SSFS Soccer: Future

"The mark of a Champion, in any endeavor, is their pride in preparing for their competition. For the businessman, as well as the athlete, it's reading the right books, listening to the right tapes/CDs, attending the right seminars and choosing the right mentors and coaches. Champions are built, not born. There is no off season for someone on the road to being a champion. There is only preparation and competition."

- Greg Werner

"What keeps so many people back is simply unwillingness to pay the price, to make the exertion, the effort to sacrifice their ease and comfort."

- Orison Swett Marden

"The three great essentials to achieving anything worthwhile are; first, hard work, second, stick-to-it-iveness, and third, common sense."

- Thomas Edison

"The secret is this: strength lies solely in tenacity."

- Louis Pasteur

"I will prepare, and someday my chance will come."

- Abraham Lincoln

"Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do."

- Goethe

"Ability may get you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there."

- John Wooden

"I learned that the only way you are going to get anywhere in life is to work hard at it. Whether you're a musician, a writer, an athlete or a businessman, there is no getting around it. If you do, you'll win -- if you don't you won't."

- Bruce Jenner, Former American Olympian

"Build up your weaknesses until they become your strongpoints."

- Knute Rockne

"I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it."

- Thomas Jefferson

"The world is full of willing people, some willing to work, the others willing to let them."

- Robert Frost

"Nothing will work unless you do."

- John Wooden

"The vision of a champion is bent over, drenched in sweat, at the point of exhaustion, when nobody else is looking."

- Mia Hamm

"Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration."

- Thomas Edison

"If you are not criticized, you may not be doing much."

- Donald Rumsfeld

"Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment."

- Jim Rohn

"When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another."

- Helen Keller

"Practice is the best of all instructors."

- Publilius Syrus

"Great things are not done by impulse, but a series of small things brought together."

- Vincent Van Gogh

"Strong convictions precede great actions."

- Louisa May Alcott

"Good, better, best, never let it rest, until your good is better, and your better is your best."

- St. Jerome, Father of the Latin church, (340?-420)

"Ambition is the path to success. Persistence is the vehicle you arrive in."

- William Eardley IV

"The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than success, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill. It will make or break a company...a church...a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we embrace for that day. We cannot change our past...we cannot change the fact that people act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude...I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you...we are in charge of our ATTITUDES ."

- Chuck Swindoll

"Learning is like rowing upstream: not to advance is to drop back."

- Chinese Proverb

"An opportunity is never lost, it's just found by someone else."

- Anonyomous

"Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'press on' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race."

- Calvin Coolidge, 30th president of the United States

"Things may come to those who patiently wait, but only those things left behind by those who hustle."

- Abraham Lincoln, President

"Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings."

- John F. Kennedy, President

"If we did all the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astonish ourselves."

- Thomas Edison

On Teamwork

"Our goal is not to win. It's to play together and to play hard. Then, winning takes care of itself."

- Mike Krzyzewski

"The best method of overcoming obstacles is the team method."

- General Colin Powell

"When a gifted team dedicates itself to unselfish trust and combines instinct with boldness and effort -- it is ready to climb."

- Pat Riley

"There are plenty of teams in every sport that have great players and never win titles. Most of the time, those players aren’t willing to sacrifice for the greater good of the team. The funny thing is, in the end, their unwillingness to sacrifice only makes individual goals more difficult to achieve. One thing I believe to the fullest is that if you think and achieve as a team, the individual accolades will take care of themselves. Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships."

- Michael Jordan

"I am a member of a team, and I rely on the team, I defer to it and sacrifice for it, because the team, not the individual, is the ultimate champion."

- Mia Hamm

"Solidarity is not a matter of sentiment but a fact, cold and impassive as the granite foundations of a skyscraper. If the basic elements, identity of interest, clarity of vision, honesty of intent, and oneness of purpose, or any of these is lacking, all sentimental pleas for solidarity, and all other efforts to achieve it will be barren of results."

- Eugene V. Debs

"The team is only as strong as the commitment of the least-accomplished person on the team."

- Tom Donnelly, Haverford College’s longtime men’s cross-country and track coach

On Success & Failure

"History has demonstrated that the most notable winners usually encountered heartbreaking obstacles before they triumphed. They won because they refused to become discouraged by their defeats."

- B.C. Forbes

"Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat."

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

"Before you can win you have to believe you are worthy."

- Mike Ditka

"The great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving."

- Oliver Wendell Holmes

"There are winners, there are losers and there are people who have not yet learned how to win."

- Les Brown

"It is not the critic that counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes up short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at best, knows the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."

- President Theodore Roosevelt, April 23, 1917

"The only failure one should fear is not hugging to the purpose they see as best."

- George Eliot

"Winning is important to me, but what brings me real joy is the experience of being fully engaged in whatever I'm doing."

- Phil Jackson, NBA Coach

"Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lessons afterwards."

- Vernon Sanders Law

"You were born to win, but to be a winner you must plan to win, prepare to win, and expect to win."

- Zig Ziglar

"What counts can't always be counted; what can be counted doesn't always count."

- Albert Einstein

On Character & Courage

"From what we get, we can make a living; what we give, however, makes a life."

- Arthur Ashe

"Let your lives speak."

- George Fox

"I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can't accept not trying."

- Michael Jordan

"Character may be manifested in the great moments, but it is made in the small ones."

- Philip Brooks

"Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away."

- George Carlin

"It is nothing against you to fall down flat, but to lie there--that's disgrace."

- Edmund Vance Cooke

"If you cheat yourself in practice, you'll cheat yourself in a game; and if you cheat in a game, you'll cheat yourself for the rest of your life."

- Vince Lombardi

"You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you cannot do."

- Eleanor Roosevelt

"A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor people perfected without trial."

- Chinese Proverb

"The easiest person to deceive is one's own self."

- Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

"That you may retain your self-respect, it is better to displease the people by doing what you know is right, than to temporarily please them by doing what you know is wrong."

- William J.H. Boetcker

"When your values are clear to you, making decisions becomes easier."

- Roy Disney

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."

- Martin Luther King Jr.

"If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don't have integrity, nothing else matters."

- Former US Senator Alan Simpson

"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear."

- Ambrose Redmoon

"Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved."

- Helen Keller

"Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from indomitable will."

- Mahatma Gandhi, statesman

"Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall."

- Confucius

"The best way out is always through."

- Robert Frost

"Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident, riches take wings. Only one thing endures, and that is character."

- Horace Greeley, Publisher

"They had no right to win. Yet they did, and in doing so they changed the course of a war…even against the greatest of odds, there is something in the human spirit - a magic blend of skill, faith, and valor - that lifts man from certain defeat to incredible victory."

- Walter Lord, Author
The Battle of Midway (June 4-7, 1942)

"Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds."

- Franklin D. Roosevelt, President

"One man scorned and covered with scars still strove with his last ounce of courage to reach the unreachable stars; and the world was better for this."

- Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, from Don Quixote

"My motto was always to keep swinging. Whether I was in a slump or feeling badly or having trouble off the field, the only thing to do was keep swinging."

- Hank Aaron

"Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them."

- William Shakespeare

On Champions

"Champions keep playing until they get it right."

- Billy Jean King

"Champions are made from something they have deep inside them -- a desire, a dream, a vision."

- Muhammed Ali

"All winning teams are goal-oriented. Teams like these win consistently because everyone connected with them concentrates on specific objectives. They go about their business with blinders on; nothing will distract them from achieving their aims."

- Lou Holtz

On Goal-Setting

"A goal properly set is halfway reached ."

- Abraham Lincoln, President

"Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible."

- Anthony Robbins

"Know your goal, make a plan and pull the trigger."

- Dr. Phil McGraw

"Obstacles are those frightful things you can see when you take your eyes off your goal."

- Henry Ford

"Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will never be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency."

- Daniel Burnham

On Leadership

"Leaders don't create followers, they create more leaders."

- Tom Peters

"The coach is first of all a teacher."

- John Wooden

"A team reflects its leadership."

- Unknown

"A leader is best when people barely know he exists... when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say, 'We did this ourselves.'"

- Lao-Tse, Chinese Philosopher