Quotes from Wooden on Leadership: How to Create a Winning Organization

“You are not a failure until you start blaming others for your mistakes”
― John Wooden, quote from Wooden on Leadership: How to Create a Winning Organization

“Little things make the big things happen”
― John Wooden, quote from Wooden on Leadership: How to Create a Winning Organization

“The heights by great men reached and kept, Were not attained by sudden flight. But they, while their companions slept, Were toiling upward in the night.” –Henry Wadsworth Longfellow”
― John Wooden, quote from Wooden on Leadership: How to Create a Winning Organization

“there are no big things, only a logical accumulation of little things done at a very high standard of performance.”
― John Wooden, quote from Wooden on Leadership: How to Create a Winning Organization

“A strong leader accepts blame and gives the credit. A weak leader gives blame and accepts the credit.”
― John Wooden, quote from Wooden on Leadership: How to Create a Winning Organization

“I thought treating everyone the same was being fair and impartial. Gradually I began to suspect that it was neither fair nor impartial. In fact, it was just the opposite. That’s when I began announcing that team members wouldn’t be treated the same or alike; rather, each one would receive the treatment they earned and deserved.”
― John Wooden, quote from Wooden on Leadership: How to Create a Winning Organization

“Work without joy is drudgery. Drudgery does not produce champions, nor does it produce great organizations.”
― John Wooden, quote from Wooden on Leadership: How to Create a Winning Organization

“Never lie; never cheat; never steal. Don’t whine; don’t complain; don’t make excuses.”
― John Wooden, quote from Wooden on Leadership: How to Create a Winning Organization

“As a leader you must be sincerely committed to what’s right rather than who’s right.”
― John Wooden, quote from Wooden on Leadership: How to Create a Winning Organization

“To my way of thinking, when you give your total effort—everything you have—the score can never make you a loser. And when you do less, it can’t somehow magically turn you into a winner.”
― John Wooden, quote from Wooden on Leadership: How to Create a Winning Organization

“A player who is working hard and productively for the group shouldn’t receive the same treatment as someone who is offering less. And while each and every person on your team fills a role and performs a function, some of those roles and functions are filled by people much harder to replace than others. It would be naïve to suggest that a superstar in your organization—a top producer—won’t receive some accommodations not afforded others. This is not a double standard but rather a fact of life. Those small accommodations, however, must not apply in areas of your basic principles and values or they will soon be replaced by the perception that favoritism and special treatment are the norm.”
― John Wooden, quote from Wooden on Leadership: How to Create a Winning Organization

“Before You Can Lead Others, You Must Be Able to Lead Yourself.”
― John Wooden, quote from Wooden on Leadership: How to Create a Winning Organization

“Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable.”
― John Wooden, quote from Wooden on Leadership: How to Create a Winning Organization

“Set your standards high; namely, do the absolute best of which you are capable. Focus on running the race rather than winning it. Do those things necessary to bring forth your personal best and don’t lose sleep worrying about the competition. Let the competition lose sleep worrying about you. Teach your organization to do the same.”
― John Wooden, quote from Wooden on Leadership: How to Create a Winning Organization

“You must define success as making the complete effort to maximize your ability, skills, and potential in whatever circumstances—good or bad—may exist.”
― John Wooden, quote from Wooden on Leadership: How to Create a Winning Organization

“don’t worry about whether you’re better than somebody else, but never cease trying to be the best you can become. You have control over that; the other you don’t.”
― John Wooden, quote from Wooden on Leadership: How to Create a Winning Organization

“It's what you learn after you know it all that counts.
-John Wooden”
― John Wooden, quote from Wooden on Leadership: How to Create a Winning Organization

“The two qualities of Friendship so important for a leader to possess and instill in team members are respect and camaraderie.”
― John Wooden, quote from Wooden on Leadership: How to Create a Winning Organization

“A leader in sports, business, or any other field of endeavor should possess and provide the same qualities inherent in a good parent: character, consistency, dependability, accountability, knowledge, good judgment, selflessness, respect, courage, discipline, fairness, and structure.”
― John Wooden, quote from Wooden on Leadership: How to Create a Winning Organization

“there is one similarity between a prison guard and a leader: Both have the final word. When a decision is made, it must be accepted by those on your team, or they must be encouraged to find another team.”
― John Wooden, quote from Wooden on Leadership: How to Create a Winning Organization

“Good values are like a magnet, they attract good people.”
― John Wooden, quote from Wooden on Leadership: How to Create a Winning Organization

“Minor details—like pennies—add up. A good banker isn’t careless with pennies; a good leader isn’t sloppy about details.”
― John Wooden, quote from Wooden on Leadership: How to Create a Winning Organization

“Ultimately, I believe that’s what leadership is all about: helping others to achieve their own greatness by helping the organization to succeed.”
― John Wooden, quote from Wooden on Leadership: How to Create a Winning Organization

About the author

Popular quotes

“I walked the streets and tasted the golden sun that lay across the city.”
― Chaim Potok, quote from My Name Is Asher Lev

“Very little worth knowing is taught by fear.”
― Robin Hobb, quote from Assassin's Apprentice

“You feel a little bit lost right now about what to do with your life, a bit rudderless and oarless and aimless but that’s okay… That’s alright because we’re all meant to be like that at twenty-four.”
― David Nicholls, quote from One Day

“My grandfather always says that's what books are for. To travel without moving an inch.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, quote from The Namesake

“Out of the welter of life, a few people are selected for us by the accident of temporary confinement in the same circle. We never would have chosen these neighbors; life chose them for us. But thrown together on this island of living, we stretch to understand each other and are invigorated by the stretching. The difficulty with big city environment is that if we select—and we must in order to live and breathe and work in such crowded conditions—we tend to select people like ourselves, a very monotonous diet. All hors d’oeuvres and no meat; or all sweets and no vegetables, depending on the kind of people we are. But however much the diet may differ between us, one thing is fairly certain: we usually select the known, seldom the strange. We tend not to choose the unknown which might be a shock or a disappointment or simply a little difficult to cope with. And yet it is the unknown with all its disappointments and surprises that is the most enriching.”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, quote from Gift from the Sea

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.