I'm not saying that was God Himself. But how do we know that it wasn't someone working for him, walking around in disguise, just to see what we would do?
Long time ago, people would make the Bible, right? The guy said it, somebody wrote it down. And then if you wanted another copy of it, another human being wrote another one. It took a long, long time. Somebody created this thing called mimeograph paper and so you said, 'OK, we'll do it that way.' And so you could get three of them.
Darren Campbell, the British Olympic sprinter, was my sprint coach at Middlesbrough - yet the best advice he gave me was to slow down. That might sound strange but he said: 'You have too much speed - you don't always need to run at 100 per cent.' I was used to running flat out every time, but he told me, 'You know how quick you are, slow down.'
I reached a point where I'd watched enough directors do the job that I felt I understood it. And it's not that I'm a slow learner and it took me this long; I also was enjoying writing, and I still enjoy writing - I get tremendous satisfaction out of the writing end of it.
You never know about team speed until you get out there. You don't know who is a slow learner. A kid may not be very bright or he may be real bright but he doesn't know football. You've got to find out all those nuances and how they learn.
Somebody asked me the other day, 'What do you love the most about the show?' I said, 'The conversations that I have with my father in my head while I'm playing.' If I do something pretty good... I mean, I'm playing the gig and I'm saying in my head, 'Hey, check that one out, dad.'
There were a lot of races I was going to win at Milwaukee, but I had mechanical problems or something would happen, ... In the early years, it just took a long time for me to win a race. I got in somebody's oil one time and got in the wall, had a clutch go out once. . . so when I finally won one, it was a long time coming.
When I started writing, I said, 'I don't know how to do this. I don't know if it sounds good.' Coming from being an underdog or being told that something wasn't for you over and over repeatedly, it took a lot out of me. It took a lot of my self-confidence.
You either like me or you don't. It took me twenty-something years to learn how to love myself, I don't have that kinda time to convince somebody else.
(on Marilyn Monroe) I was walking down Broadway with her and nobody was stopping us. She was going to (Stella Adler's) actors' studio, and she was taking me to show me what it was all about. And I said to her: "How come nobody is taking your picture?" She said: "Well, watch." She took her scarf off, straightened her shoulders, and draped something another way, and we were surrounded. It must have been 400 people. And I said: "Now I know why!"
It took me a long time to learn how to write a good song.
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