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

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Popular quotes

“Perhaps I ought to remember that she is very young, a mere girl and make allowances. She is all interest, eagerness, vivacity, the world is to her a charm, a wonder, a mystery, a joy; she can’t speak for delight when she finds a new flower, she must pet it and caress it and smell it and talk to it, and pour out endearing names upon it. And she is color-mad: brown rocks, yellow sand, gray moss, green foliage, blue sky; the pearl of the dawn, the purple shadows on the mountains, the golden islands floating in crimson seas at sunset, the pallid moon sailing through the shredded cloud-rack, the star-jewels glittering in the wastes of space — none of them is of any practical value, so far as I can see, but because they have color and majesty, that is enough for her, and she loses her mind over them. If she could quiet down and keep still a couple of minutes at a time, it would be a reposeful spectacle. In that cases I think I could enjoy looking at her; indeed I am sure I could, for I am coming to realize that she is a quite remarkably comely creature — lithe, slender, trim, rounded, shapely, nimble, graceful; and once when she was standing marble-white and sun-drenched on a boulder, with her young head tilted back and her hand shading her eyes, watching the flight of a bird in the sky, I recognized that she was beautiful.”
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