Welcome to our collection of quotes by Herb Brooks. We hope you enjoy pondering them and please share widely.
Wikipedia Summary for Herb Brooks
Herbert Paul Brooks Jr. (August 5, 1937 – August 11, 2003) was an American ice hockey player and coach. His most notable achievement came in 1980 as head coach of the gold medal-winning U.S. Olympic team at Lake Placid. At the Games, Brooks's American team upset the heavily favored Soviet team in a match that came to be known as the "Miracle on Ice."
Brooks coached multiple National Hockey League (NHL) teams, as well as the French team at the 1998 Winter Olympics. He ultimately returned to coach the U.S. men's team to a silver medal at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Brooks was killed in a 2003 car accident. At the time of his death, he was the director of player personnel for the NHL's Pittsburgh Penguins.
You were born to be a player. You were meant to be here. This moment is yours.
Coaching is like being a king. It prepares you for nothing.
The legs feed the wolf.
You can't be common, the common man goes nowhere; you have to be uncommon.
Let me start with issuing you a challenge: Be better than you are. Set a goal that seems unattainable, and when you reach that goal, set another one even higher.
Risk something or forever sit with your dreams.
Win, lose, or tie, you're gonna play like champions!
Write your own book instead of reading someone else's book about success.
When you pull on that jersey, you represent yourself and your teammates, and the name on the front is a hell of a lot more important than the one on the back. Get that through your head!
This is your time. Their time is done. It's over. I'm sick and tired of hearing about what a great hockey team the Soviets have. Screw 'em. This is your time. Now go out there and take it!
You don't have enough talent to win on talent alone.
The name on the front is a hell of a lot more important than the one on the back.
Maybe I'm sort of like the players -- there's still a lot of little boy in me.
Everything goes in cycles, to a degree.
If I'd have went on the ice when this thing happened, someone would have speared me or something. It's a great feeling of accomplishment and pride. They had to do it; it was their moment.
You know, Willie Wonka said it best: we are the makers of dreams, the dreamers of dreams.
You're playing worse and worse every day and right now you're playing like it's next month.
You're looking for players whose name on the front of the sweater is more important than the one on the back. I look for these players to play hard, to play smart and to represent their country.
We should be dreaming. We grew up as kids having dreams, but now we're too sophisticated as adults, as a nation. We stopped dreaming. We should always have dreams.
And maybe I'm a little smarter now than I was before for all the stupid things I've done.
This is your moment. You're meant to be here.
Great moments are born from great oppurtunities.