Explore Quotes by Bill Russell

This monument is going to be built as a symbol.

Success is a result of consistent practice of winning skills and actions. There is nothing miraculous about the process. There is no luck involved.

If you really have integrity, there are very few people who can insult you, or honor you.

Learning is a daily experience and a lifetime mission. I truly believe in the saying "We work to become, not to acquire."

Concentration and mental toughness are the margins of victory.

The idea is not to block every shot. The idea is to make your opponent believe that you might block every shot.

Remember that basketball is a game of habits. If you make the other guy deviate from his habits, you've got him

We overreached our decision power. Sometimes our decisions have to fit the reality of the outside world.

On females officiating in the NBA -Incompetence should not be confined to one sex.

If Shakespeare can compare all of life to a stage, maybe it's not odd to believe that part of the play can take place on a basketball court.

My father once told me that anyone who worked for three dollars an hour owed it to himself to put in four dollars' worth of work.

The most important measure of how good a game I played was how much better I’d made my teammates play.

My most prized possession was my library card from the Oakland Public Library.

The only important statistic is the final score.

We learn to make a shell for ourselves when we are young and then spend the rest of our lives hoping for someone to reach inside and touch us. Just touch us—anything more than that would be too much for us to bear.

To me, the most important part of winning is joy. You can win without joy, but winning that’s joyless is like eating in a four-star restaurant when you’re not hungry. Joy is a current of energy in your body, like chlorophyll or sunlight, that fills you up and makes you naturally want to do your best.

To love someone is nothing, to be loved by someone is something, to love someone who loves you is everything.

Don't knock the ball in the stands, keep it in your hands!

After I played him for the first time, I said 'Let's see. He's four or five inches taller. He's 40 or 50 pounds heavier. His vertical leap is at least as good as mine. He can get up and down the floor as well as I can. And he's smart. The real problem with all this is I have to show up.

The most important thing to me is the friends that I've made.

The morale and the camaraderie that we had for one another earlier in the year is starting to come under duress because of all the losses. Some of the guys are feeling the pressure now from the last year when they were not successful.