Mike Krzyzewski Quotes

The only way you're going to grow is to be in difficult situations.

Only the mediocre are always at their best. If your standards are low, it is easy to meet those standards every single day, every single year. But if your standard is to be the best, there will be days when you fall short of that goal. It is okay to not win every game. The only problem would be if you allow a loss or a failure to change your standards. Keep your standards intact, keep the bar set high, and continue to try your very best every day to meet those standards. If you do that, you can always be proud of the work that you do.

If you set up an atmosphere of community and trust, it becomes a tradition. Older team members will establish your credibility with newer ones. Even if they don't like everything about you, they'll say, 'He's trustworthy, committed to us as a team.'

If you have talent with teamwork, you've got a chance to be a championship team.

With accomplishments comes confidence and with confidence comes belief. It has to be in that order.

Never delegate. Always empower.

My ambition in high school was to be a high school coach and teacher, and that's still what I do: teach.

With me and basketball, it became part of me.

There are always those times when you're going to be down. It's how you step through it that makes you the person you are.

I always wanted to teach.

I've been so fortunate in my life that my family has never been jealous of my success. They have shown true love and commitment to me by being supportive. They shared in it.

Embrace the hell out of personal responsibility.

Great rivalries don't have to be built on hatred. They're built on respect, on a respect for excellence.

The team that trusts-their leader and each other-is more likely to be successful.

It's funny what happens when you become a grandparent. You start to act all goofy and do things you never thought you'd do. It's terrific.

I'm still not a great reader, but my wife is and my daughters are, and I envy them. I think I got into a bad habit of trying to do something all the time, instead of trying to sit down and take my time a little bit.

First of all, what happens is, when you're good at something, you spend a lot of time with it. People identify you with that sport, so it becomes part of your identity.

We travel in Duke stuff... They can have a hat, but it must be a Duke hat.

Leaders have to search for the heart on a team, because the person who has it can bring out the best in everybody else.

I'm fortunate now that I coach at Duke University and we've won a lot. I have some kids who haven't failed that much. But when they get to college, they're going to fail some time. That's a thing that I can help them the most with.

In all forms of leadership, whether you are a coach, a CEO, or a parent, there are four words that, when said, can bring out the best in your team, your employees, and your family. I BELIEVE IN YOU. Those four words can mean the difference between a fear of failure and the courage to try.

You start developing a championship attitude by, first of all, telling kids that they are really good and that they have the potential to become better.

Pete Newell told me 'get as much information and learn as much about the game as you can, but use your own personality to teach it.'

The life expectancy of a team is about eight months. Then the next year, it's a whole new team.

I try to see each new season as a new challenge because I have a new team to work with, new opponents to encounter, and often new ideas and theories to try

A basketball team is like the five fingers on your hand. If you can get them all together, you have a fist. That's how I want you to play.

Basketball was not my main sport in grade school, or even the first year of high school.

I love practice. It is when a coach exercises the most control over the improvement of his or her team.

There are five fundamental qualities that make every team great: communication, trust, collective responsibility, caring and pride. I like to think of each as a separate finger on the fist. Any one individually is important. But all of them together are unbeatable

Leadership is an ever-evolving position.

A leader has to show the face his team needs to see.

A team is a fist-not five fingers.

When you first assemble a group, it's not a team right off the bat. It's only a collection of individuals

Leaders should be reliable without being predictable. They should be consistent without being anticipated

Confidence shared is better than confidence only in yourself.

It takes courage not only to make decisions, but to live with those decisions afterward

When I was in sixth grade, I wanted to become a priest.

I've tried to handle winning well, so that maybe we'll win again, but I've also tried to handle failure well. If those serve as good examples for teachers and kids, then I hope that would be a contribution I have made to sport. Not just basketball, but to sport.

Confrontation simply means meeting the truth head-on.

If you win a National Championship, or you win two, people think you have not only seen the Holy Grail, but you've embraced it. Basically, I do what a lot of people do, but I've been able to win.

I think you're not a human being unless you have doubts and fears.

If the only reason I coached was to win basketball games, my life would be pretty shallow

When I had troubles, I'd go out - with basketball, you can do it by yourself, too. So you'd go out and shoot, and you'd fantasize.

I always won in my imagination. I always hit the game-winning shot, or I hit the free throw. Or if I missed, there was a lane violation, and I was given another one.

When I was growing up, there weren't any Little Leagues in the city. Parents worked all the time. They didn't have time to take their kids out to play baseball and football.

It's always an honor to be ranked high, but whatever is said about you, you take it and then take a realistic look at yourself and who you are.

It is the ultimate honor for a coach to be his country's coach.

Talent is important. But the single most important ingredient after you get the talent is internal leadership. It's not the coaches as much as one single person or people on the team who set higher standards than that team would normally set for itself. I really believe that that's been ultimately important for us.