Quotes by Bob Knight

The key is not the will to win everybody has that. It is the will to prepare to win that is important.

America has the greatest reputation in the world for helping others whenever and wherever disaster strikes. Now, more than ever,it's important for us to contribute to those who are in need. Your assistance is really beneficial and will be greatly welcomed and appreciated.

To be as good as it can be, a team has to buy into what you as the coach are doing. They have to feel you're a part of them and they're a part of you.

A coach should never be afraid to ask questions of anyone he could learn from.

The biggest difficulty in getting to the top of the ladder is getting through the crowd at the bottom.

I think that to stop an offense, you must go to the heart of that offense. If it is a particular move, a screen, the break, an outstanding scorer, whatever it is that they like to do and rely on, you have to work in your plans on taking that completely or as much as possible away from them.

So when I hear a guy after a game-winning home run say or gesture that God was on his side, I think to myself, He's saying God screwed the pitcher.

In order to achieve positive results, one must work for them, not hope for them.

I don't understand the NBA in that, each time they bring in a one-and-done kid, they have to release a veteran player on a roster. I don't understand why their players association condones that.

I was worried about losing until I looked down the floor and saw Dale Brown. Then I knew we had a chance.

Everybody wants to be on a championship team, but nobody wants to come to practice.

Practice structure determines success.

A great way to test the conditioning of your team is the two-mile run.

I've never felt my job was to win basketball games -- rather, that the essence of my job as a coach was to do everything I could to give my players the background necessary to succeed in life.

For me to get an award from the press, I know there's been no favoritism.

If the NBA were on channel 5 and a bunch of frogs making love were on channel 4, I'd watch the frogs, even if they were coming in fuzzy.

There are as many guys in coaching who do a lousy job as there are in the media. Those are two professions that are a lot alike. There aren't a hell of a lot of really good coaches or writers.

My practices were not set up to be easy or enjoyed.

The goal is to make practice more difficult, physically mentally, than anything your players will face during a game.

Good basketball always starts with good defense!

At one point, I said to the officials that you guys haven't called walking for 20 years, now you don't know what it is. When you call walking, you're about half right.

Defense is all about helping. No one can guard a good dribbler, You have to walk kids through how to help and then how to help the helper.

This is like the town council just hired a new marshal to clean up the town, I guarantee you, if I stay here long enough, they'll get rid of me, too.

Discipline is knowing what to do. Knowing when to do it. Doing it to the best of your abilities. Doing it that way every single time.

To me, the most enjoyable part is the practice and preparation.

When we're playing a good scoring center, we tell our team that it is not our defensive man's job to stop the center. It's the responsibility of our perimeter people to stop the ball from going inside.

Everyone wants to win, but not everyone is willing to prepare to win.

As coaches we talk about two things: offense and defense. There is a third phase we neglect, which is more important. It's conversion from offense to defense and defense to offense.

You can't imagine the number of people in professional sports who have come up to me and said, God, you treat those assholes like I'd like to treat them. And my question is, Then why don't you?

BS is just what it stands for, an MS is More of the Same, and a PhD is Piled Higher and Deeper.

Superiority and success doesn't favor good effort or self-esteem... The mentally precise and physically fit win, while the mediocre and obtuse take solace in hopeful cliches.

I always designed my practice plans the night before and then made tweaks a few hours before practice began.

Basketball is a full court game, so every drill must be done full court.

Perform drills that force your players to think.

Competitive drills enhance quickness.

Don't fight the rabbits. If you fight the rabbits, the elephants are going to kill you.

The structure of your practice is the main reason for your success or lack of success as a coach.

I'm not sure I've ever been around anybody that wanted to win more or worked harder than Michael Jordan.

Basketball may have been invented in Massachusetts, but it was made for Indiana.

My overall point is that 'one and dones' are not healthy for college basketball. I should not have made it personal to Kentucky and its players and I apologize.

There are two real keys to winning. You've got to have good players: no coach won with bad players. You win with good players. That is number one. Number two is, when we are playing, let's say we are playing Michigan, and they had a really good press: we've got to solve that press.

Trump is not national: he's international. He's known all over the world. He has established businesses all over, and he has given jobs to thousands and thousands of people all over the world with these businesses that he has put together.

From my mother to people that I've known in my lifetime, they've tried to settle me down a little bit. Now I'm trying to do the same thing to my man Trump.

Probably nobody in America has come close to setting up as many jobs for people with his business as Donald Trump has.

I'll tell you one thing about Donald Trump: There will never be a Benghazi in a Donald Trump administration.

Harry Truman, with what he did in dropping and having the guts to drop the bomb in 1944, saved -- saved millions of American lives.

I'm a teacher. My mother was a teacher. I spent 40 years as a teacher.

I just like the United States, and I like being an American.

I think that we as a people are always prone to think about, well, tomorrow will be a better day. Well, why will it be a better day? And I think the more that we believe in doing things better, doing the right thing rather than hoping that that's going to happen, let's make it happen.

I have always maintained that in basketball the importance of the mental to the physical is about four to one.

Why talk now when so many things have been said without ever giving me a chance to talk?

Well, I think it's pretty much established that I just didn't have any interest in coaching in the pros.

I don't think I have ever been out of control.

And I would be the first to admit that probably, in a lot of press conferences over the time that I have been in coaching, indulging my own sense of humor at press conferences has not been greatly to my benefit.

Walking has been ridiculous in college basketball the past 15 years.

I watched the guy that hits a home run, and he comes across the plate and he points skyward, like thanking for the help from the Almighty to hit the home run. And as he does that, I say to myself, 'God screwed the pitcher.' And I don't know how else you look at it.

During my 40-year coaching career at West Point, Indiana and Texas Tech, my teams reached the Final Four on five occasions, winning the national championship three times.

Most people have the will to win, few have the will to prepare to win.

A big part of teaching is being emphatic. Maybe I'm right or wrong, but part of my approach was that when I said something, the kids understood exactly what I meant and what I wanted.

If I came in to recruit your son, I would tell you, your wife, and your son, that I will be the most demanding coach your son can play for.

I'm not sure what a conservative is. I don't know whether a conservative is a guy that goes to bed too early or maybe doesn't sleep long enough or just what the hell he might be. I don't know. Maybe he's a guy that -- you know, he just wants to be real quiet.

Everybody has an opportunity in America. I don't care if guys whine and complain about this or that. You know, no country affords its inhabitants the opportunities that the U.S.A. gives to its people.

People change over the years, and that changes situations for good and for bad.

You don't play against opponents, you play against the game of basketball.

Mental toughness is to physical as four is to one.

The will to succeed is important, but what's more important is the will to prepare.

I don't think my dad ever raised his voice to my mother or to me, ever.

We need a Donald Trump more than we've ever needed anybody since George Washington.