Explore Quotes by Dan Gable

A lot of my intensity in wrestling was due to my mental preparation before the matches. I got myself into a different world.

Freedom across the world is a result of many individuals working together.

But we've got to work. We can't just live on reputations at all - by any means.

Right out of high school I never had the fear of getting beat, which is how most people lose.

Pain is nothing compared to what it feels like to quit. Give everything you got today for tomorrow may never come.

I vowed I wouldn't ever let anyone destroy me again. I was going to work at it every day, so hard that I would be the toughest guy in the world. By the end of practice, I wanted to be physically tired, to know that I'd been through a workout. If I wasn't tired, I must have cheated somehow, so I stayed a little longer.

Always remember the pain of defeat, and never let it happen again.

You can't ever work too much because there's no such thing as being in too good condition. You can't ever lift too many weights because you can't ever get too strong. You can't ever wrestle too much because you can always do better.

But after that, turn it into action. Don't just dream.

All I worried about was what Owings was doing to me, instead of what I was doing to him. When you start worrying about that stuff, you're going down the wrong path.

I’m a big believer in starting with high standards and raising them. We make progress only when we push ourselves to the highest level. If we don’t progress, we backslide into bad habits, laziness and poor attitude.

My mind's never gone very far away from what I wanted to accomplish.

Raising your level of performance requires a proper mentality and meaning from within. This gives you the ability and drive to work on the things necessary to go to a higher level. When people ask me how to raise their level of performance, the first thing I ask is, How important is it to you?

When I lifted weights, I didn't lift just to maintain my muscle tone. I lifted to increase what I already had, to push to a new limit. Every time I worked, I was getting a little better. I kept moving that limit back and back. Every time I walked out of the gym, I was a little better than when I walked in.

The obvious goals were there- State Champion, NCAA Champion, Olympic Champion. To get there I had to set an everyday goal which was to push myself to exhaustion or, in other words, to work so hard in practice that someone would have to carry me off the mat.

There is no mat space for malcontents or dissenters.

Wrestling... what men do during boys basketball season.

If you want to train and work hard 3 months out of the year, well, then, UNI is a great place to go. If you want to bust your tail 6 months out of the year, you should be very happy at ISU. But if you want to train and develop into a champion 12 months out of the year, then Iowa is the place for you.

If you're afraid to fail, you'll never succeed.

I can take anyone down at anytime; they can't take me down; no one can ride or turn me; I can control anyone.

Once you've wrestled, everything in life is easy.