Top 200 Michael Jordan Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career...”

— Michael Jordan

152. “I can accept failure, but I can’t accept not trying.”

— Michael Jordan

153. “I took cooking classes when I was younger; girls weren’t interested in me, and I thought I may be alone for the rest of my life.”

— Michael Jordan

154. “There will be a player greater than me.”

— Michael Jordan

155. “If you love the game, nobody can take that from you.”

— Michael Jordan

156. “I hope the millions of people I’ve touched have the optimism and desire to share their goals and hard work and persevere with a positive attitude.”

— Michael Jordan

157. “Confidence allows you to progress in something you’re attempting to accomplish, whether it’s playing basketball or baseball or whether it’s trying to succeed in business.”

— Michael Jordan

158. “Winning isn’t always championships.”

— Michael Jordan

159. “I believe greatness is an evolutionary process that changes and evolves era to era.”

— Michael Jordan

160. “There is no such thing as a perfect basketball player, and I don’t believe there is only one greatest player either.”

— Michael Jordan

161. “Gambling is legal and betting is legal, for what I bet.”

— Michael Jordan

162. “I do not have a problem, I enjoy gambling, but I think people are trying to make it seem like I have a problem, because people really don’t know.”

— Michael Jordan

163. “I can’t speak for the future. I have no crystal ball.”

— Michael Jordan

164. “I knew where I wanted to go, what kind of player I wanted to become and I focused on getting there.”

— Michael Jordan

165. “I’ve had tendinitis since college.”

— Michael Jordan

166. “I make shoes for white suburban kids, not the poor black kids. That would be like opening a restaurant for people without stomachs.”

— Michael Jordan

167. “Playing sick. That is so hard to do. It has to be a total mental challenge, as well as the physical challenge.”

— Michael Jordan

168. “I’ve reached the pinnacle of my career. I just feel that I don’t have anything else to prove.”

— Michael Jordan

169. “I think the players win the championship, and the organization has something to do with it, don’t get me wrong. But don’t try to put the organization above the players.”

— Michael Jordan

170. “How many times have your parents told you not to do things, and the next thing you know, you go do it? And you realized you shouldn’t have done it.”

— Michael Jordan

171. “I’d take 12 guys who had a strong passion for the game over 12 guys who don’t respect the game.”

— Michael Jordan

172. “When I play against someone that’s new in the league, I make him respect me. They may have heard about me, but now you get to see me actually in front of you. That drives me.”

— Michael Jordan

173. “I want to be perceived as a guy who played his best in all facets, not just scoring. A guy who loved challenges.”

— Michael Jordan

174. “The best evaluation I can make of a player is to look in his eyes and see how scared they are.”

— Michael Jordan

175. “Failure I can accept, what I can not accept is not trying.”

— Michael Jordan

176. “The players today reflect how much the game has evolved and changed both in style and culture. The game now has a wider appeal to a larger market.”

— Michael Jordan

177. “Do I need my number retired throughout the course of the league to acknowledge what I’ve done? No.”

— Michael Jordan

178. “When I lose the sense of motivation and the sense to prove something as a basketball player, it’s time for me to move away from the game.”

— Michael Jordan

179. “If you pass the ball to Bill Cartwright, you’ll never get the ball from me.”

— Michael Jordan

180. “The good part about being famous is being able to help people. The hard part is every day you have to be in a good mood, because that is what people expect. You learn to get good at it.”

— Michael Jordan

181. “You’re an idiot. You’ve screwed up every play we ever ran. You’re too stupid to even remember the plays. We ought to get rid of you.”

— Michael Jordan

182. “It’s a habit of mine now, noticing labels, logos, shoes.”

— Michael Jordan

183. “I want to play for years.”

— Michael Jordan

184. “Drugs have been in the game for a long time. They were there when I was in college, and even in high school. It’s in life. It’s in business. It’s everywhere.”

— Michael Jordan

185. “I built my talents on the shoulders of someone else’s talent.”

— Michael Jordan

186. “It’s easier for me to get ready for a game on the road because you’re expected to lose when you play away from home. That’s a challenge to right there and that perks my competitive juices.”

— Michael Jordan

187. “I will not quit this game because of what the media has done to me.”

— Michael Jordan

188. “I viewed it as a business, but I always viewed it as a game. An opportunity to show my skills, my basketball skills, amongst the best in the world.”

— Michael Jordan

189. “I went to a bookstore to try to find a book. The bottom line is, it all comes by trial and error. It was scary and exciting at first you don’t know what to expect. But once you look into your child’s eyes, you forget about that.”

— Michael Jordan

190. “I basically expect anything. Isn’t that wild? I used to surprise myself a lot: certain moves, how I’d get out of trouble. But at some point, you accept the talent that you have, you accept your creativity.”

— Michael Jordan

191. “There’s only one Michael Jordan.”

— Michael Jordan

192. “It’s absolutely wrong that I don’t want guys to challenge me. And the people who say that aren’t in the room.”

— Michael Jordan

193. “When I was playing before I retired, I never really understood the appreciation and the respect that people gave me. People had treated me like a god or something, and that was very embarrassing.”

— Michael Jordan

194. “I won’t have any competitive instincts in any sports, other than golf. I can’t see being competitive in sports any more.”

— Michael Jordan

195. “I wasn’t really a work conscious type of person.”

— Michael Jordan

196. “Basketball isn’t my job.”

— Michael Jordan

197. “I’d like to be settled into somewhat of a normal life. Somewhat. I know it’s never going to be completely normal.”

— Michael Jordan

198. “It’s probably a twelve-day. He needs two days to wake up.”

— Michael Jordan

199. “Being Michael Jordan means acting the same as I always have.”

— Michael Jordan

200. “I smoked my first cigar in 1991, when we won the championship. Up to that point, I had never smoked a cigar, never smoked anything.”

— Michael Jordan