Larry Bird Quotes

Use your brain, not your endurance.

Shame on the body for breaking down while the spirit perseveres.

I didn't have the same fitness or ability as the other girls, so I had to beat them with my mind.

You can only do so much in the gym or pool. Seventy per cent of it is physical, but the final 30 per cent is down to the mental capacity to actually control what you can do in competition.

Dumb and tough goes a long way in this sport but to be elite, you've got to be smarter.

I like players that play off IQ.

If I had to identify the one skill set shared by most by the men who become part of the SEAL teams... it would be sheer brainpower.

Even when matches don't work out the way you planned, you've always got to stay strong in defence; it's a matter of willpower and intelligence.

Of course I am tough, but I am smart, too. I'm more smart than tough. People watching my record and say that this guy is tough. This is not about tough; this is about mind. You think when you fight. This is about everything.

A real man's weapon is his mind.

People think I'm crazy to put myself through such torture, though I would argue otherwise. Somewhere along the line we seem to have confused comfort with happiness... Dostoyevsky had it right: 'Suffering is the sole origin of consciousness.' Never are my senses more engaged than when the pain sets in. There is a magic in misery. Just ask any runner.

I always pushed myself. Whenever I felt I needed to stop, I made myself run faster.

The real battle is won in the mind. It's won by guys who understand their areas of weakness, who sit and think about it, plotting and planning to improve. Attending to the detail. Work on their weaknesses and overcome them. Because they can.

Fortify courage with the true rampart of patience.

Your choice of armor was your intellect.

It hurts, but that’s all it does. The most difficult part of the training is training your mind. You build calluses on your feet to endure the road. You build calluses on your mind to endure the pain. There’s only one way to do that. You have to get out there and run.

The fundamental qualities for good execution of a plan is first; intelligence; then discernment and judgment, which enable one to recognize the best method as to attain it; the singleness of purpose; and, lastly, . . . stubborn will.

All we are asked to bear we can bear. That is a law of the spiritual life. The only hindrance to the working of this law, as of all benign laws, is fear.

The pain barrier was not a barrier for her; she could go beyond it.

In long-distance running the only opponent you have to beat is yourself, the way you used to be.

The guts carry the feet, not the feet the guts.

Pain is a coward. He flees when faced by the irresistible power of the will-to-live, which is more strongly rooted in the flesh than the intensest passion is rooted in the spirit.

During a Chess competition a Chessmaster should be a combination of a beast of prey and a monk

The first two months were painful and they really tested my manhood because there were times I didn’t want to get up because I was in pain. That willpower has to kick in.

Dollars and guns are no substitutes for brains and will power.