Starr Speaking Up Quotes

I'm forgetting so many things about you, I swear, I can't even remember how those butterflies felt with just the sight, or sound of you. The memory of feeling complete calmness because you always rescued me, from my chaotic thoughts, is almost a distant remembrance. I can't recall, which time you didn't speak up when I begged for words, caused these cuts in my heart, that now bares very fragile stitching borrowed from my self worth. ANONYMOUS

When Lombardi joined the Green Bay Packers in 1959, the team had gone eleven straight seasons without a winning record, and after winning only one of twelve games the previous year, the team fired Lombardi’s predecessor. Upon arriving at training camp as their new head coach, Lombardi made an immediate and indelible first impression on Bart Starr, a struggling third-string, fourth-year quarterback. After leading the players to a meeting room, Lombardi waited in front of a portable blackboard as the players sat down. He picked up a piece of chalk and began to speak. “Gentlemen,” he said, “we have a great deal of ground to cover. We’re going to do things a lot differently than they’ve been done here before . . . [We’re] going to relentlessly chase perfection, knowing full well we will not catch it, because perfection is not attainable. But we are going to relentlessly chase it because, in the process, we will catch excellence.”6 He paused and stared, his eyes moving from player to player. The room was silent. “I’m not remotely interested in being just good,” he said with an intensity that startled them all.