Quotes on Wrestling

Destiny is no matter of chance. It is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.

Everybody is looking for instant success, but it doesn't work that way. You build a successful life one day at a time.

It's not the will to win that matters-everyone has that. It's the will to prepare to win that matters.

More enduringly than any other sport, wrestling teaches self-control and pride. Some have wrestled without great skill - none have wrestled without pride.

Character - Some day, you will be wrestling with the great temptation, or trembling under the great sorrow of your life. But the real struggle is here, now, in these quiet weeks. Now it is being decided whether, in the day of your supreme sorrow or temptation, you shall miserably fail or gloriously conquer. Character cannot be made except by a steady, long-continued process.

There is no normal life that is free of pain. It's the very wrestling with our problems that can be the impetus for our growth.

As I go clowning my sentimental way into eternity, wrestling with all my problems of estrangement and communion, sincerity and simulation, ambition and acquiescence, I shuttle between worrying whether I matter at all and whether anything else matters but me.

If I had stood at the free-throw line and thought about 10 million people watching me on the other side of the camera lens, I couldn't have made anything. So I mentally tried to put myself in a familiar place. I thought about all those times I shot free throws in practice and went through the same motion, the same technique that I had used thousands of times. You forget about the outcome. You know you are doing the right things. So you relax and perform.

When fate hands you a lemon, make lemonade.

Over every mountain there is a path, although it may not be seen from the valley.

The job of an educator is to teach students to see vitality in themselves

When my wrestlers got their hands raised, I jumped for joy.

We, as a wrestling community, better remember it is more than one individual that makes a winner.

A clean, hard-fought wrestling match is the most honest of athletic contests. There is no technological interventions, no teammates to blame, no panel of judges to bias the score. In wrestling, you compete or you quit. No alibis. I like that

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

There's always ways of motivating yourself to higher levels. Write about it, dream about it. But after that, turn it into action. Don't just dream.

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.

Little things make the difference. Everyone is well prepared in the big things, but only the winners perfect the little things.

A prime function of a leader is to keep hope alive.

I would say act like a man of thought and think like a man of action.

Many of those who have paid the ultimate price for freedom have come through the wrestling ranks. We need to honor them and win this decision to have wrestling - the world's oldest sport - remain a part of the most prestigious athletic competition in the world, the Olympics.