Notre Dame Quotes

I never learn anything talking. I only learn things when I ask questions.

The owl goes not into the nest of the lark.

When a man understands the art of seeing, he can trace the spirit of an age and the features of a king even in the knocker on a door.

by making himself a priest made himself a demon.

Ron Powlus will win the Heisman two times and be the greatest quarterback in the history of Notre Dame.

Whether you like it or not, you're a national figure after five games at Notre Dame.

I met my wife on Spring break when I was in college. I was at the University of Notre Dame. She was at the University of New Hampshire. I bumped into her in Florida and told her the next day that I was going to marry her and 20 or something years later here we are.

I was still rooting for Notre Dame.It's like there's the cultural Catholic experience.

Those who know Notre Dame, no explanation’s necessary. Those who don’t, no explanation will suffice.

We studied a mosque, and this is when we were at Notre Dame, and in this mosque they had people from a variety of countries, most of them immigrants. In some of the countries, when you go into a mosque you remove your shoes. To not do so could be punishable even by death in that nation. In other countries, it would be a great offense to remove their shoes when they come into the mosque, a sign of disrespect.

You don't go to Notre Dame to learn something, you go to Notre Dame to be somebody.

I took a Russian class at Notre Dame. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would fly someday in a Russian spacecraft with two cosmonauts, speaking only Russian.

I haven't seen the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, the Louvre. I haven't seen anything. I don't really care.

I missed so many opportunities along the way to do what I wanted to do because I didn't have the confidence to tell myself, much less anybody else, 'Yes, this is the business I wanted to be a part of, and not feeling that I had the talent... and letting it go all the way through Notre Dame and then through two years of Navy service.

For dogs we kings should have lions, and for cats, tigers. The great benefits a crown.

I do not believe there is an atheist in the world who would bulldoze Mecca-or Chartres, York Minster or Notre Dame, the Shwe Dagon, the temples of Kyoto or, of course, the Buddhas of Bamiyan.

A few years ago I met an old professor at the University of Notre Dame. Looking back on his long life of teaching, he said with a funny wrinkle in his eyes: I have always been complaining that my work was constantly interrupted, until I slowly discovered that my interruptions were my work.

It isn't necessary to see a good tackle. You can hear it.

Lads, you're not to miss practice unless your parents died or you died.

I've found that prayers work best when you have big players.

I've kicked at Notre Dame the past four years, I've been in frigid cold weather, snow. I've kicked at Yankee Stadium in December, so whatever is thrown at me I'm able to do.

At home we're the hosts, and I never liked the idea of being embarrassed in front of our friends.

If you burn your neighbors house down, it doesn't make your house look any better.

I have no desire at all to become the winningest coach at Notre Dame. The record belongs to Knute Rockne or some other coach in the future.

I'm going to be the next head coach at Notre Dame.

My solo travels in Paris have brought many perfect hours of being alone but not a moment of loneliness. People who depend on other people are often in hiding from themselves. Two and a quarter million people live in the City of Light: you will see many of them and you will pass them in the street, but when you see Notre Dame after dark and walk home and perhaps stop to have a drink in the Marais, you can feel that the only thing that is missing from your experience is the common dependence on someone to distract your attention.  You are living without it: you are on vacation.

As good as we were, we didn’t win a National Championship until 1993, mainly because we kept losing to Miami on missed kicks. I used to get mad because nobody else would play Miami. Notre Dame would play them, then drop them. Florida dropped them. Penn State dropped them. We would play Miami and lose by one point on a missed field goal, and it would knock us out of the National Championship. I didn’t want to play them, either, but I had to play them. That’s why I said, 'When I die, They’ll say, ‘At least he played Miami.'

In 1953 there were two ways for an Irish Catholic boy to impress his parents: become a priest or attend Notre Dame.

Seldom do we experience the charisma and character of a dynamic personality such as Lou Holtz, the very successful former football coach of Notre Dame. Lou has left his distinctive mark of success everywhere he has coached. Winning Every Day is not just a catchy phrase, but with Coach Holtz, a way of life.

I noticed the drama majors on campus when I was at Notre Dame. They just seemed to be freer spirits than the rest of us. There was joy in their work; they were the only ones studying something whose work made them happy. I envied that.

I've been coming to Notre Dame since 1957. This place, this campus, is the closest thing there is to perfection.

The morning we left South Bend, every student and professor was out of bed long before breakfast and marched downtown accompanying the team to the railroad station. It was the first time I'd seen anything like this mass hysteria generated on the Notre Dame campus over a football game.

The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, who said to his tailor Irving, Forget the slacks - please work on the blazer! Never got a dinner!

The only qualifications for a lineman are to be big and dumb. To be a back, you only have to be dumb.

Show me a gracious loser and I'll show you a failure.

Perhaps the dumbest of these story lines is that [Pope] Francis has re-opened conversation and debate in a Church that had been closed and claustrophobic for 35 years under John Paul II and Benedict XVI. I defy anyone who, over the last 35 years, has spent time on the campuses of Notre Dame or Georgetown, or who has read the National Catholic Reporter, or who has gone to a meeting of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, to make that claim without experiencing a twinge of conscience that says, "I should wash my mouth out with soap."

You'll never get ahead of anyone as long as you try to get even with him.

National Defense A strong USA defense brought down the Soviet Union. It was Ronald Reagan - first in a speech at Notre Dame University in May 1981, then his 'Evil Empire' speech of March 1983 - who most eloquently declared communism's imminent demise. Reagan was right. And even Soviet officials attribute Ronald Reagan's rhetoric and foreign policy to bringing down that 'evil empire.' By Christmas Day, 1990, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Liberals wished it were other things.

Growing up under the heavy hand of the School Sisters of Notre Dame, it was drummed into me that attending weekly mass was not an option. It was a must to avoid eternal damnation, which was not a prospect filled with many positives. Hell fire was perpetual, and no parole would be offered.

An atheist is a man who watches a Notre Dame - Southern Methodist University game and doesn't care who wins.

I don't know what my appeal is. I can see I've got blue eyes and don't look like the Hunchback of Notre Dame but I can't understand the fuss.

Hamilton had a complaint. "Why did you have to tell the cops I'm your boyfriend? That's gross, Amy. We're related!" Amy was disgusted. "We had a common ancestor, like, five hundred years ago. Besides, if they think we're together, we only have to come up with one story, and I can do all the talking." "Hey, I got an early acceptance to Notre Dame," Hamilton said defensively. "I can talk." "Of course you can," Amy soothed. "It's what you say that might get us into trouble.

The man who complains about the way the ball bounces is likely the one who dropped it.

There are two kinds of people in the world, Notre Dame lovers and Notre Dame haters. And, quite frankly, they're both a pain in the ass.

There are two kinds of people in the world, observers and non-observers.

One man practicing sportsmanship is far better than a hundred teaching it.

Football is a game played with arms, legs and shoulders but mostly from the neck up.

Sure, I'd love to beat Notre Dame, don't get me wrong. But nothing matters more than beating that cow college on the other side of the state!

There is no academic virtue in playing mediocre football and no academic vice in winning a game that by all odds one should lose...There has indeed been a surrender at Notre Dame, but it is a surrender to excellence on all fronts, and in this we hope to rise above ourselves with the help of God.

The message that President Obama delivered in his speech at Notre Dame was: morality is immoral. Pro-life is the extremist position, not a moral position. Yet we should compromise and work to reduce abortions. Where's the compromise between life and death - and why work to reduce the number of them occurring if there's nothing wrong with them?