The Power of Negative Thinking Quotes

“You can always turn no into yes, and usually make people happy, but it's a lot harder – sometimes too late - to change yes to no.”
― Bob Knight, The Power of Negative Thinking: An Unconventional Approach to Achieving Positive Results

“Having the will to win is not enough. Everyone has that. What matters is having the will to prepare to win.”
― Bob Knight, The Power of Negative Thinking: An Unconventional Approach to Achieving Positive Results

“If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting, too; If you can dream—and not make dreams your master; If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim, If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same; … If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone; And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them “hold on!” If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son! Wow! Kipling would have been a hell of a coach.”
― Bob Knight, The Power of Negative Thinking: An Unconventional Approach to Achieving Positive Results

“What vulnerabilities do we have and what can we do to minimize them, to get around them, to survive them—and give ourselves a better chance to win?”
― Bob Knight, The Power of Negative Thinking: An Unconventional Approach to Achieving Positive Results

“Early failure is usually better than early success, because the lesson in humility lasts a long time and makes you more effective over the long term.”
― Bob Knight, The Power of Negative Thinking: An Unconventional Approach to Achieving Positive Results

“That’s the true mark of a champion—forgetting the last victory and preparing for the next one. And that one comment should be on every coach’s wall: The first job that we have today is putting yesterday aside to be remembered later. (Tony LaRussa, World Series Champion 2011)”
― Bob Knight, The Power of Negative Thinking: An Unconventional Approach to Achieving Positive Results

“Before you can inspire your players to “win,” you have to show them how not to lose.”
― Bob Knight, The Power of Negative Thinking: An Unconventional Approach to Achieving Positive Results

“Several years ago I did a TV commercial for Minute Maid where my team came in at halftime after obviously playing well, and I greeted them with a big smile and cookies and nice words. I had to go to Los Angeles two days early just to prepare for that one. I got paid well for it, but the performance should have won me an Oscar.”
― Bob Knight, The Power of Negative Thinking: An Unconventional Approach to Achieving Positive Results

“I have a lot of respect for good officials, and they know I think really good officials are priceless. As all rare things are.”
― Bob Knight, The Power of Negative Thinking: An Unconventional Approach to Achieving Positive Results

“He (George Washington) saw those dangers to good government without even exposure to today’s runaway election expenses. For the presidency alone, what is more wasteful than the multimillions of dollars raised and spent for presidential primaries? All evidence is that today, the true best and brightest of our potential national leaders have no appetite for entering into the long, long months of primaries, raising and spending those multimillions, exhausting all that money and themselves, getting their careers dissected and maligned. Then, the “lucky” winner emerging in the fall is usually so smeared by his primary rivals that the other party simply has to raise a few reminders of what a candidate’s own party “friends” had said about him or her. Hell of a system, after more than 230 years of the evolution of our democracy.”
― Bob Knight, The Power of Negative Thinking: An Unconventional Approach to Achieving Positive Results

“There isn’t always an absolute right way and a wrong way to do things, but there usually is a better way, a high-percentage way. The positive thinker generally feels that his way will be the right way and nothing will go wrong, if he just believes. The negative thinker disbelieves. He takes every precaution to prevent the wrong thing from happening, and in doing so has a much better chance of things turning out right in the end.”
― Bob Knight, The Power of Negative Thinking: An Unconventional Approach to Achieving Positive Results

“You have to develop enough common sense to know what you can’t do and focus on what you can. Know your limits. If you can’t do it, don’t, and say so,”
― Bob Knight, The Power of Negative Thinking: An Unconventional Approach to Achieving Positive Results

“One game is not a season. Pleasure, enjoyment, success are not short-term. Success is a grind. It’s perseverance; it is operating at a high level of performance on a constant basis.”
― Bob Knight, The Power of Negative Thinking: An Unconventional Approach to Achieving Positive Results

“The mark of success, or failure, in handling victory is what happens the next time out.”
― Bob Knight, The Power of Negative Thinking: An Unconventional Approach to Achieving Positive Results

“A coach should never forget to compliment his players on a well-played victory, but shouldn’t hesitate to tell them when they’ve played poorly—in a loss or a win.”
― Bob Knight, The Power of Negative Thinking: An Unconventional Approach to Achieving Positive Results

“Wanting alone doesn’t get anything done.”
― Bob Knight, The Power of Negative Thinking: An Unconventional Approach to Achieving Positive Results

“Discipline is recognizing what has to be done, doing it as well as you can do it, and doing it that way all the time.”
― Bob Knight, The Power of Negative Thinking: An Unconventional Approach to Achieving Positive Results

“Many of us are not aware of our optimistic tendencies.… Data clearly shows that most people overestimate their prospects for professional achievement; expect their children to be extraordinarily gifted; miscalculate their likely life span; expect to be healthier than their peers; hugely underestimate their likelihood of divorce, cancer, and unemployment; and are confident overall that their future lives will be better than those their parents put up with. This is known as the optimism bias—the inclination to overestimate the likelihood of encountering positive events in the future and to underestimate the likelihood of experiencing negative events. —The Optimism Bias: A Tour of the Irrationally Positive Brain
(TALI SHAROT, PANTHEON BOOKS, 2011)”
― Bob Knight, The Power of Negative Thinking: An Unconventional Approach to Achieving Positive Results

“The first job that we have today is putting yesterday aside to be remembered later.”
― Bob Knight, The Power of Negative Thinking: An Unconventional Approach to Achieving Positive Results

“Coaching is leadership, and leadership is leadership, whether in a gym, an office, a classroom, or a family.”
― Bob Knight, The Power of Negative Thinking: An Unconventional Approach to Achieving Positive Results

“On the way to market, an old man and his young grandson meet a man going the other way. The stranger says, “Old man, you should have your grandson riding the mule.” So he puts his grandson on the mule. They go a little farther, they’re stopped again, and a different man says, “Boy, you should let your poor grandfather ride the mule while you guide it.” So they switch, go a little farther, and they’re stopped again by a man who tells them, “You should both be riding the mule,” so both get on the mule and continue toward market. They meet a fourth man who tells them. “Hey, you two, it’s not very kind of you to be riding and creating that much of a burden for your poor mule.” So they get off, and they all go a little farther before a fifth man says, “You know, grandfather and grandson, that mule looks tired to me. You two ought to carry the mule.” So grandfather and grandson pick up the mule and trudge along. As they’re crossing a bridge over a river, the old man slips, they both lose their balance and fall, and they accidentally drop the mule over the bridge into the water, and it drowns. Which I think just extends Lincoln’s point: If you try to please everybody, you’re going to lose your ass.”
― Bob Knight, The Power of Negative Thinking: An Unconventional Approach to Achieving Positive Results

“I heard once about a man in his eighties who had mastered an art I admire: flyrod casting. It never left him. Well up in years, he could wade into a stream and, with a perfect snap of the wrist, make a cast to exactly the spot he wanted, his grace and ease unfailingly causing younger witnesses to marvel at what an athlete he must have been. Once he was standing onshore casting out into the water when he heard a voice from somewhere close say: “Pick me up.” His hearing hadn’t stayed with him as well as his casting had, so after looking around and seeing no one, he went back to casting, and he heard the voice again: “I said pick me up. I’m down here. By your feet.” He looked down and saw a huge frog. “Pick me up, kiss me, and I’ll turn into the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen. You’ll be indulged with pleasures no man has ever dreamed of, for the rest of your life. You’ll…” He picked the frog up, looked at it a second, and put it in the pocket of his fishing jacket. “Hey!” the frog screamed. “Didn’t you hear me? I said kiss me, and I’ll turn into a beautiful woman, and for the rest of your life give you pleasures no man has ever known.” He went back to casting. The voice screamed again: “Didn’t you HEAR me?! I said KISS ME and…” His arm arched another perfect cast, and without looking down he interrupted: “That may be… but at my age, I’d rather have a talking frog.”
― Bob Knight, The Power of Negative Thinking: An Unconventional Approach to Achieving Positive Results

“presuming, you’ve thoroughly thought out and researched”
― Bob Knight, The Power of Negative Thinking: An Unconventional Approach to Achieving Positive Results