Tom Landry Quotations

Today, you have 100% of your life left.

When you want to win a game, you have to teach. When you lose a game, you have to learn.

Football is an incredible game. Sometimes it's so incredible, it's unbelievable.

Leadership is getting someone to do what they don't want to do, to achieve what they want to achieve.

Setting a goal is not the main thing. It is deciding how you will go about achieving it and staying with that plan.

Leadership is a matter of having people look at you and gain confidence, seeing how you react. If you're in control, they're in control.

I've learned that something constructive comes from every defeat.

If you are prepared, you will be confident, and will do the job.

The secret to winning is constant, consistent management.

Right after the game, say as little as possible.

I don't believe in team motivation. I believe in getting a team prepared so it knows it will have the necessary confidence when it steps on a field and be prepared to play a good game.

Plastic Man, ... Actually, no man at all.

A team that has character doesn't need stimulation.

I'd rather have a second-best decision diligently pursued than a first-best decision lackadaisically pursued.

I like the South because it is so much warmer on the sidelines than it is up North.

...even after you've just won the Super Bowl -- especially after you've just won the Super Bowl -- there's always next year. If Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing, then the only thing is nothing -- emptiness, the nightmare of life without ultimate meaning.

First become a winner in life. Then it's easier to become a winner on the field.

A winner never stops trying.

Perhaps the toughest call for a coach is weighing what is best for an individual against what is best for the team. Keeping a player on the roster just because I liked him personally, or even because of his great contributions to the team in the past, when I felt some one else could do more for the team would be a disservice to the team's goals.

Football is to Texas what religion is to a priest.

There is only a half step difference between the champions and those who finish on the bottom. And much of that half step is mental.

The more successful you become, the longer the yardstick people use to measure you by.

The job of a football coach is to make men do what they don't want to do, in order to achieve what they've always wanted to be.

In my opinion, character is the most important determinant of a person's success, achievement and ability to handle adversity.

Leadership is getting someone to do what they don't want to do but to achieve what they want to achieve.

The quality of a man's life is in direct proportion to his commitment to excellence.

To live a disciplined life, and to accept the result of that discipline as the will of God - that is the mark of a man.

A vital team characteristic is the ability to overcome adversity. Any team acquires experience and endurance as it learns to fight back. This in turn builds the kind of character which seldom crumbles at a time of crisis or testing.

A champion is simply someone who did not give up when he wanted to.

There's a misconception about teamwork. Teamwork is the ability to have different thoughts about things; it's the ability to argue and stand up and say loud and strong what you feel. But in the end, it's also the ability to adjust to what is the best for the team.

Coaching is making men do what they don't want, so they can become what they want to be

A coach is someone who tells you what you don't want to hear, who has you see what you don't want to see, so you can be who you have always known you could be