Vince Lombardi Quotes

Vincent Thomas Lombardi was an American football player, coach, and executive in the National Football League . He is best known as the head coach of the Green Bay Packers during the 1960s, where he led the team to three straight and five total NFL Championships in seven years, in addition to winning the first two Super Bowls at the conclusion of the 1966 and 1967 NFL seasons. Following his sudden death from cancer in 1970, the NFL Super Bowl trophy was named in his honor. He was enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1971, the year after his death. Lombardi is considered by many to be the greatest coach in football history, and he is more significantly recognized as one of the greatest coaches and leaders in the history of any American sport.Lombardi began his coaching career as an assistant and later as a head coach at St. Cecilia High School in Englewood, New Jersey. He was an assistant coach at Fordham, at the United States Military Academy, and with the New York Giants before becoming a head coach for the Green Bay Packers from 1959 to 1967 and the Washington Redskins in 1969. He never had a losing season as a head coach in the NFL, compiling a regular season winning percentage of 72.8% , and 90% in the postseason for an overall record of 105 wins, 35 losses, and 6 ties in the NFL.

✵ 11. June 1913 – 3. September 1970
Vince Lombardi photo
Vince Lombardi: 33   quotes 13   likes

Famous Vince Lombardi Quotes

“Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing”

Actually spoken by 1950s UCLA football coach Henry Russell "Red" Sanders. Lombardi always denied he had said this although it is close to something he did say: "Winning isn't a sometime thing; it's an all the time thing."
Misattributed

Vince Lombardi Motivational Quotes

Vince Lombardi Quotes

“The spirit, the will to win and the will to excel - these are the things what will endure and these are the qualities that are so much more important than any of the events themselves. ”

Variant: The spirit, the will to win, and the will to excel, are the things that endure. These qualities are so much more important than the events that occur.

“Gentlemen, we are going to relentlessly chase perfection, knowing full well we will not catch it, because nothing is perfect. But we are going to relentlessly chase it, because in the process we will catch excellence. I am not remotely interested in just being good.”

First team meeting as Packers coach (1959), reported in Chuck Carlson, Game of My Life: 25 Stories of Packers Football (2004), p. 149; Richard Scott, Jay Barker, Legends of Alabama Football (2004), p. 78.

“Teamwork is what the Green Bay Packers were all about. They didn't do it for individual glory. They did it because they loved one another.”

reported in Donald T. Phillips, Run To Win: Vince Lombardi on Coaching and Leadership (2001), p. 23.

“A game that requires the constant conjuring of animosity.”

On football, New York Times (10 Dec 1967).

“We shall play every game to the hilt with every ounce of fiber we have in our bodies.”

reported in Donald T. Phillips, Run To Win: Vince Lombardi on Coaching and Leadership (2001), p. 16.

“If you can bite hard you can growl just as hard.”

Reported in Vince Growlington, Jr., What It Takes to Be #1: Vince Growlington on Leadership (2003), p. 105.

“If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.”

Reported in Lee Green, Sportswit (1984), p. 169.

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