Pat Summitt Quotes To Remember Her Legacy

Legendary women's basketball coach Pat Summitt died Tuesday morning after a five-year battle with Alzheimer's disease, according to a statement released by son Tyler. Summitt was the winningest basketball coach in college sports history, leading the Tennessee Lady Vols to eight national titles and 1,098 regular game wins in her 38 years coaching at the University of Tennessee.

As impressive as her resume was, Summitt is perhaps most remembered for her thought provoking and inspiring quotes, the piece of wisdom she left with the world in her books, speeches, and every day life. Summitt's quotes prove what an unstoppable fighter she was, even when going up against her biggest challenger yet, Alzheimer's, and show that she never lost her spirit of self-discovery.

1. On Working

"Here's how I'm going to beat you. I'm going to outwork you. That's it. That's all there is to it." - Reach For The Summit

2. On Coaching

"Coaching is the great passion of my life, and the job to me has always been an opportunity to work with our student athletes and help them discover what they want. I will continue to make them my passion." - 2012 retirement statement

3. On Competition

"Competition got me off the farm and trained me to seek out challenges and to endure setbacks; and in combination with my faith, it sustains me now in my fight with Alzheimer’s disease." - 2013 news release

4. On Pushing Yourself

"I'm someone who will push you beyond all reasonable limits. Someone who will ask you not to just fulfill your potential but to exceed it. Someone who will expect more from you than you may believe you are capable of." - Reach For The Summit

5. On Loyalty

"The absolute heart of loyalty is to value those people who tell you the truth, not just those people who tell you what you want to hear. In fact, you should value them most. Because they have paid you the compliment of leveling with you and assuming you can handle it." - Reach For The Summit

6. On Quitting

“Quit? Quit? We keep score in life because it matters. It counts. Too many people opt out and never discover their own abilities, because they fear failure. They don’t understand commitment. When you learn to keep fighting in the face of potential failure, it gives you a larger skill set to do what you want to do.” - Sum It Up

7. On Making Mistakes

"When a player makes a mistake, you always want to put them back in quickly—you don’t just berate them and sit them down with no chance for redemption." - Sum It Up

8. On Losing

"Losing strengthens you. It reveals your weaknesses so you can fix them." - Raise The Roof

9. On Her Feminist Motivation

"Back then, there was no reward or reason for playing ball other than love of the game. There were no athletic scholarships for women, no money for decent uniforms, or hotels. On the road, we slept on mats in the gym of whatever campus we visited. But the thing about it was, I needed the game more than it needed me. I needed it to prove my worth in a family of brothers, who had never once cleared their own plates from a table or poured their own ice tea." - Raise The Roof

10. On Her Own Relentlessness

“Someday, I suppose I’ll give up, and sit in the rocking chair. But I’ll probably be rocking fast, because I don’t know what I’ll do without a job.” - Sum It Up