Top 60 Pat Riley Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Complacency is the last hurdle standing between any team and its potential greatness.”

— Pat Riley

Featured in: Coaching Quotes, Excellence Quotes, Performance Quotes

2. “Excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better.”

— Pat Riley

Featured in: Coaching Quotes, Excellence Quotes, Professional Growth Quotes, Goal Setting Quotes, Practice Quotes

3. “Whatever it takes to win.”

— Pat Riley

Featured in: Strategy Quotes, Winning Quotes, Not Giving Up Quotes, Basketball Quotes, Boss Quotes

4. “The key to teamwork is to learn a role, accept a role, and strive to become excellent playing it.”

— Pat Riley

Featured in: Friday Quotes for Work, Collaboration Quotes, Basketball Quotes

5. “Great teamwork is the only way we create the breakthroughs that define our careers.”

— Pat Riley

Featured in: Collaboration Quotes, Inspirational Career Quotes

6. “If you have a positive attitude and constantly strive to give your best effort, eventually you will overcome your immediate problems and find you are ready for greater challenges.”

— Pat Riley

Featured in: Gym Motivation Quotes

7. “There are only two options regarding commitment; you’re either in or you’re out.”

— Pat Riley

8. “Anytime you stop striving to get better, you’re bound to get worse.”

— Pat Riley

9. “Excellence happens when you try each day to both do and be, a little better than you were yesterday!”

— Pat Riley

10. “The key to success is to learn to do something right and then do it right every time.”

— Pat Riley

11. “There’s always the motivation of wanting to win. Everybody has that. But a champion needs, in his attitude, a motivation above and beyond winning.”

— Pat Riley

12. “When you leave it to chance, then all of a sudden you don’t have any more luck.”

— Pat Riley

13. “From nobody to upstart. From upstart to contender. From contender to winner. From winner to champion. From champion to Dynasty.”

— Pat Riley

14. “There can only be one state of mind as you approach any profound test; total concentration, a spirit of togetherness, and strength.”

— Pat Riley

Featured in: Teamwork Quotes

15. “In every adversity, there is a seed of equivalent benefit.”

— Pat Riley

16. “You have no choices about how you lose, but you do have a choice about how you come back and prepare to win again.”

— Pat Riley

17. “The true warrior understands and seizes that moment by giving an effort so intense and so intuitive that it could only be called one from the heart.”

— Pat Riley

18. “There are only two options regarding commitment. You’re either in or out. There’s no such thing as a life in between.”

— Pat Riley

19. “Commitment to the team – there is no such thing as in-between, you are either in our out.”

— Pat Riley

20. “No rebounds – no rings.”

— Pat Riley

21. “Teamwork requires that everyone’s efforts flow in a single direction. Feelings of significance happen when a team’s energy takes on a life of its own.”

— Pat Riley

22. “Great effort springs naturally from great attitude.”

— Pat Riley

23. “In every contest, there comes a moment that separates winning from losing. The true warrior understands and seizes that moment.”

— Pat Riley

24. “Great players crave instruction on their weaknesses.”

— Pat Riley

25. “Your either in or out. There’s no in between.”

— Pat Riley

26. “A champion needs a motivation above and beyond winning.”

— Pat Riley

27. “To have long term success as a coach or in any position of leadership, you have to be obsessed in some way.”

— Pat Riley

28. “If you get tough mentally, you can get tough physically and overcome fatigue.”

— Pat Riley

29. “Look for your choices, pick the best one, then go with it.”

— Pat Riley

30. “Great players and great teams want to be driven. They want to be pushed to the edge. They don’t want to be cheated. Ordinary players and average teams want it to be easy.”

— Pat Riley

31. “Management must speak with one voice. When it doesn’t management itself becomes a peripheral opponent to the team’s mission.”

— Pat Riley

32. “When you’re playing against a stacked deck, compete even harder.”

— Pat Riley

33. “The Ten Commandments were not a suggestion.”

— Pat Riley

34. “Basketball is a business. Pure and simple. If you want to have fun, go to the YMCA.”

— Pat Riley

Featured in: Fun Quotes

35. “The most DIFFICULT thing for individuals to do when they become part of a team is to sacrifice, it is much EASIER to be selfish.”

— Pat Riley

36. “Each Warrior wants to leave the mark of his will, his signature, on important acts he touches. This is not the voice of ego but of the human spirit, rising up and declaring that it has something to contribute to the solution of the hardest problems, no matter how vexing!”

— Pat Riley

37. “Shoulda, coulda, and woulda won’t get it done. In attacking adversity, only a positive attitude, alertness, and regrouping to basics can launch a comeback.”

— Pat Riley

38. “There’s no such thing as coulda, shoulda, or woulda. If you shoulda and coulda, you woulda done it.”

— Pat Riley

39. “Being ready isn’t enough; you have to be prepared for a promotion or any other significant change.”

— Pat Riley

40. “The changes in your life aren’t always what you hoped for. But they usually help you grow.”

— Pat Riley

41. “When a great team loses through complacency, it will constantly search for new and more intricate explanations to explain away defeat.”

— Pat Riley

42. “You have to defeat a great players aura more than his game.”

— Pat Riley

43. “Never be ready to play yesterday. Being ready to play today is what’s important.”

— Pat Riley

44. “Coaches who let a championship team back off from becoming a dynasty are cowards.”

— Pat Riley

45. “When a gifted team dedicates itself to unselfish trust and combines instinct with boldness and effort, its ready to climb.”

— Pat Riley

46. “You can only receive what you’re willing to give.”

— Pat Riley

47. “Show the world how much you’ll fight for the winners circle.”

— Pat Riley

48. “Don’t let other people tell you what you want.”

— Pat Riley

49. “Being a part of success is more important than being personally indispensable.”

— Pat Riley

50. “All of us have at least one great voice deep inside.”

— Pat Riley