Quotes by Pat Summitt

Discipline helps you finish a job, and finishing is what separates excellent work from average work.

Change equals self-improvement. Push yourself to places you haven't been before.

We communicate all the time, even when we don't realize it. Be aware of body language.

Anyone can quit, but it takes a strong, committed person not to quit when times are tough.

Teamwork does not come naturally. Let's face it. We are born with certain inclinations, but sharing isn't one of them.

In the absence of feedback, people will fill in the blanks with a negative. They will assume you don't care about them or don't like them.

I lost my confidence.

I've always put great emphasis on the academics and getting your degree. It's important because basketball is short term. The long term is what are you gonna do after college and after you no longer can bounce the ball.

I don't give out compliments easily.

We do not win championships with girls. We win with competitors.

Discipline is the only sure way I know to convince people to believe in themselves.

Someday, I suppose I'll give up, and sit in the rocking chair. But I'll probably be rocking fast, because I don't know what I'll do without a job.

If I'm not leading by example, then I'm not doing the right thing. And I want to always do the right thing.

Our emphasis is on execution, not winning.

It is what it is. But, it will be what you make it.

Silence is a form of communication, too. Sometimes less is more.

She taught me that it's ok to let down your guard and allow your players to get to know you. They don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.

You spend more of the game preparing to win in the final seconds. And that is what separates winners from losers.

Confidence is what happens when you've done the hard work that entitles you to succeed.

When you choose to be a competitor you choose to be a survivor. When you choose to compete, you make the conscious decision to find out what your real limits are, not just what you think they are.

The willingness to experiment with change may be the most essential ingredient to success at anything.

In order to grow, you must accept new responsibilities, no matter how uncertain you may feel or how unprepared you are to deal with them.

Sometimes I draw blanks.

I think sometimes for me that sounds like almost being selfish. I am not about personal records.

You have to make shots. That's the bottom line.

I just think they were just a team that really enjoyed the process and allowed our coaching staff to enjoy the process.

Loyalty is not unilateral. You have to give it to receive it.

If it doesn't bother you, it won't bother them.

If you want to be in the game you better shoot 75% from the line.

Rebounding wins championships, you need to emphasize it and work with kids on it.

Teamwork doesn't come naturally. It must be taught.

Belief in yourself is what happens when you know you've done the thing things that entitle you to success.

When you grow up on a dairy farm, cows don't take a day off. So you work every day and my dad always said, 'No one can outwork you,'

The greatest strength any human being an have is to recognize his or her own weaknesses. When you identify your weaknesses, you can begin to remedy them -- or at least figure out how to work around them.

I think that it was a great feeling and probably a little bit more special because of the length of time that had passed before we won, but I think more importantly, it was just a great feeling because this team had such strong leadership and they had great chemistry.

Teamwork is really a form of trust. It's what happens when you surrender the mistaken idea that you can go it alone and realize that you won't achieve your individual goals without the support of your colleagues.

Individual success is a myth. No one succeeds all by herself.

Success lulls you. It makes the most ambitious of us complacent and sloppy. In a way, you have to cultivate a kind of amnesia and forget all of your previous prosperity.

Attitude is a choice. What you think you can do, whether positive or negative, confident or scared, will most likely happen.

It's harder to stay on top than it is to make the climb, Continue to seek new goals.

There is an old saying: a champion is someone who is willing to be uncomfortable.

Attitude lies somewhere between emotion and logic. It's that curious mix of optimism and determination that enables you to maintain a positive outlook and to continue plodding in the face of the most adverse circumstances.

Change equals self improvement. Push yourself to places you haven't been before.

By doing things when you are too tired, by pushing yourself farther than you thought you could -- like running the track after a two-hour practice -- you become a competitor. Each time you go beyond your perceived limit, you become mentally stronger.

Winners are not born, they are self-made.

A lot of kids just want to go play basketball, but they don't know to play and they don't have the skills to play. I think just the skill development right off and then play all you can, but don't sacrifice your skill development by just playing and not working on the specifics of the game.

Know your strengths, weaknesses, and needs.

There is nothing wrong with having competitive instincts. They are survival instincts.

You can't always be the most talented person in the room. But you can be the most competitive.

Attitude is a choice. Think positive thoughts daily. Believe in yourself.

Success is a project that's always under construction.

There are some concrete ways to create a winning attitude. But nothing beats practicing it. When you prepare to win, belief comes easily.

Sometimes you learn more from losing than winning. Losing forces you to reexamine.

I think the most important thing I thought is, I thought about recruiting and what we need in recruiting.

My parents taught me a long time ago that you win in life with people, and that's important, because if you hang with winners, you stand a great chance of being a winner.

I have a love-hate relationship with losing. I hate how it makes me feel, which is basically sick. But I love what it brings out.

Setting up a system that rewards you for meeting your goals and has penalties for failing to hit your target is just as important as putting your goals down on paper.

I won 1,098 games, and eight national championships, and coached in four different decades. But what I see are not the numbers. I see their faces.

There is not that many players that really can take over games, signed Candace Parker, I really felt like at that time that a National Championship was certainly in reach.

Responsibility equals accountability equals ownership. And a sense of ownership is the most powerful weapon a team or organization can have.

Group discipline produces a unified effort toward a common goal.

No one feels strong when she examines her own weakness. But in facing weakness, you learn how much there is in you, and you find real strength.

Accountability is essential to personal growth, as well as team growth. How can you improve if you're never wrong? If you don't admit a mistake and take responsibility for it, you're bound to make the same one again.

A competitor continually sets new goals. He feels the need to keep raising the bar. If the fist goal is to make the team, and he achieves it, he immediately resets the goal to: I want to be a starter.

I mean, we're always trying to evaluate and tweak things and get better.

The ultimate goal of discipline is to teach self discipline.

You can't pick and choose the days that you feel like being responsible. It's not something that disappears when you're tired.

The absolute heart of loyalty is to value those people who tell you the truth, not just those people who tell you what you want to hear. In fact, you should value them most. Because they have paid you the compliment of leveling with you and assuming you can handle it.

To me, teamwork is a lot like being part of a family. It comes with obligations, entanglements, headaches, and quarrels. But the rewards are worth the cost.

Losing strengthens you. It reveals your weaknesses so you can fix them.

I want to continue to do is to help these young women be successful. .. You don't just say goodbye at the end of their playing careers and end it there.

I want to keep coaching as long as I can. I love teaching and working with student athletes and I love being at the University of Tennessee.

I am about helping each and every student athlete that selects to wear the orange, you know, be successful at Tennessee individually and as a team. That type of record is certainly not anything that I have aspirations to reach.

God doesn't take things away to be cruel. He takes things away to make room for other things. He takes things away to lighten us. He takes things away so we can fly.

Teamwork is what makes common people capable of uncommon results.

I was like, 'I don't know if I could be an Olympian...' But my dad really influenced me to stay and be in the Olympics.

In my case, symptoms began to appear when I was only 57. In fact, the doctors believe early-onset Alzheimer's has a strong genetic predictor, and that it may have been progressing for some years before I was diagnosed.

I remember teaching a clinic to other coaches, and a guy raised his hand and asked if I had any advice when it came to coaching women. I leveled him with a death-ray stare, and said, 'Go home and coach basketball.'

I remember standing on a medal podium at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, imbued with a sense that if you won enough basketball games, there was no such thing as poor, backward, country, female, or inferior.

Sometimes I'm more stubborn than I am smart.

I'm not a good loser. I get sick physically... I take it to heart. I hate it.

Most people get excited about games, but I've got to be excited about practice, because that's my classroom.

I can remember trying to coach, trying to figure out schemes, and it just wasn't coming to me.

When you grow up on a dairy farm, cows don't take a day off. So you work every day and my dad always said, 'No one can outwork you.'

I'd wake up in the morning and I would think, 'Where am I?' I'd have to gather myself.

I hate to sound this way but, 'Why me? Why me with dementia?'

I don't want to sit around the house. I want to be out there. I want to go to practice. I want to be in the huddles. That's me.

Class is more important than a game.

I've got a great staff and great support system, and I'm going to stick my neck out and do what I always do.

I think I can help others just by my example.

Competition got me off the farm and trained me to seek out challenges and to endure setbacks; and in combination with my faith, it sustains me now in my fight with Alzheimer's disease.

Have you ever walked along a shoreline, only to have your footprints washed away? That's what Alzheimer's is like. The waves erase the marks we leave behind, all the sand castles. Some days are better than others.

Coaching is the great passion of my life, and the job to me has always been an opportunity to work with our student athletes and help them discover what they want.

I think that a lot of people would perceive my style as being intimidating. And although I don't want to intimidate kids, I am very demanding.

When you learn to keep fighting in the face of potential failure, it gives you a larger skill set to do what you want to do in life. It gives you vision. But you can't acquire it if you're afraid of keeping score.

The game is never over. No matter what the scoreboard reads or what the referee says, it doesn't end when you come off the court.

Winning is fun... Sure. But winning is not the point. Wanting to win is the point. Not giving up is the point. Never letting up is the point. Never being satisfied with what you've done is the point.

We keep score in life because it matters. It counts. It matters. Too many people opt out and never discover their own abilities because they fear failure. They don't understand commitment.