Legendary basketball coach John Wooden’s UCLA teams won 10 national championships, but the “Wizard of Westwood” taught his student-athletes far more than basketball.
Here, courtesy of Gerry Offield of our town, is a collection of “Woodenisms.”
• Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out.
• Never mistake activity for achievement.
• Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.
• Be prepared and be honest.
• You can’t let praise or criticism get to you. It’s a weakness to get caught up in either one.
• You can’t live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you.
• If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?
• Ability is a poor man’s wealth
• Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.
• Consider the rights of others before your own feelings and the feelings of others before your own rights.
• Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.
• Don’t measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished with your ability.
• It’s not so important who starts the game but who finishes it .
• It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.
• It’s the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen.
• Talent is God-given, be humble. Fame is man-given, be grateful. Conceit is self-given, be careful.
• The main ingredient of stardom is the rest of the team.
• Success comes from knowing that you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.
The gifted and talented Mark Brady sends a new joke involving our favorite Norwegians, Ole and Lena.
Ole, ill and in the hospital, feels the end is near. Lena, his daughter and two sons, and a nurse are with him. Ole says:
“My oldest son Swen, I want you to take the Minnetonka houses. My daughter Leona, take the apartments over in Edina. My son Rasmus, I want you to take the offices over on Hennepin. And Lena, my dear wife, please take all the residential buildings downtown.”
The nurse is blown away by all this and says, “Mrs. Olson, your husband must have been such a hard working man to have accumulated all this property.”
Lena replies, “Property? The idiot has a paper route!”
- Log in or Subscribe to post comments.