200 Best Vince Lombardi Quotes: Inspirational Leadership & Success Wisdom

Discover 200 powerful Vince Lombardi quotes on leadership, winning, teamwork & excellence. Inspiring words from the legendary coach to motivate success in sports, business & life.

I’ve compiled 200 of the most famous Vince Lombardi quotes for you! These quotes are organized into thematic categories covering his core philosophies:

• Teamwork & Leadership – His insights on building teams and leading people
• Commitment & Dedication – The importance of total commitment to excellence
• Success & Achievement – What it takes to succeed and pay the price for greatness
• Mental Toughness & Discipline – Building character and inner strength
• Will to Win & Excellence – The relentless pursuit of being the best
• Winning & Competition – His famous perspectives on winning and losing
• Perseverance & Resilience – Never giving up and bouncing back from setbacks

The collection includes his most iconic quotes like “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing” Quotes Vince Lombardi and “Perfection is not attainable. But if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence,” Quotes | Vince Lombardi along with many deeper insights about leadership, character, and the pursuit of greatness.

These quotes reflect Lombardi’s core belief that success comes through hard work, discipline, teamwork, and an unwavering commitment to excellence – principles that apply far beyond football to business, leadership, and life in general.

200 Famous Vince Lombardi Quotes

Teamwork & Leadership

1. “The achievements of an organization are the results of the combined effort of each individual.”
2. “Individual commitment to a group effort – that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.”
3. “People who work together will win, whether it be against complex football defenses, or the problems of modern society.”
4. “Leaders are made, they are not born. They are made by hard effort, which is the price which all of us must pay to achieve any goal that is worthwhile.”
5. “Leadership is based on a spiritual quality — the power to inspire, the power to inspire others to follow.”
6. “Leadership rests not only upon ability, not only upon capacity – having the capacity to lead is not enough. The leader must be willing to use it.”
7. “It is essential to understand that battles are primarily won in the hearts of men. Men respond to leadership in a most remarkable way and once you have won his heart, he will follow you anywhere.”
8. “Having the capacity to lead is not enough. The leader must be willing to use it.”
9. “A leader must identify himself with the group, must back up the group, even at the risk of displeasing superiors.”
10. “No leader, however great, can long continue unless he wins battles. The battle decides all.”
11. “Leadership is not just one quality, but rather a blend of many qualities; and while no one individual possesses all of the needed talents that go into leadership, each man can develop a combination to make him a leader.”
12. “Coaches who can outline plays on a blackboard are a dime a dozen. The ones who win get inside their players and motivate.”

Commitment & Dedication

13. “Winning is not a sometime thing, it is an all the time thing. You don’t do things right once in a while…you do them right all the time.”
14. “Once a man has made a commitment to a way of life, he puts the greatest strength in the world behind him. It’s something we call heart power.”
15. “Unless a man believes in himself and makes a total commitment to his career and puts everything he has into it – his mind, his body, his heart – what’s life worth to him?”
16. “The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor.”
17. “I would say that the quality of each man’s life is the full measure of that man’s commitment of excellence and victory.”
18. “Most important of all, to be successful in life demands that a man make a personal commitment to excellence and to victory.”
19. “In order to succeed, this group will need a singleness of purpose, they will need a dedication, and they will have to convince all of their prospects of the willingness to sacrifice.”
20. “Success demands singleness of purpose.”

Success & Achievement

21. “Football is a great deal like life in that it teaches that work, sacrifice, perseverance, competitive drive, selflessness and respect for authority is the price that each and every one of us must pay to achieve any goal that is worthwhile.”
22. “Success is like anything worthwhile. It has a price. You have to pay the price to win and you have to pay the price to get to the point where success is possible.”
23. “A man can be as great as he wants to be. If you believe in yourself and have the courage, the determination, the dedication, the competitive drive, and if you are willing to sacrifice the little things in life and pay the price for the things that are worthwhile, it can be done.”
24. “To achieve success, whatever the job we have, we must pay a price.”
25. “Once you agree upon the price you and your family must pay for success, it enables you to ignore the minor hurts, the opponent’s pressure, and the temporary failures.”
26. “There is no substitute for work.”
27. “Success is based upon a spiritual quality, a power to inspire others.”
28. “The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary.”
29. “Some of us will do our jobs well and some will not, but we will all be judged on one thing: the result.”
30. “If you’ll not settle for anything less than your best, you will be amazed at what you can accomplish in your lives.”

Mental Toughness & Discipline

31. “Mental toughness is many things and rather difficult to explain. Its qualities are sacrifice and self-denial. Also, most importantly, it is combined with a perfectly disciplined will that refuses to give in.”
32. “I’ve never known a man worth his salt who, in the long run, deep down in his heart, didn’t appreciate the grind, the discipline.”
33. “Once you learn to quit, it becomes a habit.”
34. “The good Lord gave you a body that can stand most anything. It’s your mind you have to convince.”
35. “There is something good in men that really yearn for discipline.”
36. “There is only one kind of discipline, and that is the perfect discipline. As a leader, you must enforce and maintain that discipline; otherwise, you will fail at your job.”
37. “Mental toughness is essential to success.”
38. “Mental toughness is Spartanism, with all its qualities of self-denial, sacrifice, dedication, fearlessness, and love.”
39. “If you’re lucky enough to find a guy with a lot of head and a lot of heart, he’s never going to come off the field second.”
40. “Brains without competitive hearts are rudderless.”
41. “Teams do not go physically flat, they go mentally stale.”

Will to Win & Excellence

42. “The spirit, the will to win and the will to excel – these are the things that endure and these are the qualities that are so much more important than any of the events that occasion them.”
43. “The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather in a lack of will.”
44. “There’s only one way to succeed in anything, and that is to give it everything. I do, and I demand that my players do.”
45. “You never win a game unless you beat the guy in front of you. The score on the board doesn’t mean a thing. That’s for the fans.”
46. “Everyone has the will to win but very few have the will to prepare to win.”
47. “Perfection is not attainable. But if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence.”
48. “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.”
49. “I firmly believe that any man’s finest hours – his greatest fulfillment of all that he holds dear – is that moment when he has worked his heart out in good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle – victorious.”
50. “After all the cheers have died down and the stadium is empty, after the headlines have been written, and after you are back in the quiet of your room and the championship ring has been placed on the dresser and after all the pomp and fanfare have faded, the enduring thing that is left is the dedication to doing with our lives the very best we can to make the world a better place in which to live.”

Winning & Competition

51. “Winning is not everything – but making the effort to win is.”
52. “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.”
53. “If it doesn’t matter who wins or loses, then why do they keep score?”
54. “Show me a good loser, and I’ll show you a loser.”
55. “The objective is to win: fairly, squarely, decently, win by the rules, but still win.”
56. “To the winner, there is 100-percent elation, 100-percent fun, 100-percent laughter; and yet the only thing left to the loser is resolution and determination.”
57. “Winning is not a sometime thing…it’s an all the time thing. You don’t win once in a while…you don’t do the right thing once in a while…you do them right all the time. Winning is a habit.”
58. “A team that thinks it’s going to lose is going to lose.”
59. “Second place is meaningless. You can’t always be first, but you have to believe that you should have been – that you were never beaten – that time just ran out on you.”
60. “Beat your opponent where he is strongest, and you demoralize him.”
61. “Win by the rules, but still, win.”
62. “Running a football team is no different than running any other kind of organization.”

Perseverance & Resilience

63. “It’s not whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you get up.”
64. “The harder you work, the harder it is to surrender.”
65. “Once you have established the goals you want and the price you’re willing to pay, you can ignore the minor hurts, the opponent’s pressure and the temporary failures.”
66. “Obstacles are what you see when you take your eyes off of the goal.”
67. “Don’t succumb to excuses. Go back to the job of making the corrections and forming the habits that will make your goal possible.”
68. “If you don’t think you’re a winner, you don’t belong here.”
69. “You defeat defeatism with confidence.”
70. “Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.”

Character & Values

71. “There are three things that are important to every man in this locker room. His God, his family, and the Green Bay Packers. In that order.”
72. “Faithfulness and truth are the most sacred excellences and endowments of the human mind.”
73. “Morally, the life of the organization must be of exemplary nature. This is one phase where the organization must not have criticism.”
74. “The object is to win fairly, by the rules – but to win.”
75. “I believe in God.”
76. “When we place our dependence in God, we are unencumbered, and we have no worry.”
77. “I derived my strength from daily mass and communion.”
78. “Before I can embrace freedom, I should be aware of what duties I have.”

Habits & Mindset

79. “Winning is a habit. Watch your thoughts, they become your beliefs. Watch your beliefs, they become your words. Watch your words, they become your actions. Watch your actions, they become your habits. Watch your habits, they become your character.”
80. “Confidence is contagious and so is lack of confidence, and a customer will recognize both.”
81. “If you aren’t fired with enthusiasm, you’ll be fired with enthusiasm.”

Passion & Motivation

82. “It is and has always been an American zeal to be first in everything we do, and to win.”
83. “To be successful, a man must exert an effective influence upon his brothers and upon his associates, and the degree in which he accomplishes this depends on the personality of the man. The incandescence of which he is capable.”
84. “The flame of fire that burns inside of him. The magnetism which draws the heart of other men to him.”

Teaching & Coaching

85. “They call it coaching but it is teaching. You do not just tell them…you show them the reasons.”
86. “At many a moment on many a day, I am convinced that pro football must be a game for madmen, and I must be one of them.”
87. “I’ve been in football all my life, gentlemen, and I don’t know whether I’m particularly qualified to be a part of anything else, except I consider it a great game, a game of many assets.”
88. “I think a symbol of what this country’s best attributes are: courage and stamina and a coordinated efficiency or teamwork.”

Additional Famous Quotes

89. “Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect.”
90. “The greatest accomplishment is not in never falling, but in rising again after you fall.”
91. “The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand.”
92. “Gentlemen, we will chase perfection, and we will chase it relentlessly, knowing all the while we can never attain it. But along the way, we shall catch excellence.”
93. “Winners never quit and quitters never win.”
94. “Success isn’t a result of spontaneous combustion. You have to set yourself on fire.”
95. “The measure of who we are is what we do with what we have.”
96. “Dictionary is the only place that success comes before work. Hard work is the price we must pay for success.”
97. “If you can accept losing, you can’t win.”
98. “Champions make their own luck.”
99. “We would accomplish many more things if we did not think of them as impossible.”
100. “Leaders aren’t born, they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work.”

More Inspirational Quotes

101. “The real glory is being knocked to your knees and then coming back. That’s real glory. That’s the essence of it.”
102. “I don’t build character. I eliminate the people who don’t have it.”
103. “Life’s battles don’t always go to the stronger or faster man. But sooner or later, the man who wins is the man who thinks he can.”
104. “Fatigue makes cowards of us all.”
105. “We didn’t lose the game; we just ran out of time.”
106. “The man on top of the mountain didn’t fall there.”
107. “Some people try to find things in this game that don’t exist but football is only two things – blocking and tackling.”
108. “Football is like life – it requires perseverance, self-denial, hard work, sacrifice, dedication and respect for authority.”
109. “The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence.”
110. “A school without football is in danger of deteriorating into a medieval study hall.”
111. “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.”
112. “I hold it more important to have the players’ confidence than their affection.”
113. “The successful man has enthusiasm. Good work is never done in cold blood; heat is needed to forge anything. Every great achievement is the story of a flamed heart.”
114. “We live in an age fit for heroes. No time has ever offered such perils or prizes.”
115. “Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.”
116. “Confidence is contagious. So is lack of confidence.”
117. “The only true satisfaction a player receives is the satisfaction that comes from being part of a successful team, regardless of his personal accomplishments.”
118. “Build for your team a feeling of oneness, of dependence on one another and of strength to be derived by unity.”
119. “Mental toughness is humility, simplicity, Spartanism. And one other, love. I don’t necessarily have to like my players, but as their leader I must love them.”
120. “I’ve never been associated with a losing team in my life, and I don’t intend to start now.”
121. “Ice bowls and championships are won by men who can focus their energy and emotions.”
122. “We shall play every game to the hilt with every ounce of fiber we have in our bodies.”
123. “Each Sunday after the battle, one group savors victory, another lives in the bitterness of defeat.”
124. “The will to excel and the will to win, they endure. They are more important than any events that occasion them.”
125. “Every time a football player goes to ply his trade, he’s got to play from the ground up – from the soles of his feet right up to his head. Every inch of him has to play.”

Leadership Wisdom

126. “A leader must identify himself with the group, must back up the group, even at the risk of displeasing the brass.”
127. “The leader can never close the gap between himself and the group. If he does, he is no longer what he must be. He must walk a tightrope between the consent he must win and the control he must exert.”
128. “One must not hesitate to innovate and change with the times. The leader who stands still is not progressing, and he will not remain a leader for long.”
129. “In great attempts, it is glorious even to fail.”
130. “A leader is a man who has the ability to get other people to do what they don’t want to do and like it.”
131. “Most leaders are made by demands of external situations.”
132. “A man is known by his loyalties.”
133. “Leadership is not just one quality, but rather a blend of many qualities.”
134. “The leader must know, must know that he knows, and must be able to make it abundantly clear to those about him that he knows.”
135. “You carry on no matter what are the obstacles. You simply refuse to give up – and, when the going gets rough, you get tougher.”

Excellence & Standards

136. “Excellence is achieved by the mastery of the fundamentals.”
137. “The strength of the group is in the will of the leader, and the will is character in action.”
138. “Character is the result of two things: mental attitude and the way we spend our time.”
139. “Having the capacity to lead is not enough. The leader must be willing to use it.”
140. “The will to prepare to win is more important than the will to win.”
141. “The achievements of an organization are the results of the combined effort of each individual.”
142. “Inches make champions.”
143. “The harder you work, the luckier you get.”
144. “You don’t do things right once in a while. You do them right all the time.”
145. “Individual commitment to a group effort: That is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.”

Motivation & Drive

146. “I think good physical conditioning is important. I think a lot of times people think they can do it with talent alone but as talent goes up, work ethic must go up as well.”
147. “If winning isn’t everything, why do they keep score?”
148. “Some of us will do our jobs well and some will not, but we will be judged by only one thing – the result.”
149. “Success is not a destination, but the road that you’re on. Being successful means that you’re working hard and walking your walk every day. You can only live your dream by working hard towards it. That’s living your dream.”
150. “Winning is habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.”
151. “The difference between men is in energy, in the strong will, in the settled purpose and in the invincible determination.”
152. “The successful person has the habit of doing the things failures don’t like to do.”
153. “You have to pay the price. You will find that everything in life exacts a price, and you will have to decide whether the price is worth the prize.”
154. “Winning means you’re willing to go longer, work harder, and give more than anyone else.”
155. “A disciplined person is the one who follows the will of the one who gives the orders.”

Final Wisdom Quotes

156. “The test of a successful person is not an ability to eliminate all problems before they arise, but to meet and work out difficulties when they do arise.”
157. “We win or lose as a team. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
158. “There’s no such thing as a successful individual. It takes a team.”
159. “The good Lord gave you a body that can stand most anything. It’s your mind that you have to convince.”
160. “The joy is in creating, not maintaining.”
161. “Ability is what you’re capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.”
162. “Show me a good loser and I’ll show you a loser.”
163. “Once you agree upon the price you and your family must pay for success, it enables you to ignore the minor hurts, the opponent’s pressure, and temporary failures.”
164. “Success demands singleness of purpose.”
165. “You defeat defeatism with confidence.”
166. “We live in an age fit for heroes.”
167. “The will to win is important, but the will to prepare is vital.”
168. “Winning is not everything, but the will to win is everything.”
169. “The man who wins is the average man with laser-like focus.”
170. “Character in action is the measure of greatness.”
171. “Excellence is not a skill, it’s an attitude.”
172. “The quality of life is in proportion, always, to the capacity for delight. The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.”
173. “Winning is not a destination. It’s a way of life.”
174. “Every man is the architect of his own fortune.”
175. “The will to excel and the will to win endure. They are more important than any events that occasion them.”
176. “Champions are made from something deep inside of them – a desire, a dream, a vision.”
177. “The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand.”
178. “Unless a man believes in himself and makes a total commitment to his career and puts everything he has into it – his mind, his body, his heart – what is life worth to him?”
179. “The will to prepare is the will to win.”
180. “Success is based on preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.”

Final Collection

181. “A man’s finest hour is when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle – victorious.”
182. “There is no room for second place. There is only one place in my game, and that’s first place.”
183. “If you are not making mistakes, you are not trying hard enough.”
184. “Football is a game of inches played by men of character.”
185. “The way a team plays as a whole determines its success.”
186. “Individual glory is insignificant when it comes to team achievement.”
187. “A good executive goes around with a worried look on his assistants.”
188. “The most important ingredient of leadership is character.”
189. “The spirit, the will to win, and the will to excel are the things that endure.”
190. “A man can be as great as he wants to be.”
191. “I will demand excellence and settle for nothing less.”
192. “The only way to win is as a team.”
193. “Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure.”
194. “Character is what you do when no one is watching.”
195. “The man who complains about the way the ball bounces is likely the one who dropped it.”
196. “Winners train, losers complain.”
197. “The harder the battle, the sweeter the victory.”
198. “Excellence is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.”
199. “The will to succeed is important, but what’s more important is the will to prepare.”
200. “Victory belongs to the most persevering.”

These quotes capture the essence of Vince Lombardi’s philosophy on leadership, winning, excellence, teamwork, and character. His words continue to inspire athletes, coaches, business leaders, and anyone striving for greatness in their chosen field.