John Wooden Quotes

Therefore the superior man is watchful over himself, when he is alone.

People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built.

It does us no harm to look over our past shortcomings and plan to improve our characters and actions in the coming year

Practice self-awareness, self-evaluation, and self-improvement. If we are aware that our manners - language, behavior, and actions - are measured against our values and principles, we are able to more easily embody the philosophy, leadership is a matter of how to be, not how to do.

I take very seriously this notion that my highest job is to live a better life, all the time and to the best of my ability. I need to monitor my own progress - take my own inventory - and clean my own closet. I am trying to do all that.

It is easier to enrich ourselves with a thousand virtues, than to correct ourselves of a single fault.

The safest principle through life, instead of reforming others, is to set about perfecting yourself.

A man has to live with himself, and he should see to it that he always has good company.

Do not think of your faults, still less of other's faults; look for what is good and strong, and try to imitate it. Your faults will drop off, like dead leaves, when their time comes.

Character isn't something you were born with and can't change, like your fingerprints. It's something you weren't born with and must take responsibility for forming.

I can always see what I've done wrong. I'm always learning. I'm the perennial student.

There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self.

Respect for self is the beginning of cultivating virtue in men and women.

You cannot lead others until you have first learned to lead yourself.

How well I walk my talk, and not talk my talk, determines the quality of my engagement, of all my experience with what is quite personally my God. I'm my greatest teacher, and within me, I have the power to push myself deeper and higher.

I make a lot of mistakes, too, and I'm constantly re-evaluating how I'm doing things and trying to be better every day, whether it's as a mom or taking care of myself.

Character is the result of two great forces: the initial force which the Creator gave it when He called the man into being; and the force of all the external influence and culture that mold and modify the development of a life.

We can all become better than we are.

I've done everything I can in my life to be the best person I can be, and I can look in the mirror and say that.

I wouldn't be the type of person to critique anybody. I've got to look at myself first, to be a better person.

We can all get better. We all have to think about how to improve ourselves, no matter how good we are.

I know what I think of myself and the standard I hold myself to.

Character building is one of my favourite things to do.

I'm the first one to always criticize myself, and I'm trying to find ways to get better.

You cannot build up a character in a solitude; you need a formed character to stand a solitude.