Top 40 Jim Valvano Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Don’t give up. Don’t ever give up.”

— Jim Valvano

Featured in: Motivational Quotes, Perseverance Quotes, Never Give Up Quotes, Motivational Monday Quotes, Feel Good Quotes

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

— Jim Valvano

Featured in: Time Quotes, Short Inspiring Quotes, Short Inspirational Quotes, Positive Motivational Quotes, Opportunity Quotes

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

— Jim Valvano

Featured in: Attitude Quotes, Grateful Quotes, Motivational Quotes for Men, Basketball Quotes, Family Quotes

4. “In every single day, in every walk of life, ordinary people do extraordinary things. Ordinary People accomplish Extraordinary things.”

— Jim Valvano

Featured in: Believe in Yourself Quotes, Make A Difference Quotes, Never Give Up Quotes, You Are Amazing Quotes, Hero Quotes

5. “Never give up! Failure and rejection are only the first step to succeeding.”

— Jim Valvano

Featured in: Willpower Quotes, Obstacles Quotes, Giving Up Quotes, Epic Quotes, Rejection Quotes

6. “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.”

— Jim Valvano

7. “Life changes when you least expect it to. The future is uncertain. So, seize this day, seize this moment, and make the most of it.”

— Jim Valvano

8. “Enjoy your life, the precious moments you have.”

— Jim Valvano

9. “Nothing has ever been accomplished in any walk of life without enthusiasm, without motivation, and without perseverance.”

— Jim Valvano

10. “The greatest gift you can give your children is to believe in them.”

— Jim Valvano

11. “Every day ordinary people do extra-ordinary things!”

— Jim Valvano

12. “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.”

— Jim Valvano

13. “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.”

— Jim Valvano

14. “Know where you have been, where you are now and where you want to be.”

— Jim Valvano

15. “To find the unlimited scope of human possibility, look within yourself.”

— Jim Valvano

16. “You need to have a dream, a goal, and you must be willing to work hard.”

— Jim Valvano

17. “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.”

— Jim Valvano

18. “Nothing can happen if it’s not first a dream. If you have someone with a dream, if you have a motivated person with a goal and a vision, if you have someone that never gives up, who has great hope, Anything can happen.”

— Jim Valvano

19. “If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that’s a full day.”

— Jim Valvano

20. “Take time every day to laugh, to think, to cry.”

— Jim Valvano

21. “I will thank God for the day and the moment I have.”

— Jim Valvano

22. “Conceive the inconceivable – then accomplish it.”

— Jim Valvano

23. “A person really doesn’t become whole, until he becomes a part of something that’s bigger than himself.”

— Jim Valvano

24. “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.”

— Jim Valvano

25. “Other people go to the office. I get to coach. I know I’ve been blessed.”

— Jim Valvano

26. “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.”

— Jim Valvano

27. “Now I’m fighting cancer, everybody knows that. People ask me all the time about how you go through your life and how’s your day, and nothing is changed for me.”

— Jim Valvano

28. “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.”

— Jim Valvano

29. “Be a dreamer. If you don’t know how to dream, you’re dead.”

— Jim Valvano

30. “Time is very precious to me. I don’t know how much I have left and I have some things that I would like to say. Hopefully, at the end, I will have said something that will be important to other people too.”

— Jim Valvano

31. “And if you see me, smile and maybe give me a hug. That’s important to me too.”

— Jim Valvano

32. “All really successful coaches have a system.”

— Jim Valvano

33. “It’s so important to know where you are.”

— Jim Valvano

34. “Coaches are basically schizophrenic. We are pessimistic to the press and among fellow coaches, but to our team, we are the eternal optimists.”

— Jim Valvano

35. “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.”

— Jim Valvano

36. “Spend each day with some laughter and some thought, to get you’re emotions going.”

— Jim Valvano

37. “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.”

— Jim Valvano

38. “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.”

— Jim Valvano

39. “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.”

— Jim Valvano

40. “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.”

— Jim Valvano

41. “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.”

— Jim Valvano

42. “Are you saying that the assistant had the answers all along, he just wasn’t telling anyone?”

— Jim Valvano

43. “Why shouldn’t I milk it? We’re an agricultural institution.”

— Jim Valvano

44. “I talked about my family, my family’s so important.”

— Jim Valvano

45. “I’ll also tell you that five hundred thousand people will die this year of cancer. And I’ll also tell you that one in every four will be afflicted with this disease, and yet, somehow, we seem to have put it in a little bit of the background.”

— Jim Valvano

46. “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.”

— Jim Valvano

47. “I know, I gotta go, I gotta go, and I got one last thing and I said it before, and I’m gonna say it again: Cancer can take away all my physical ability. It cannot touch my mind; it cannot touch my heart; and it cannot touch my soul. And those three things are going to carry on forever.”

— Jim Valvano