Shoe Dog Quotes

The best quotes by the author we have brought to you

“All we have to do, I tell the students, is work and study, study and work, hard as we can.” (Shoe Dog Quotes)
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“And those who urge entrepreneurs to never give up? Charlatans. Sometimes you have to give up. Sometimes knowing when to give up, when to try something else, is genius. Giving up doesn’t mean stopping. Don’t ever stop.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“Beating the competition is relatively easy. Beating yourself is a never-ending commitment.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“Before running a big race, you always want to walk the track.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“Business is no more about making money than the human body is about making blood. Yes you need to make the stuff, but only to serve your higher aims.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“But my hope was that when I failed, if I failed, I’d fail quickly, so I’d have enough time, enough years, to implement all the hard-won lessons. I wasn’t much for setting goals, but this goal kept flashing through my mind every day, until it became my internal chant: Fail fast.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“But that’s the nature of money. Whether you have it or not, whether you want it or not, whether you like it or not, it will try to define your days. Our task as human beings is not to let it.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“Confidence. More than equity, more than liquidity, that’s what a man needs. I wished I had more. I wished I could borrow some. But confidence was cash. You had to have some to get some. And people were loath to give it to you.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“Don’t go to sleep one night, wrote Rūmī, the thirteenth-century Persian poet. What you most want will come to you then. Warmed”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“Fear of failure, I thought, will never be our downfall as a company.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“Fight not to win, but to avoid losing. A surefire losing strategy.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“Free enterprise always irritates the kinds of trolls who live to block, to thwart, to say no, sorry, no. And it’s always been this way. Entrepreneurs have always been outgunned, outnumbered. They’ve always fought uphill, and the hill has never been steeper.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“Hard work is critical, a good team is essential, brains and determination are invaluable, but luck may decide the outcome.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“Have faith in yourself, but also have faith in faith. Not faith as others define it. Faith as you define it. Faith as faith defines itself in your heart.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“He was easy to talk to, and easy not to talk to-equally important qualities in a friend. Essential in a travel companion.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“History is one long processional of crazy ideas.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“How can I leave my mark on the world, I thought, unless I get out there first and see it?”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“I got into the habit every night of phoning my father from my recliner. He’d always be in his recliner, too, and together, recliner to recliner, we’d hash out the latest threat confronting Blue Ribbon.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“I had an aching sense that our time is short, shorter than we ever know, shorter as a morning run, and I wanted mine to be meaningful. And purposeful. And creative. And important. Above all… different.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“I read in my guidebook that Michelangelo was miserable while painting his masterpiece. His back and neck ached. Paint fell constantly into his hair and eyes. He couldn’t wait to be finished, he told friends. If even Michelangelo didn’t like his work, I thought, what hope is there for the rest of us?”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“I refused to even consider ordering less inventory. Grow or die, that’s what I believed, no matter the situation.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“I tell the man Blue Ribbon is sinking like the Titanic, and he responds by begging for a berth in first class.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“I thought back on my running career at Oregon. I’d competed with, and against, men far better, faster, more physically gifted. Many were future Olympians. And yet I’d trained myself to forget this unhappy fact. People reflexively assume that competition is always a good thing, that it always brings out the best in people, but that’s only true of people who can forget the competition. The art of competing, I’d learned from track, was the art of forgetting, and I now reminded myself of that fact. You must forget your limits. You must forget your doubts, your pain, your past. You”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“I thought of that phrase, “It’s just business.” It’s never just business. It never will be. If it ever does become just business, that will mean that business is very bad.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“I told her that I flat-out didn’t want to work for someone else. I wanted to build something that was my own, something I could point to and say: I made that. It was the only way I saw to make life meaningful.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“I trusted them, wholly, and didn’t look over their shoulders, and that bred a powerful two-way loyalty. My management style wouldn’t have worked for people who wanted to be guided, every step, but this group found it liberating, empowering. I let them be, let them do, let them make their own mistakes, because that’s how I’d always liked people to treat me.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“I wanted to build something that was my own, something I could point to and say: I made that. It was the only way I saw to make life meaningful.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“I was a linear thinker, and according to Zen linear thinking is nothing but a delusion, one of the many that keep us unhappy. Reality is nonlinear, Zen says. No future, no past. All is now.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“I was fascinated by all the great generals, from Alexander the Great to George Patton. I hated war, but I loved the warrior spirit.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“I’d tell men and women in their midtwenties not to settle for a job or a profession or even a career. Seek a calling. Even if you don’t know what that means, seek it. If you’re following your calling, the fatigue will be easier to bear, the disappointments will be fuel, the highs will be like nothing you’ve ever felt.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“If my life was to be all work no play, I wanted my work to be play.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“If you’re following your calling, the fatigue will be easier to bear, the disappointments will be fuel, the highs will be like nothing you’ve ever felt.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few. —Shunryu”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“It’s never just business. It never will be. If it ever does become just business, that will mean that business is very bad.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“Just keep going. Don’t stop. Don’t even think about stopping until you get there, and don’t give much thought to where “there” is. Whatever comes, just don’t stop.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“Let everyone else call your idea crazy… just keep going. Don’t stop. Don’t even think about stopping until you get there, and don’t give much thought to where “there” is. Whatever comes, just don’t stop.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“Life is growth. Business is growth. You grow or you die.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“Like books, sports give people a sense of having lived other lives, of taking part in other people’s victories. And defeats. When sports are at their best, the spirit of the fan merges with the spirit of the athlete.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“Like it or not, life is a game. Whoever denies that truth, whoever simply refuses to play, gets left on the sidelines, and I didn’t want that.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“My hope was that when I failed, if I failed, I’d fail quickly, so I’d have enough time, enough years, to implement all the hard-won lessons. I wasn’t much for setting goals, but this goal kept flashing through my mind every day, until it became my internal chant: Fail fast.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“No brilliant idea was ever born in a conference room,” he assured the Dane. “But a lot of silly ideas have died there,” said Stahr. —F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Last Tycoon”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“No matter the sport – no matter the human endeavor, really – total effort will win people’s hearts.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that. —Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“Our time is short, shorter than we ever know, short as a morning run, and I wanted mine to be meaningful. And purposeful. And creative. And important. Above all… different. I wanted to leave a mark on the world.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“People reflexively assume that competition is always a good thing, that it always brings out the best in people, but that’s only true of people who can forget the competition.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“Put it this way. The harder you work, the better your Tao. And since no one has ever adequately defined Tao, I now try to go regularly to mass. I would tell them: Have faith in yourself, but also have faith in faith. Not faith as others define it. Faith as you define it. Faith as faith defines itself in your heart.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“So that morning in 1962 I told myself: Let everyone else call your idea crazy… just keep going. Don’t stop. Don’t even think about stopping until you get there, and don’t give much thought to where “there” is. Whatever comes, just don’t stop.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“Starting my own business was the only thing that made life’s other risks—marriage, Vegas, alligator wrestling—seem like sure things. But my hope was that when I failed, if I failed, I’d fail quickly, so I’d have enough time, enough years, to implement all the hard-won lessons. I wasn’t much for setting goals, but this goal kept flashing through my mind every day, until it became my internal chant: Fail fast.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“Supply and demand is always the root problem in business. It’s been true since Phoenician traders raced to bring Rome the coveted purple dye that colored the clothing of royals and rich people; there was never enough purple to go around. It’s hard enough to invent and manufacture and market a product, but then the logistics, the mechanics, the hydraulics of getting it to the people who want it, when they want it – this is how companies die, how ulcers are born.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“That’s the nature of money. Whether you have it or not, whether you want it or not, whether you like it or not, it will try to define your days. Our task as human beings is not to let it.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“The art of competing, I’d learned from track, was the art of forgetting, and I now reminded myself of that fact. You must forget your limits. You must forget your doubts, your pain, your past.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“The cowards never started and the weak died along the way. That leaves us, ladies and gentlemen. Us.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“The roadside was littered with cautious, conservative, prudent entrepreneurs. I wanted to keep my foot pressed hard on the gas pedal.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“The single easiest way to find out how you feel about someone. Say goodbye.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“The world is made up of crazy ideas. History is one long processional of crazy ideas. The things I loved most – books, sports, democracy, free enterprise – started as crazy ideas.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“There is a primal urge to compare everything – life, business, adventures of all sorts – to a race. But the metaphor is often inadequate. It can take you only so far.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“There were many ways down Mount Fuji, according to my guidebook, but only one way up. Life lesson in that, I thought. Signs”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“There’s a kind of exuberant clarity in that pulsing half second before winning and losing are decided. I wanted that, whatever that was, to be my life, my daily life.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“This is what sports are, what they can do. Like books, sports give people a sense of having lived other lives, of taking part in other people’s victories. And defeats. When sports are at their best, the spirit of the fan merges with the spirit of the athlete, and in that convergence, in that transference, is the oneness that the mystics talk about.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“Though I’ve been known to call business war without bullets, it’s actually a wonderful bulwark against war. Trade is the path of coexistence, cooperation. Peace feeds on prosperity.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“To study the self is to forget the self. Mi casa, su casa.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“We were trying to create a brand, but also a culture. We were fighting against conformity, against boringness, against drudgery. More than a product, we were trying to sell an idea – a spirit.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“What if there were a way, without being an athlete, to feel what athletes feel? To play all the time, instead of working? Or else to enjoy work so much that it becomes essentially the same thing.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“When it came rolling in, the money affected us all. Not much, and not for long, because none of us was ever driven by money. But that’s the nature of money. Whether you have it or not, whether you want it or not, whether you like it or not, it will try to define your days. Our task as human beings is not to let it.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“When sports are at their best, the spirit of the fan merges with the spirit of the athlete, and in that convergence, in that transference, is the oneness that the mystics talk about.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog

“When you make something, when you improve something, when you deliver something, when you add some new thing or service to the lives of strangers, making them happier, or healthier, or safer, or better, and when you do it all crisply and efficiently, smartly, the way everything should be done but so seldom is—you’re participating more fully in the whole grand human drama. More than simply alive, you’re helping others to live more fully, and if that’s business, all right, call me a businessman. Maybe it will grow on me.”
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog