Kobe Bryant is one of the most memorable and all time greatest basketball players in history of the game. Just to remind you have some the greatest accomplishments he’s done for his team:
- Hall of Famer
- 18-time All-Star
- 2-time Scoring Champion
- 5-time NBA Champion
- 15-time All-NBA
- 12-time All-Defensive
- 4-time AS MVP
- 2-time Finals MVP
- 2008 MVP
Not only is he an inspiration to his team mates and the world of basketball, but to millions of people around the world. Kobe Bryant is the epitome of hard work and dedication. We hope that you will take some of these quotes with you and that it’ll inspire you to take some action so you may also live your dreams.
Here are 40 Kobe Bryant’s memorable quotes to live by:
1. “Losers visualize the penalties of failure. Winners visualize the rewards of success.” – Kobe Bryant
2. “Pain doesn’t tell you when you ought to stop. Pain is the little voice in your head that tries to hold you back because it knows if you continue you will change.” – Kobe Bryant
3. “Once you know what failure feels like, determination chases success.” – Kobe Bryant
4. “It’s different from being 21 and you think there’s endless amount of opportunities. At 33, the ending is much, much closer.” – Kobe Bryant
5. “Use your success, wealth and influence to put them in the best position to realize their own dreams and find their true purpose. Put them through school, set them up with job interviews and help them become leaders in their own right. Hold them to the same level of hard work and dedication that it took for you to get to where you are now, and where you will eventually go.” – Kobe Bryant
6. “Everything negative – pressure, challenges – is all an opportunity for me to rise.” – Kobe Bryant
7. “Pain doesn’t tell you when you ought to stop. Pain is the little voice in your head that tries to hold you back because it knows if you continue you will change. Don’t let it stop you from being who you can be. Exhaustion tells you when you ought to stop. You only reach your limit when you can go no further.” – Kobe Bryant
8. “I create my own path. It was straight and narrow. I looked at it this way: you were either in my way, or out of it. If you were standing between me and the game, I was going to knock you on your back and not feel bad about it. I was unapologetically me. That’s all I ever wanted to be. I was never worried about my reputation – that’s how I earned one. That’s how I became the Black Mamba.” – Kobe Bryant
9. “If you’re afraid to fail, then you’re probably going to fail.” – Kobe Bryant
10. “Leadership is lonely … I’m not going to be afraid of confrontation to get us to where we need to go. There’s a big misconception where people thinking winning or success comes from everybody putting their arms around each other and singing kumbaya and patting them on the back when they mess up, and that’s just not reality. If you are going to be a leader, you are not going to please everybody. You have to hold people accountable. Even if you have that moment of being uncomfortable.” – Kobe Bryant
11. “Trust me, setting things up right from the beginning will avoid a ton of tears and heartache.” – Kobe Bryant
12. “The important thing is that your teammates have to know you’re pulling for them and you really want them to be successful.” – Kobe Bryant
13. “I would go 0-for-30 [from the field] before I would go 0-for-9. 0-for-9 means you beat yourself, you psyched yourself out of the game. … The only reason is because you’ve just now lost confidence in yourself.” – Kobe Bryant
14. “The moment you give up, is the moment you let someone else win.” – Kobe Bryant
15. “When we are saying this cannot be accomplished, this cannot be done, then we are short-changing ourselves. My brain, it cannot process failure. It will not process failure. Because if I have to sit there and face myself and tell myself ‘you are a failure,’ I think that is almost worse than dying.” – Kobe Bryant
16. “This is the moment I accept the most challenging times will always be behind me and in front of me.” – Kobe Bryant
17. “I’m extremely willful to win, and I respond to challenges. It’s not a challenge to me to win the scoring title, because I know I can.” – Kobe Bryant
18. “I’ve shot too much from the time I was 8 years old. But ‘too much’ is a matter of perspective. Some people thought Mozart had too many notes in his compositions. Let me put it this way: I entertain people who say I shoot too much. I find it very interesting. Going back to Mozart, he responded to critics by saying there were neither too many notes or too few. There were as many as necessary.” – Kobe Bryant
19. “I have self-doubt. I have insecurity. I have fear of failure. I have nights when I show up at the arena and I’m like, ‘My back hurts, my feet hurt, my knees hurt. I don’t have it. I just want to chill.’ We all have self-doubt. You don’t deny it, but you also don’t capitulate to it. You embrace it.” – Kobe Bryant
20. “My parents are my backbone. Still are. They’re the only group that will support you if you score zero or you score 40.” – Kobe Bryant
21. “I never looked at [basketball] as work. I didn’t realize it was work until my first year in the NBA. When I came around, I was surrounded by other professionals and I thought basketball was going to be everything to them and it wasn’t. And I was like, ‘This is different.’ I thought everybody was so obsessive about the game like me. It was like, no? Oh, that’s hard work. I get it now.” – Kobe Bryant
22. “The last time I was intimidated was when I was 6 years old in karate class. I was an orange belt and the instructor ordered me to fight a black belt who was a couple years older and a lot bigger. I was scared s—less. I mean, I was terrified and he kicked my ass. But then I realized he didn’t kick my ass as bad as I thought he was going to and that there was nothing really to be afraid of. That was around the time I realized that intimidation didn’t really exist if you’re in the right frame of mind.” – Kobe Bryant
23. “I can’t relate to lazy people. We don’t speak the same language. I don’t understand you. I don’t want to understand you.” – Kobe Bryant
24. “The most important thing is to try and inspire people so that they can be great in whatever they want to do.” – Kobe Bryant
25. “Friends can come and go, but banners hang forever.” – Kobe Bryant
26. “When I have the chance to guard Michael Jordan, I want to guard him. I want him. It’s the ultimate challenge. I don’t want to be the next Michael Jordan, I only want to be Kobe Bryant.” – Kobe Bryant
27. “I’m chasing perfection.” – Kobe Bryant
28. “Winning takes precedence over all. There’s no gray area. No almosts.” – Kobe Bryant
29. “There’s a choice that we have to make as people, as individuals. If you want to be great at something, there’s a choice you have to make. We all can be masters at our craft, but you have to make a choice. What I mean by that is, there are inherent sacrifices that come along with that. Family time, hanging out with friends, being a great friend, being a great son, nephew, whatever the case may be. There are sacrifices that come along with making that decision.” – Kobe Bryant
30. “It’s the one thing you can control. You are responsible for how people remember you – or don’t. So don’t take it lightly. If you do it right, your game will live on in others. You’ll be imitated and emulated by those you played with, those you played against and those who never saw you play at all. So leave everything on the court. Leave the game better than you found it. And when it comes time for you to leave, leave a legend.” – Kobe Bryant
31. “Learn to love the hate. Embrace it. Enjoy it. You earned it. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and everyone should have one about you. Haters are a good problem to have. Nobody hates the good ones. They hate the great ones.” – Kobe Bryant
32. “I’m reflective only in the sense that I learn to move forward. I reflect with a purpose.” – Kobe Bryant
33. “The topic of leadership is a touchy one. A lot of leaders fail because they don’t have the bravery to touch that nerve or strike that chord. Throughout my years, I haven’t had that fear.” – Kobe Bryant
34. “There is beauty in that. I mean, it’s going through the cycle. I mean, it’s the cycle that is the natural progression of growth, of maturation. I mean, there’s no sadness in that … I see the beauty in not being able to blow past defenders anymore, you know what I mean? I see the beauty in getting up in the morning and being in pain because I know all the hard work that it took to get to this point. So, I’m not, I’m not sad about it. I’m very appreciative of what I’ve had.” – Kobe Bryant
35. “I saw you come in and I wanted you to know that it doesn’t matter how hard you work, that I’m willing to work harder than you.” – Kobe Bryant
36. “I’m extremely willful to win, and I respond to challenges. Scoring titles and stuff like that… it sounds, well, I don’t care how it sounds – to me, scoring comes easy. It’s not a challenge to me to win the scoring title, because I know I can.” – Kobe Bryant
37. “My brain… it cannot process failure. It will not process failure. Because if I sit there and have to face myself and tell myself, ‘You’re a failure’… I think that’s almost worse than death.” – Kobe Bryant
38. “To be an event, every single night. Something witnessed. Not just watched. I had a different drive. The kind that made people uneasy. Some people wanted me to come back down to earth. To come down to their level. To relax. But I couldn’t. It wasn’t in my DNA. Because to go where others have never gone, you have to do what others have never done.” – Kobe Bryant
39. “The most important thing is you must put everybody on notice that you’re here and you are for real.” – Kobe Bryant
40. “I wanna be the best, simple, and plain.” – Kobe Bryant
We miss you, Kobe, you will always be remembered.
