Jim Valvano Quotes

One of the biggest motivators is to be part of something larger than yourself.

In a field, I am the absence of field. In a crowd, I am the absence of crowd. In a dream, I am the absence of dream. But I don't want to live as an absence. I move to keep things whole. Because sometimes I feel drunk on positivity. Sometimes I feel amazement at the tangle of words and lives, and I want to be a part of that tangle.

People want to be on a team. They want to be part of something bigger than themselves. They want to be in a situation where they feel that they are doing something for the greater good.

What I do and what I dream include thee, as the wine must taste of its own grapes.

Free people make the only milieu possible in society for the full gift of one's self to church, state, and family. Free people enjoy and sustain and feel with one another because they live for one another. The paths of life are intermingled lives.

Inviting others to help us with our work in the Church helps them feel needed and helps them feel the Spirit. When these feelings come, many people often then realize that something has been missing from their lives.

I definitely feel more complete than before. There's a void you have when you don't feel you've found the other part of who you are, so I'm in a different place now and that's nice to experience.

I think true success is intrinsic... It's love. It's kindness. It's community.

No man or woman is an island. To exist just for yourself is meaningless. You can achieve the most satisfaction when you feel related to some greater purpose in life, something greater than yourself.

A man's got to work for more than himself and his kids to feel right.

It took me a while and a lot of hard times to figure out my purpose, I am so happy with my life. I just want to help make other people happy, too.

Men are free when they belong to a living, organic, believing community, active in fulfilling some unfulfilled, perhaps unrealized purpose … Men are freest when they are most unconscious of freedom.

Until he has been part of a cause larger than himself, no man is truly whole.

It was an amazing feeling of now being a larger part of your state

One of the most important parts of my life has been community.

Basketball to me is more than a passion or a paycheck - it is the tool I use to try to have an impact in the world.

When you have that connection to say, 'I'm going to play for something bigger than myself,' man, you have a chance to do something good.

A life not lived for others is not a life.

Unless I am a part of everything I am nothing.

Basketball can serve as a kind of metaphor for ultimate cooperation. It is a sport where success, as symbolized by the championship, requires that the dictates of community prevail over selfish impulses.

A human being is happiest and most successful when dedicated to a cause outside his own individual, selfish satisfaction.

I just know that I wasn't happy where I was. I didn't feel complete. I didn't feel like I was contributing what I needed to contribute to not only to my, my, my fans that I had begun to gather but to myself most of all, most importantly for me.

People who succeed in life have a need for something greater than themselves.

Those only are happy who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way.

Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.