Best 100 quotes of Pat Summitt on MyQuotes

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.

Actually, when I saw it in USA Today, I just, Candace Parker was, we were warming up in practice and she was underneath the basket shooting and I just said, 'Hey Candace! I enjoyed what I read in the paper today about your decision [to stay].' She just started laughing and I did too. So I haven't discussed it with her.

Admit to and make yourself accountable for mistakes. How can you improve if you're never wrong?

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.

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

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

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

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.

Bringing together disparate personalities to form a team is like a jigsaw puzzle. You have to ask yourself: what is the whole picture here? We want to make sure our players all fit together properly and complement each other, so that we don't have a big piece, a little piece, an oblong piece, and a round piece. If personalities work against each other, as a team you'll find yourselves spinning your wheels.

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.

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

Coaches who start listening to fans often wind up sitting next to them.

Combine practice with belief.

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.

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

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

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.

Group discipline produces a unified effort toward a common goal.

Hard work breeds self-respect.

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.

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

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

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

If I was renowned as as tough coach, I also wanted to be a caring one

If you don't want responsibility, don't sit in the big chair. To be successful, you must accept full responsibility

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

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

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.

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

I love teaching I think more than anything. It's the opportunity to just teach young people and teach the game. You teach more than basketball. You teach life skills. The teaching part of it is something that I am passionate about. I look forward to every practice. A lot of people say well, I enjoy coaching, but I see myself as more as a teacher.

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

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

I never ask Candace Parker if she was thinking about leaving because I never had any reason to believe she would. I just kept the focus on the team and on Candace and the role she played for us.

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.

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 remember every player-every single one-who wore the Tennessee orange, a shade that our rivals hate, a bold, aggravating color that you can usually find on a roadside crew, "or in a correctional institution," as my friend Wendy Larry jokes. But to us the color is a flag of pride, because it identifies us as Lady Vols and therefore as women of an unmistakable type. Fighters. I remember how many of them fought for a better life for themselves. I just met them halfway.

I think basketball has changed tremendously and for the better. I think that obviously the game is better. I think the skill of the players are better, the strength, the overall athleticism, the teamwork involved. I think coaching is better. We have more exposure for our game than ever. You know, our sport has grown significantly in really the last five years. It's pretty amazing.

I think helped our players in terms of being able to fight through some adversity along the way.

I think I can help others just by my example.

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

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.

I think the only thing that I really thought about, I am always every year thinking about how I can get better, how my stuff can get better, how our team can improve.

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

It's my experience that people rise to the level of their own expectations and of the competition they seek out.

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'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 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 was a little concerned about it when State Farm approached me because, you know, I've never done a commercial by any means, but I tried to look at it as something that would be good for our game. We've never had a women's basketball coach represented in that fashion and I love State Farm for the fact they really support the women's game.