Jim Valvano Basketball Quotations

Cancer can take away all of my physical abilities. It cannot touch my mind, it cannot touch my heart, and it cannot touch my soul.

My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person, he believed in me.

If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that's a full day. That's a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you're going to have something special.

And if you see me, smile and maybe give me a hug. That's important to me too.

I can't tell you what an honor it is, to even be mentioned in the same breath with Arthur Ashe. This is something I certainly will treasure forever.

People think I have courage. The courage in my family are my wife Pam, my three daughters, here, Nicole, Jamie, LeeAnn, my mom, who's right here too.

But try if you can to support, whether it's AIDS or the cancer foundation, so that someone else might survive, might prosper, and might actually be cured of this dreaded disease.

Be a dreamer. If you don't know how to dream, you're dead.

I asked a ref if he could give me a technical foul for thinking bad things about him. He said, of course not. I said, well, I think you stink. And he gave me a technical. You can't trust em.

I just got one last thing, I urge all of you, all of you, to enjoy your life, the precious moments you have. To spend each day with some laughter and some thought, to get you're emotions going.

How do you go from where you are to where you wanna be? And I think you have to have an enthusiasm for life. You have to have a dream, a goal. And you have to be willing to work for it.

I will thank God for the day and the moment I have.

We need your help. I need your help. We need money for research. It may not save my life. It may save my children's life. It may save someone you love. And it's very important.

No matter what business you're in, you can't run in place or someone will pass you by. It doesn't matter how many games you've won.

I talked about my family, my family's so important.

Now, I look at where I am now and I know what I wanna to do. What I would like to be able to do is to spend whatever time I have left and to give, and maybe some hope to others.

The difference between Namath and me is that when you make the money he makes, they say you're ruggedly handsome. When you make the money I make, they say you have a big nose. (On resembling Joe Namath)

I made a ridiculous statement when I first went to North Carolina State. I said I know basketball down there was like life or death. It was very wrong. It's more important.

We have a very intelligent team. I've had clubs that when you tell a guy to go back door, he leaves the gym. Or you tell the team you're going to have a closed practice and eight guys don't show up.

Why shouldn't I milk it? We're an agricultural institution.

All really successful coaches have a system.

We win or the alumni bash in our teeth. (On the dental plan at NC State)

There are 86,400 seconds in a day. It's up to you to decide what to do with them.

It's so important to know where you are.

Other people go to the office. I get to coach. I know I've been blessed.

Don't give up. Don't ever give up.

We should do three things every day of our life. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is to think, we should spend some time in thought. And, number three is you should have your emotions moved to tears.