When people need love and understanding and support the most is when they deserve it the least.
— Lou Holtz
In football, it's the job of the player to play, the coach to coach, the official to officiate. Each guy is charged with upholding his end, nothing more. In golf, the player, coach and official are rolled into one, and they overlap completely. Golf really is the best microcosm of life - or at least the way life should be.
I think that everybody needs four things in life. Everybody needs something to do regardless of age. Everybody needs someone to love. Everybody needs something to hope for, and, of course, everybody needs someone to believe in.
I was born January 6, 1937, eight years after Wall Street crashed and two years before John Steinbeck published The Grapes of Wrath, his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about the plight of a family during the Great Depression.
Had I been a great athlete, I'm not sure I would have even gone into coaching. I may have turned out feeling that my life ended when my athletic career ended, as happens so many times with various athletes.
I look like I have beriberi and scurvy.
I'm so old, I don't buy green bananas any more.
Nothing on this earth is standing still. It's either growing or it's dying. No matter if it's a tree or a human being.
At home I have a copy of the April 21, 1986, issue of 'Sports Illustrated.' I'm on the cover with the blurb, 'Can Lou Do It?' I'd just arrived at Notre Dame, and with spring football underway, I was the focal point of that week's coverage.
If you made me the national commissioner of football, I'd tell you one thing that I would mandate. The second Saturday in September, we're going to have conference day. Everybody from the SEC plays a Big 12 team. Everybody from the Big Ten is going to play the ACC. Everybody from the Big East is going to play the Pac-10.
Everyone goes through adversity in life, but what matters is how you learn from it.
I believe in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
One thing about me is I try to be honest.
When I left the University of Notre Dame, I honestly felt I would never coach again.
After winning, most teams become individuals; most teams become complacent.
My wife doesn't even want to spend 2 hours with me.
All my life, I've been trying to make a hole-in-one. The closest I've come is a bogey.
ESPN is a great organization to work for.
Winners embrace hard work. They love the discipline of it, the trade-off they're making to win. Losers, on the other hand, see it as punishment. And that's the difference.
Our cellar home had a kitchen and a combination bedroom and half bath, which meant we had a sink next to the bed. We had no refrigerator, no shower or tub, and no privacy. My parents shared the bedroom with my sister and me.
When I die, and people realize that I will not be resurrected in three days, they will forget me. That is the way it should be.
The Sisters of Notre Dame at St. Aloysius Grade School influenced my life tremendously. This was due to the fact that they encouraged you always to make sure that God is the focus of your life, and they didn't allow you to do anything except to the very best of your ability.
We have an obligation to help people that cannot help themselves. The mentally retarded, the physically retarded, et cetera.
My wife told me if there is any rumors about me, it better be about politics and not about my social life.
In golf, the player, coach and official are rolled into one, and they overlap completely. Golf really is the best microcosm of life - or at least the way life should be.
We can all be successful and make money, but when we die, that ends. But when you are significant is when you help other people be successful. That lasts many a lifetime.
I follow three rules: Do the right thing, do the best you can, and always show people you care.
I used to pray that God would make me a great athlete, and He never did.
God answers prayers, but he doesn't always answer it your way.
Whenever you give up something, you must replace it with something.
I have no desire at all to become the winningest coach at Notre Dame. The record belongs to Knute Rockne or some other coach in the future.
I'll assure you this: I will have nothing to do with politics.
Football coaches don't have real problems.
When the bank asks me about my assets, I include my friendship with Regis Philbin.
I have to admit, I sometimes wonder how much more successful I would have been as a coach had it not been for my spending summers on the golf course. I could have watched more film, that's for sure. One advantage Joe Paterno had over me was that he didn't play golf.
My philosophy in life is, Decide what you want to do. You have to have something to hope for.
At age nine, I got a paper route. Sixty-six papers had to be delivered to sixty-six families every day. I also had to collect thirty cents a week from each customer. I owed the paper twenty cents per customer per week, and got to keep the rest. When I didn't collect, the balance came out of my profit. My average income was six dollars a week.
I do know this: God does answer your prayers, but it's not always in the way you expect. God knows what's best for us, though, so there's no need to worry when things don't go how we originally wanted them to go.
Don't run if you can walk. Don't walk if you can stand. Don't stand if you can sit. Don't sit if you can lie down.
I believe - we all pay taxes. I'm happy to pay it, but I hate to have it abused, money wasted, no accountability. That's going to bother you.
An agent won't help you get drafted higher, won't make you win more games, and won't make you faster or stronger.
My first assistant-coaching job in football was at William & Mary in 1961. The pay wasn't much, so to get $300 more per year, I agreed to coach the golf team. I didn't even know how to keep score, and really, my main job was not to wreck the van on the way to tournaments.
As a coach, one thing that used to frustrate me was one player would make a bad decision, and that's all you would read about in the papers all over the country. We have so many athletes do so many wonderful things for other people, and you never read about it.
I think life is a matter of choices and that wherever we are, good or bad, is because of choices we make.
Successful people will always tell you you can do something. It's the people who have never accomplished anything who will always discourage you from trying to achieve excellent things.
I was raised a Catholic on both sides of the family. I went to a Catholic grade school and thought everybody in the country was Catholic, because that's all I ever was associated with.
I feel that God wants me to coach; otherwise, he wouldn't have put the desire in me.
I'm an old man, and all my life I've said that Notre Dame should remain independent because it's a national school.
Virtually nothing is impossible in this world if you just put your mind to it and maintain a positive attitude.
We were at a beach one summer, and I had a bathing suit on. My wife looked at me and said: 'Boy, you are skinny, aren't you?' I said: 'Honey, I'd like to remind you that it was minor defects like this that kept me from getting a better wife.'
