Top 60 Julius Erving Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Attitude is altitude.”

— Julius Erving

2. “Being a professional is doing the things you love to do, on the days you don’t feel like doing them.”

— Julius Erving

3. “I demand more from myself than anybody could ever expect.”

— Julius Erving

4. “I firmly believe that respect is a lot more important, and a lot greater, than popularity.”

— Julius Erving

5. “The key to success is to keep growing in all areas of life – mental, emotional, spiritual, as well as physical.”

— Julius Erving

6. “If you don’t do what’s best for your body, you’re the one who comes up on the short end.”

— Julius Erving

7. “Goals determine what you are going to be.”

— Julius Erving

8. “One of the most predictable things in life is there will be change. You are better off if you can have a say in the change. But you are ignorant or naive if you don’t think there will be change, whether you want it to or not.”

— Julius Erving

9. “To be an innovator, you can’t be worried about making mistakes.”

— Julius Erving

10. “To be great we need to win games we aren’t supposed to win.”

— Julius Erving

11. “And I continued to grow until I was 25 years old.”

— Julius Erving

12. “Being a typical Pisces, I might have experienced mood shifts, but I don’t remember any depression, or needing to do anything, or to have someone bring me out of being depressed.”

— Julius Erving

13. “I had to spend countless hours, above and beyond the basic time, to try and perfect the fundamentals.”

— Julius Erving

14. “If you get depressed about being the second-best team in the world, then you’ve got a problem.”

— Julius Erving

15. “The biggest thing that I felt basketball could do for me was help me get a good education.”

— Julius Erving

16. “Teachers are sort of faced with a thankless task, because no matter how good they are, unless they find a way to personally rationalize the rewards of their effort, nobody else is really going to do it for them en masse.”

— Julius Erving

17. “It’s better to stay too long than to leave too soon.”

— Julius Erving

18. “You can feel the vibes, feel the people pulling for you.”

— Julius Erving

19. “I came from a broken home, so my mom was a major influence in my life.”

— Julius Erving

20. “I pulled the plug on it at a time that I thought was right for me to exit.”

— Julius Erving

21. “I keep both eyes on my man. The basket hasn’t moved on me yet.”

— Julius Erving

22. “But you know, we have a very normal family. We’ve had our ups and downs. You know, we’ve had our issues, but we’ve had great cause for celebration.”

— Julius Erving

23. “I didn’t want to become a reserve player, or a bench player, and it was time to move on and take on another challenge.”

— Julius Erving

24. “My mom is one of 14 children. She’s a great lady. She’s a Taurus. Has been a profound influence in my life, still is to this day. Born in meager surroundings in rural South Carolina.”

— Julius Erving

25. “So much of becoming a good athlete involves bringing other things to the table, other than physical skills. It involves intelligence, it involves many of the things that you learn during the process of being educated. How to analyze, how to assess, how to equate, how to reason.”

— Julius Erving

26. “They are taking steps, but they are baby steps.”

— Julius Erving

27. “I think I started learning lessons about being a good person long before I ever knew what basketball was. And that starts in the home, it starts with the parental influence.”

— Julius Erving

28. “If you’ve experienced having control, you don’t want to be moved to a subordinate position, if you have your druthers.”

— Julius Erving

29. “When I went to Philadelphia I was 26 years old and really sitting on top of the world. Family life, a professional career, plenty of friends and associates, and a good reputation, a wish list that could be the envy of many.”

— Julius Erving

30. “LA Clippers should come to Louisville.”

— Julius Erving

31. “Every team that I’ve played on, I’ve either been the captain or co-captain.”

— Julius Erving

32. “I wanted to undertake the challenge of daring to be great.”

— Julius Erving

33. “I think that my God-given physical attributes, big hands, and big feet, the way that I’m built, proportion-wise, just made basketball the most inviting sport for me to play.”

— Julius Erving

34. “I am very proud to be featured, especially when you consider the outstanding champions who have had this honor. It is great company to be in.”

— Julius Erving

35. “When I get a chance to power jump off both legs, I can lean, twist, change directions and decide whether to dunk the ball or pass it to an open man. In other words, I may be committed to the air, but I still have some control over it.”

— Julius Erving

36. “I’ve always tried to tell myself that the work itself is the thing, that win, lose, or draw, the work is really what counts.”

— Julius Erving

37. “And from the first time I picked up a basketball at age eight – I had a lot of difficulty when I first picked up a basketball, because I was a scrub – there were things that I liked about it.”

— Julius Erving

38. “You know, we always tried to rationalize by saying you take the good, you take the upside, you got to deal with the downside, you’ve to take the downside.”

— Julius Erving

39. “I live my life trying to never appear to be a small man.”

— Julius Erving

40. “The first professional game that I ever played remains, to me, the most exciting moment of my professional career.”

— Julius Erving

41. “In 1981, at age 31, I was voted the best player in basketball, and the most valuable player in the league.”

— Julius Erving

42. “In a lot of areas of my life, particularly in my teenage years, I began to think about the world, and to think about the universe as being a part of my conscious everyday life.”

— Julius Erving

43. “I always try to keep a pretty conservative demeanor on the court.”

— Julius Erving

44. “Right up until the time I retired at age 37, I felt like there were still things that I could do better.”

— Julius Erving

45. “That was just my own personal program: I didn’t want to get too high over the good moments because I didn’t want to be saddened and depressed when things didn’t go as I had planned.”

— Julius Erving

46. “When I played, the owners had the power. The prisoners are running the prison now, not the warden. The warden is strong and he has say so but, the balance of power is definitely with the players.”

— Julius Erving

Featured in: Strong Quotes

47. “I think I was chosen by basketball, although I never really physically got drafted to any team that I played for.”

— Julius Erving

48. “When handling the ball, I always would look for daylight, wherever there was daylight.”

— Julius Erving

49. “Many people think sports are totally physical, that you don’t have to think, everything is done for you and you’re catered to, I found that to be so far removed from the truth that it’s almost a joke. The ones who become stars are the ones who have a head on their shoulders and know how to use it.”

— Julius Erving

50. “As a kid, I played a lot of one-on-none.”

— Julius Erving