Top 35 John McEnroe Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “You cannot be serious!”

— John McEnroe

2. “My greatest strength is that I have no weaknesses.”

— John McEnroe

3. “I’ll let the racket do the talking.”

— John McEnroe

4. “Everybody loves success, but they hate successful people.”

— John McEnroe

5. “As they say in sports, the older you get, the better you used to be.”

— John McEnroe

6. “The important thing is to learn a lesson every time you lose. Life is a learning process and you have to try to learn what’s best for you. Let me tell you, life is not fun when you’re banging your head against a brick wall all the time.”

— John McEnroe

7. “The important thing is to learn a lesson every time you lose.”

— John McEnroe

8. “Do you have any problems, other than that you’re unemployed, a moron, and a dork?”

— John McEnroe

9. “We all choke. Winners know how to handle choking better than losers.”

— John McEnroe

10. “I am not a monster. I’m not all bad. Maybe 10 percent. I think I’m 90 percent good.”

— John McEnroe

11. “If you want to be a tennis player, then mould yourself on Roger Federer. I won three Wimbledon titles and I wish I could play like him.”

— John McEnroe

12. “Be happy. If you’re successful but unhappy, that’s emptiness.”

— John McEnroe

13. “What is the single most important quality in a tennis champion? I would have to say desire, staying in there and winning matches when you are not playing that well.”

— John McEnroe

14. “Borg’s won Wimbledon four straight times and out there he has just lost an 18-16 tie breaker. You’d think maybe once he’d let up and say forget it. But oh, no way.”

— John McEnroe

15. “I think it’s the mark of a great player to be confident in tough situations.”

— John McEnroe

16. “That’s one of the best sets I’ve seen him play, although I should preface that by saying I haven’t seen him play before.”

— John McEnroe

17. “I want to be remembered as a great player, but I guess it will be as a player who got angry on a tennis court.”

— John McEnroe

18. “If Roger stopped right now and never won another match, to me he’d already be one of the greatest players to ever play the game. To me, he’s the greatest all around talent that I’ve ever seen.”

— John McEnroe

19. “The good part of having six kids is, there’s always one who wants to hug you and say, ‘Daddy, I love you.’”

— John McEnroe

20. “Tennis is a funny game; unbelievable highs and the lows are just as low.”

— John McEnroe

21. “No one cares about the Davis Cup. How many people know I won five Davis Cups and seven majors, but that I rarely played the Australian Open?”

— John McEnroe

22. “I know being a linesman is a thankless job, especially with guys like me around.”

— John McEnroe

23. “Equipment’s the biggest change. And the guys have been getting bigger, stronger, more athletic – so the game has become more of a track meet instead of a tennis match, in a sense.”

— John McEnroe

24. “Bush is an idiot and he’s President, so anything’s possible.”

— John McEnroe

25. “I believe there’s only one autobiography you can do.”

— John McEnroe

26. “There’s too much money and too many nice guys around.”

— John McEnroe

27. “The only thing championship about Wimbledon is its prestige.”

— John McEnroe

28. “We should reach out to people to try to go after the fans the way other sports do. Because we can’t just depend on the fact that it is a great game.”

— John McEnroe

29. “I havent seen a professional player come out of New York in over 20 years since my brother Patrick came out. Blake spent a few years in Harlem, but he moved to Connecticut when he was a kid.”

— John McEnroe

30. “I have never seen someone point after point that just gives it everything.”

— John McEnroe

31. “There’s something deeply satisfying when it succeeds, but I’m not going to do another book just to put my name on something and make some money if it’s not something I deeply care about.”

— John McEnroe

32. “If, in a few months, I’m only number 8 or number 10 in the world, I’ll have to look at what off-the-court work I can do. I will need to do something if I want to be number 1.”

— John McEnroe

33. “The Open era had brought personalities into the game, and personality was generating media exposure, which was generating more money, which in turn guaranteed more media exposure – which in turn drove in even more money. Where money and publicity meet, there’s always excitement, but good behavior is rarely a part of the mix. Manners are the operating rules of more stable systems.”

— John McEnroe

34. “Let’s hope his nerves will run through his veins.”

— John McEnroe

35. “I had a similar year back in 1984 when I felt like I couldn’t lose.”

— John McEnroe

36. “I’d like to think I could have and should have won more, but that’s not the point. And I was at the point where I was playing great tennis in the mid 80s – the type of tennis people hadn’t seen before – and I was very proud of that.”

— John McEnroe

37. “It would be a nice place if you took all the people out of the city.”

— John McEnroe

38. “To be involved in a senior tournament back in the States is very satisfying.”

— John McEnroe

39. “4. In between rounds at Wimbledon in 1982, I struggled to learn David Bowie’s “Suffragette City” and “Rebel, Rebel” in my hotel flat. I heard a knock on my door. It was David Bowie. “Come up and have a drink,” he told me. “Just don’t bring your guitar.”

— John McEnroe