Paterno Quotes & Sayings

Believe deep down in your heart that you're destined to do great things. — Joe Paterno

Success without honor is an unseasoned dish; it will satisfy your hunger, but it won't taste good. — Joe Paterno

If I had to do it over again, I'd probably play the game the same way. — Joe Paterno

I like that people who are not experts can not only understand but get engaged by my work. I like that Joe Paterno can read me. Bill Bradley. — Leslie Fiedler

SMU: 'It's unbelievable to think that kind of corruption came right from the top of the power structure. The NCAA did what it had to do' in canceling SMU's 1988 football season. — Joe Paterno

Joe Paterno was a well-educated man, and he was also a man from a different time. — Joe Posnanski

When a team outgrows individual performance and learns team confidence, excellence becomes a reality. — Joe Paterno

The will to win is important, but the will to prepare is vital. — Joe Paterno

You must relate athletic experiences to life. — Joe Paterno

Joe Paterno would end every game by gathering the players and reciting the Lord's Prayer. He loved it - not so much for religious reasons but for the words. Look. The Lord's Prayer uses the words "us" and "we" and "our." It doesn't use the word "I" or "me" or "mine." Paterno understood. It's a team prayer. — Joe Posnanski

Everybody likes to win. It sure beats the devil out of losing. — Joe Paterno

Once Joe Paterno learned that his former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky was showering with a young boy in the Penn State football locker room, he had two choices: think of the child as his own and call police. Or not. He chose the latter. — Christine Pelosi

I've had a wonderful experience here at Penn State. — Joe Paterno

Sport is a product of human culture. America seems to need football at this state of our social development. When you get ninety million people watching a single game on television, it ... shows you that people need something to identify with. — Joe Paterno

I'm not Joe Paterno. Somebody didn't come and tell me Bernie Fine did something and I'm hiding it. I know nothing. If I saw some reason not to support Bernie, I would not support him. If somebody showed me a reason, proved that reason, I would not support him. But until then, I'll support him until the day I die. — Jim Boeheim

You can't have a great university without a great library. — Joe Paterno

Losing a game is heartbreaking. Losing your sense of excellence or worth is a tragedy. — Joe Paterno

In every life, there have to be some shadows. Look at me. My life has been filled with sunshine. A beautiful and caring wife. Five healthy children. I got to do what I loved. How many people are that lucky? — Joe Paterno

My father said about money: 'You have to have some. But you don't have to have all of it. Just be honest with yourself.' — Joe Paterno

Success is best measured by the achiever. — Joe Paterno

We need people who influence their peers and who cannot be detoured from their convictions by peers who do not have the courage to have any convictions. — Joe Paterno

There's never been a greater game than football. — Joe Paterno

What is a coach? We are teachers. Educators. We have the same obligations as all teachers, except we probably have more influence over young people than anybody but their families. And, in a lot of cases, more than their families. — Joe Paterno

To teach an academic subject is certainly not easy, but compared to coaching, it is. We can say 'two plus two is four' to every kid and be sure that we are right. But in coaching, we have to literally get to the soul of the people we are dealing with. — Joe Paterno

We shall act with good intentions, but at times we will be wrong. When we are, let us admit it and try to right the situation. — Joe Paterno

Coaches have got to be given rank within the university so that you can't fire a coach unless you go through an academic committee, just as you would with a professor. If coaches are to have any stability and security, they need to be treated like an English professor. — Joe Paterno

Take away what we love, wed all be Joe Paterno. — Joe Budden

Don't just stand back and play the way you're coached. A great player must rise to the occasion and turn the game around on his own. — Joe Paterno

Publicity is like poison; it doesn't hurt unless you swallow it. — Joe Paterno

They ask me what I'd like written about me when I'm gone. I hope they write I made Penn State a better place, not just that I was a good football coach. — Joe Paterno

Joe Paterno was a dictator. — Rodney Erickson

We have to realize a kid will love us one day and hate us the next. That cannot change who we are and what we are about. — Joe Paterno

There has to be some self-denial. — Joe Paterno

Its the name on the front of the jersey that matters most, not the one on the back. — Joe Paterno

I don't think I deviated from what I'm all about and what I thought was important. Whether you want to call that a legacy, or whatever you want to call it. — Joe Paterno

The kids that were the victims ... I think we all ought to say a prayer for them, — Joe Paterno

Mostly I want to talk positive; I wanna talk about a bunch of great kids that I coached and made me look good and the university that I've seen grow from a cow college, which it was, only 12,000 people, and when I came here, we weren't at Pennsylvania State University, we were at Penn State College. — Joe Paterno

We play with enthusiasm and recklessness. We aren't afraid to lose. If we win, great; but win or lose, it is the competition that gives us pleasure. — Joe Paterno

Act like you expect to get into the end zone. — Joe Paterno

Besides pride, loyalty, discipline, heart, and mind, confidence is the key to all the locks. — Joe Paterno

You have to perform at a consistently higher level than others. That's the mark of a true professional. — Joe Paterno

Success and excellence are not the same. Excellence grows within a person, is largely within that person's control, and its meaning lasts. Success is measured externally, by comparison to others, is often outside our control, and is perishable. — Joe Paterno

Right now I'm trying to figure out what I'm gonna do, 'cause I don't want to sit around on my backside all day. If I'm gonna do that I'll be a newspaper reporter. — Joe Paterno

There are many people, particularly in sports, who think that success and excellence are the same thing. They are not the same thing. Excellence is something that is lasting and dependable and largely within a person's control. In contrast, success is perishable and is often outside our control. If you strive for excellence, you will probably be successful eventually. People who put excellence in the first place have the patience to end up with success. An additional burden for the victim of the success mentality is that he is threatened by the success of others and he resents real excellence. In contrast, the person that is fascinated by quality is excited when he sees it in others. — Joe Paterno

I still haven't gotten that little something out of my system that I'm still not a kid going to a football game. I'm excited. — Joe Paterno

I really enjoyed coaching. — Joe Paterno

Joe Paterno left this world with a clear conscience, — Jay Paterno

You need to play with supreme confidence, or else you'll lose again, and then losing becomes a habit. — Joe Paterno

I have to admit, I sometimes wonder how much more successful I would have been as a coach had it not been for my spending summers on the golf course. I could have watched more film, that's for sure. One advantage Joe Paterno had over me was that he didn't play golf. — Lou Holtz

Here, I have an opportunity to affect the lives of a lot of young people - and not just on my football team. I'm not kidding myself that that would be true at the professional level. — Joe Paterno

I'm not as concerned about me. What's happened to me has been great. I got five great kids. Seventeen grandchildren. — Joe Paterno

From now on, anyone raped at Penn State should just tell Joe Paterno's statue. It couldn't help you any less than the real Joe would have. — Jim Norton

Keep hustling, something good will happen, — Joe Paterno

The name on the front of the jersey is what really matters, not the name on the back. — Joe Paterno

The minute you think you've got it made, disaster is just around the corner. — Joe Paterno

You can't be a part-time man of principle. — John Amaechi

I had a great bunch of kids. They all hung with us. The coaching staff hung with us. And we played tough every game. If you've got kids that want to play and react to you, it's fun. I'm having a good time. — Joe Paterno

Can you be a nicer gentleman, or a better man for your sport or your kids than Joe Paterno? — Pete Rose

When you want to know what Penn State is, and when you want to know what 'We Are' means, come to THON. — Jay Paterno

I don't think it's fair to 12-, 13- and 14-year-olds to say 'Show us you're a winner right now!' Winning isn't everything. I'll never buy that thing that if a boy loses a football game, he's a loser in life. — Joe Paterno

My thing was play as hard as you can, don't be stupid, pay attention to details, and have enough guts in the clutch that you're not afraid to make a play. Some things I thought were important for a young man to know. — Joe Paterno

It doesn't matter what people think of me. I've lived my life. — Joe Paterno

Today, you've got a decision to make. You're gonna get better or you're gonna get worse, but you're not gonna stay the same. Which will it be? — Joe Paterno

When a kid plays football games before he attends a class, something is wrong. — Joe Paterno

If you live to be 100 years old, what you've done here for the last two days, weeks, monthswhat you've done here will echo in eternity. — Jay Paterno

All coaches are thinking men, or else they wouldn't survive. — Joe Paterno

We can never be like it was at Penn State with Joe Paterno. That was an anomaly in an of itself. — James Brown

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

My name, I have spent my whole life trying to make that name mean something. And now it's gone. — Joe Paterno