John Wooden Quotes

You've got to put your head down and do the work. There are no shortcuts.

Every day, you have to put in the hard work.

I'm always working hard.

There is absolutely nothing that beats hard work.

Focused, hard work is the real key to success.

There are no shortcuts. I approached practices the same way I approached games. You can't turn it on and off like a faucet. I couldn't dog it during practice and then, when I needed that extra push late in the game, expect it to be there. Very few people get anywhere by taking shortcuts.

It doesn't take talent to work hard.

Talent is never enough. With few exceptions the best players are the hardest workers.

I worked as hard as I could. I was always the first one on the ice, and the last one off.

Success travels in the company of very hard work. There is no trick, no easy way.

There is no shortcut to achievement.

It doesn't take any talent to play hard.

Many successful people are no more talented than unsuccessful people. The difference between them lies in the old axiom that successful people do those things that unsuccessful people don't like to do.

Without the work, the magic won’t come.

Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself.

My parents taught me as a kid: do your work. Do it well. Try as hard as you can, whatever it is. It will one day, for the long run, it will make some sort of change somewhere.

Accustom yourself to tireless activity.

There's no substitute for work. There are no shortcuts. There are no secrets.

It's important to work hard - there's no short cut around that.

I've been good about keeping my nose to the grindstone.

One must work, nothing but work, and one must have patience.

And here is the lesson I learned in the army. If you want to do a thing badly, you have to work at it as though you want to do it well.

There's a phrase, "sitzfleisch", which means just plain sitting on your ass and getting it done. Just showing up for work. My uncle Raphael was a painter, and he used to say, "If the muse is late for work, start without her". You have to be there. You have to be there, and do it, and grind it out, even when it is grinding and you know you're probably going to rewrite all this tomorrow.

Every day is a work day, and I have to work my ass off just as much as any other guy, doing whatever job they're doing. I believe in commitment and hard work, and hopefully, after that, success comes.

Learn to labour and to wait.