John Wooden Teaching Quotations

I'd be satisfied just coaching in high school. I turned down a number of colleges when I was teaching in South Bend, Indiana, before I went into the service. I honestly believe that if I hadn't enlisted in the service, I would never have left high school teaching. I'm sure I would have never left.

Winning and losing aren't all they're cracked up to be, but the trip to the destination is.

I discovered early on that the player who learned the fundamentals of basketball is going to have a much better chance of succeeding and rising through the levels of competition than the player who was content to do things his own way. A player should be interested in learning why things are done a certain way. The reasons behind the teaching often go a long way to helping develop the skill.

There are little details in everything you do, and if you get away from any one of the little details, you're not teaching the thing as a whole. For it is little things which, together, make the whole. This, I think, is extremely important.

It matters not the subject taught, nor all the books on all the shelves, What matters most, yes most of all, is what the teachers are themselves.

When everyone has good players, teaching will be a telling difference.

I think the teaching profession contributes more to the future of our society than any other single profession.

Profound responsibilities come with teaching and coaching. You can do so much good–or harm. It’s why I believe that next to parenting, teaching and coaching are the two most important professions in the world.

When I was coaching I always considered myself a teacher. Teachers tend to follow the laws of learning better than coaches who do not have any teaching background. A coach is nothing more than a teacher. I used to encourage anyone who wanted to coach to get a degree in teaching so they could apply those principles to athletics.

In the end, it's about the teaching, and what I always loved about coaching was the practices. Not the games, not the tournaments, not the alumni stuff. But teaching the players during practice was what coaching was all about to me.

Ben has really embraced the tradition of the program, and growing up in Southern California, he understands what it really means. To see him teaching those same principles to his players just gives me a lot of pride.