I believe in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

Successful people will always tell you you can do something. It's the people who have never accomplished anything who will always discourage you from trying to achieve excellent things.

I used to pray that God would make me a great athlete, and He never did.

Everyone goes through adversity in life, but what matters is how you learn from it.

I think life is a matter of choices and that wherever we are, good or bad, is because of choices we make.

I follow three rules: Do the right thing, do the best you can, and always show people you care.

If you made me the national commissioner of football, I'd tell you one thing that I would mandate. The second Saturday in September, we're going to have conference day. Everybody from the SEC plays a Big 12 team. Everybody from the Big Ten is going to play the ACC. Everybody from the Big East is going to play the Pac-10.

As a coach, one thing that used to frustrate me was one player would make a bad decision, and that's all you would read about in the papers all over the country. We have so many athletes do so many wonderful things for other people, and you never read about it.

We can all be successful and make money, but when we die, that ends. But when you are significant is when you help other people be successful. That lasts many a lifetime.

At home I have a copy of the April 21, 1986, issue of 'Sports Illustrated.' I'm on the cover with the blurb, 'Can Lou Do It?' I'd just arrived at Notre Dame, and with spring football underway, I was the focal point of that week's coverage.

My first assistant-coaching job in football was at William & Mary in 1961. The pay wasn't much, so to get $300 more per year, I agreed to coach the golf team. I didn't even know how to keep score, and really, my main job was not to wreck the van on the way to tournaments.

In golf, the player, coach and official are rolled into one, and they overlap completely. Golf really is the best microcosm of life - or at least the way life should be.

Nothing on this earth is standing still. It's either growing or it's dying. No matter if it's a tree or a human being.

An agent won't help you get drafted higher, won't make you win more games, and won't make you faster or stronger.

My wife told me if there is any rumors about me, it better be about politics and not about my social life.

I'm so old, I don't buy green bananas any more.

I believe - we all pay taxes. I'm happy to pay it, but I hate to have it abused, money wasted, no accountability. That's going to bother you.

We have an obligation to help people that cannot help themselves. The mentally retarded, the physically retarded, et cetera.

I look like I have beriberi and scurvy.

Don't run if you can walk. Don't walk if you can stand. Don't stand if you can sit. Don't sit if you can lie down.

The Sisters of Notre Dame at St. Aloysius Grade School influenced my life tremendously. This was due to the fact that they encouraged you always to make sure that God is the focus of your life, and they didn't allow you to do anything except to the very best of your ability.

Had I been a great athlete, I'm not sure I would have even gone into coaching. I may have turned out feeling that my life ended when my athletic career ended, as happens so many times with various athletes.

I do know this: God does answer your prayers, but it's not always in the way you expect. God knows what's best for us, though, so there's no need to worry when things don't go how we originally wanted them to go.

A government of laws, and not of men.

A desire to be observed, considered, esteemed, praised, beloved, and admired by his fellows is one of the earliest as well as the keenest dispositions discovered in the heart of man.

A desire to be observed, considered, esteemed, praised, beloved, and admired by his fellows is one of the earliest as well as the keenest dispositions discovered in the heart of man.

There is in the Congress a collection of the greatest men upon this continent in point of abilities, virtues, and fortunes

The universal object and idol of men of letters is reputation.

The numbers of men in all ages have preferred ease, slumber, and good cheer to liberty, when they have been in competition.

The happiness of man, as well as his dignity, consists in virtue.

This oration will be read five hundred years hence with as much rapture as it was heard. It ought to be read at the end of every century, and indeed at the end of every year, forever and ever.

Education makes a greater difference between man and man than nature has made between man and brute.

Elections, especially of representatives and counselors, should be annual, there not being in the whole circle of the sciences a maxim more infallible than this, "where annual elections end, there slavery begins." These great men ... should be (chosen) once a year-Like bubbles on the sea of matter bourne, they rise, they break, and to the sea return. This will teach them the great political virtues of humility, patience, and moderation, without which every man in power becomes a ravenous beast of prey.

There is something very unnatural and odious in a government a thousand leagues off. A whole government of our own choice, managed by persons whom we love, revere, and can confide in, has charms in it for which men will fight.

To suppose arms in the hands of citizens, to be used at individual discretion, except in private self-defense, or by partial orders of towns, counties or districts of a state, is to demolish every constitution, and lay the laws prostrate, so that liberty can be enjoyed by no man; it is a dissolution of the government. The fundamental law of the militia is, that it be created, directed and commanded by the laws, and ever for the support of the laws.

I do not like the late resurrection of the Jesuits. . . . If ever any congregation of men could merit eternal perdition on earth, and in hell, according to these historians, though, like Pascal, true Catholics, it is this company of Loyolas.

The form of government which you admire, when its principles are pure is admirable indeed. It is productive of every Thing which is great and excellent among men. But its principles are as easily destroyed as human nature is corrupted. Such a government is only to be supported by pure religion or Austere morals.

Did you ever see a portrait of a great man without perceiving strong traits of pain and anxiety?

Upon this point all speculative politicians will agree, that the happiness of society is the end of government, as all divines and moral philosophers will agree that the happiness of the individual is the end of man. From this principle it will follow that the form of government which communicates ease, comfort, security, or, in one word, happiness, to the greatest numbers of persons, and in the greatest degree, is the best. All sober inquirers after truth, ancient and modern, pagan and Christian, have declared that the happiness of man, as well as his dignity, consists in virtue.

The Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation: The doctrine of a supreme, intelligent sovereign of the universe, I believe to be the great essential principle of all morality, and consequently of all civilization.

[D]emocracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man's life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few.

There is no good government but what is republican. That the only valuable part of the British constitution is so; for the true idea of a republic is "an empire of laws, and not of men." That, as a republic is the best of governments, so that particular arrangement of the powers of society, or in other words, that form of government which is best contrived to secure an impartial and exact execution of the law, is the best of republics.

If there is a form of government, then, whose principle and foundation is virtue, will not every sober man acknowledge it better calculated to promote the general happiness than any other form?

Fear is the foundation of most governments; but it is so sordid and brutal a passion, and renders men in whose breasts it predominates so stupid and miserable, that Americans will not be likely to approve of any political institution which is founded on it.

Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore, the people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same, when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it.

We must not then depend alone upon the love of liberty in the soul of man for its preservation.

[A] republic . . . [is] a government, in which the property of the public, or people, and of every one of them was secure and protected by law . . . implies liberty; because property cannot be secured unless the man be at liberty to acquire, use or part with it, at his discretion, and unless he have his personal liberty of life and limb, motion and rest, for that purpose.

It already appears, that there must be in every society of men superiors and inferiors, because God has laid in the constitution and course of nature the foundations of the distinction.

The law no passion can disturb. 'Tis void of desire and fear, lust and anger. 'Tis mens sine affectu, written reason, retaining some measure of the divine perfection. It does not enjoin that which pleases a weak, frail man, but, without any regard to persons, commands that which is good and punishes evil in all, whether rich or poor, high or low.

I Pray Heaven to bestow the best of blessing on this house, and on ALL that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof!