Quotes by Jim Valvano
Welcome to our collection of quotes (with shareable picture quotes) by Jim Valvano. We hope you enjoy pondering them and that you will share them widely.
Wikipedia Summary for Jim Valvano
James Thomas Anthony Valvano (March 10, 1946 – April 28, 1993), nicknamed Jimmy V, was an American college basketball player, coach, and broadcaster.
Valvano had a successful coaching career with multiple schools, most notably at North Carolina State University. While the head coach at NC State, his team won the 1983 national title against improbable odds. Valvano is most remembered for his ecstatic celebration after winning the national championship against the heavily-favored Houston Cougars.
After his coaching career, Valvano gave an inspirational and memorable speech in 1993 at the ESPY Awards while terminally ill with cancer, telling listeners to laugh, think, and cry each day, saying "don't give up. Don't ever give up". He gave the speech less than two months before his death from adenocarcinoma. The ESPY Awards now include the Jimmy V Award named in his honor. Each year, a college basketball tournament called the Jimmy V Classic is held in his honor and in support of cancer victims and survivors.
We have a very intelligent team. I've had clubs that when you tell a guy to go back door, he leaves the gym. Or you tell the team you're going to have a closed practice and eight guys don't show up.
The difference between Namath and me is that when you make the money he makes, they say you're ruggedly handsome. When you make the money I make, they say you have a big nose.
If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that's a full day.
Longer Version/[Notes]:
If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that's a full day. That's a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you're going to have something special.
Nothing can happen if it's not first a dream. If you have someone with a dream, if you have a motivated person with a goal and a vision, if you have someone that never gives up, who has great hope, Anything can happen.
Nothing has ever been accomplished in any walk of life without enthusiasm, without motivation, and without perseverance.
I made a ridiculous statement when I first went to North Carolina State. I said I know basketball down there was like life or death. It was very wrong. It's more important.
Now I'm fighting cancer, everybody knows that. People ask me all the time about how you go through your life and how's your day, and nothing is changed for me.
But try if you can to support, whether it's AIDS or the cancer foundation, so that someone else might survive, might prosper, and might actually be cured of this dreaded disease.
I asked a ref if he could give me a technical foul for thinking bad things about him. He said, of course not. I said, well, I think you stink. And he gave me a technical. You can't trust em.
I set out very calculatedly to become known. The only thing I maybe miscalculated was how easy it would be.
No matter what business you're in, you can't run in place or someone will pass you by. It doesn't matter how many games you've won.
I just got one last thing, I urge all of you, all of you, to enjoy your life, the precious moments you have. To spend each day with some laughter and some thought, to get you're emotions going.
