“If they lose, then their life has somehow been diminished. I’m not that way, and it keeps me steady.”

If you don’t win a Super Bowl, you’re not considered successful in the National Football League. I can remember, when we finally won that first one, feeling so good for the players and fans.

I probably should have gotten out, but I really enjoyed the challenge of bringing a team to that game. In fact, I probably enjoy the challenge of it more than the actual game.

There are coaches to whom winning or losing means something close to life or death.

If you show emotion in competition, temporarily, you’ll be ineffective.

I’ve learned that something constructive comes from every defeat.

Leadership is getting someone to do what they don’t want to do, to achieve what they want to achieve.

I try to block out everything that distracts me. Even a big play, I blank it out.

People say you have to know when to retire, which is a dumb thing to say. If you want to go out on top, yeah, it becomes important when you quit. But I wasn’t afraid of that. And I wasn’t worried about getting fired.

As a Christian, I know my life is in God’s hands. He has a plan for me.

People will forget me pretty quick.

I don’t believe in team motivation. I believe in getting a team prepared so it knows it will have the necessary confidence when it steps on a field and be prepared to play a good game.

My hats did give me an identity. In fact, if I had a dollar for every time someone has seen me bareheaded and said, ‘I almost didn’t recognize you without a hat on’, I could have bought the Cowboys myself.

Generally, achieving goals… which in many cases means winning… is really the ultimate in this life we live in.

I at least wanted them to get into a respectable position before anyone else took over.

If you don’t believe in winning, you don’t believe in free enterprise, capitalism, our way of life.

Right after the game, say as little as possible.

To discover and know has always been a deep tendency of our nature. Can we not recognize it already in caveman?

I’m an orphan. But the public has adopted me, and that has been my only family. The biggest family in the world is my fans.

I always felt I’ve been tough, and that my tolerance for pain is pretty high.

I’m really proud, just seeing a lot of the kids that have been inspired by me.

Everything is traditionally slow – much faster than it ever has been on earth but still far, far too slow.

Almost everything that is great has been done by youth.

A contemptuous indifference turns into an enemy a woman who, well treated, might have been an angel.

In folk music, I’ve always been fond of the fragment. The song that has one verse. And you don’t know anything about the characters, you don’t know what they’re doing, but they’re doing something important. I love that. I’m really a sucker for that kind of song.