“If you’re straight with your players, they’ll be straight with you.”

When a guy takes off his coat, he’s not going to fight. When a guy takes off his wristwatch, watch out!

So they should make a great effort, a Mount Everest type effort, to live up to their potential. Success is a communal type thing.

I want my team to have my personality: surly, obnoxious, and arrogant.

I just can’t recruit where there’s grass around.

They call me eccentric. They used to call me nuts. I haven’t changed.

I’m not saying that they were Einsteins; they were marginal students. But every ballplayer whoever touched me has moved up his station in life. And the players moved up my station.

Dean Meminger was quicker than 11:15 Mass at a seaside resort.

It’s a profession in which, the longer you stay, the closer you are to being fired.

Butch, you come from DeWitt Clinton. There are five thousand brothers in that school.

A box score does not properly represent the most important thing – team play. It shows some guy scoring 27 points, but it doesn’t show that my 27-point man let his guy score 30.

A team should be an extension of a coach’s personality. My teams are arrogant and obnoxious.

Most people zero in on their failures. I try to keep all my attention on a pyramid type philosophy rather than the averaging-down philosophy.

I don’t know why people question the academic training of an athlete.

You’re the best there. You’ve been all-city two years in a row. How bad can you be? You come with me and we’ll make nice music.

My rule was I wouldn’t recruit a kid if he had grass in front of his house.

Live every day as if it were Saturday night.