2. “I like criticism. It makes you strong.”
3. “Sometimes your best effort just isn’t good enough.”
4. “Maybe my pain was motivation.”
5. “The best teacher in life is experience.”
6. “Dream as if you’ll live forever, live as if you’ll die today.”
7. “You have to be able to accept failure to get better.”
8. “I’m going to use all my tools, my God-given ability, and make the best life I can with it.”
9. “Warren Buffet told me once and he said always follow your gut. When you have that gut feeling, you have to go with don’t go back on it.”
10. “You can’t be afraid to fail. It’s the only way you succeed. You’re not gonna succeed all the time and I know that.”
11. “Greatness is defined by how much you want to put into what you do.”
12. “There is a lot of pressure put on me, but I don’t put a lot of pressure on myself. I feel if I play my game, it will take care of itself.”
13. “Why should I care? I have all the money in the world.”
14. “As a professional athlete a lot is going to be said about you―but I just try to move forward and try to achieve my goals.”
15. “People will hate you, rate you, shake you, and break you. But how strong you stand is what makes you.”
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16. “I don’t want to be Kobe, I want to be LeBron.”
17. “Ask me to play, I’ll play, ask me to shoot, I’ll shoot. Ask me to pass, I’ll pass, Ask me to steal, block out, sacrifice, lead, dominate, anything. But it’s not just what you ask of me. It’s what I ask of myself.”
18. “I feel my calling here goes above basketball.”
19. “I treated it like every day was my last day with a basketball.”
20. “Hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard.”
21. “If you put everything together as far as my mind, my body, my game. If you put everything in one bottle, this is probably the best I’ve been.”
22. “I think team first. It allows me to succeed, it allows my team to succeed.”
23. “I never get too high on my stardom or what I can do.”
24. “I’m confident with my ability.”
25. “I hear my friends and my tell me I’m special, but honestly, I still don’t get it.”
26. “I make impact plays. I make game-changing plays.”
27. “I love showcasing my talents―not only to my hometown fans and my own team but to the world.”
28. “My game is really played above time. I don’t say that like I’m saying I’m ahead of my time. I’m saying, like, if I’m on the court and I throw a pass, the ball that I’ve thrown will lead my teammate right where he needs to go before he even knows that that’s the right place to go to.”
29. “I’m ready to accept the challenge. I’m coming home.”
30. “Everywhere I’ve been, I’ve been the best player. I love being a leader, and I love being the best. I just want to get better. It’s not about being cocky or selfish or anything like that. It’s just how I am.”
31. “Nothing is given. Everything is earned.”
32. “We have an opportunity to get better.”
33. “I always say, decisions I make, I live with them. There’s always ways you can correct them or ways you can do them better. At the end of the day, I live with them.”
34. “It’s hard to win in the league because every team is good, they got players on their team. A lot harder than high school. It’s competitive, and that’s what I most love about it.”
35. “I feel confident because I’m the best player in the world. It’s that simple.”
36. “You have to do what’s best for you and what’s going to make you happy at the end of the day because no one can live with the consequences or anything that comes with your decision besides you.”
37. “The only thing on my mind right now is trying to win the whole thing.”
38. “Once you become a professional athlete or once you do anything well, then you’re automatically a role model―I have no problem being a role model. I love it. I have kids looking up to me and hopefully, I inspire these kids to do good things.”
39. “I don’t need too much. Glamour and all that stuff don’t excite me. I am just glad I have the game of basketball in my life.”
40. “I just do what I got to do and go out and be myself, on and off the court, and take care of my obligations. That’s generally your own destiny-knowing what you have to take care of.”
41. “I love the success of my teammates more than my individual achievements. I’ve just always cared more about that since I started playing.”
42. “I just bring the to win.”
43. “I’m not afraid of nothing, I just like the challenge, and I love being here.”
44. “Once you get on the playing field it’s not about whether you’re liked or not liked. All that matters is to play at a high level and do whatever it takes to help your team win. That’s what it’s about.”
45. “All your life you are told the things you cannot do. All your life they will say you’re not good enough or strong enough or talented enough. They will say you’re the wrong height or the wrong weight or the wrong type to play this or be this or achieve this. They will tell you no. A thousand times no. Until all the noes become meaningless. All your life they will tell you no. Quite firmly and very quickly. And you will tell them yes.”
46. “Something just doesn’t pop under your nose; you have to work for it.”
47. “Commitment is a big part of what I am and what I believe. How committed are you to winning? How committed are you to being a good friend? To being trustworthy? To being successful? How committed are you to being a good father, a good teammate, a good role model? There’s that moment every morning when you look in the mirror: are you committed, or are you not?”
48. “I told myself if I ever made it to the level I want to be at, I’m gonna give back.”
49. “I think the reason why I am who I am today is because I went through those tough times when I was younger.”
50. “Every night on the court I give my all, and if I’m not giving 100%, I criticize myself.”
51. “A friend told me ‘I guess you gotta go through a lot of nightmares, before you finally, you know, accomplish your dreams.”
52. “I like to get out and get up the court, using my speed and aggressiveness toward the hoop.”
53. “No matter how good one individual is, it takes a whole team to win a championship.”
54. “When you have that respect from your teammates, it makes it a lot more comfortable.”
55. “Every practice, every film session, every game will help our chemistry.”
56. “The first time I stepped on an NBA court I became a businessman.”
57. “Success isn’t owned, it’s leased. And the rent is due every day.”
58. “I never rushed the fact that I wanted to be in the NBA or rushed the fact, you know, they asked me about the NBA. I am always unintelligible back to the fact that I just love playing with my teammates.”
59. “I’m LeBron James, from Akron, Ohio, from the inner city. I’m not even supposed to be here. That’s enough. Every night I walk into the locker room, I see a No. 6 with James on the back, I’m blessed. So what everybody says about me off the court, doesn’t matter. I ain’t got no worries.”
60. “I’m just blessed that I was able to have guys around me that had some of the same goals. The man above gave me a gift and he gave me friends and a mentor that can help me reach my goal and reach my potential. And we all had the same goal, so it wasn’t hard for us to get, you know, off-track because we all wanted the same thing.”
61. “Basketball isn’t easy. All my life I’ve been striving to make myself better. It’s a full-time commitment. To be the best, you have to work the hardest. You have to chase what seems impossible over and over and over again, because giving up is not an option, and when you feel like you’ve reached your limit, it’s only the beginning, that’s when the time to dig deep, to find the courage to push some more, because if you’ve got the drive, the discipline, and the resolve to do what it takes to make yourself great, then the rewards are endless.”
62. “You know, God gave me a gift to do other things besides play the game of basketball.”
63. “That’s one of my biggest obstacles. I’m afraid of failure. I want to succeed so bad that I become afraid of failing.”
64. “I’m a guy who tries to be successful in all that I do, and when you fall short, it hurts.”
65. “All the people that were rooting on me to fail, at the end of the day, they have to wake up tomorrow and have the same life that they had before they woke up today. They have the same personal problems they had today. I’m going to continue to live the way I want to live and continue to do the things that I want to do with me and my family and be happy with that. They can get a few days or a few months or whatever the case may be on being happy about not only myself but the Miami Heat not accomplishing their goal. But they have to get back to the real world at some point.”
66. “But ever since I was a kid, I was always the winner.”
67. “I enjoy the competition and whatever it takes throughout the competition, I will do it.”
68. “A lot of players know how to play the game, but they really don’t know how to play the game, if you know what I mean. They can put the ball in the hoop, but I see things before they even happen. You know how a guy can make his team so much better? That’s one thing I learned from watching Jordan.”
69. “You know, when I have a bad game, it continues to humble me and know that, you know, you still have work to do and you still have a lot of people to impress.”
70. “I hate letting my teammates down. I know I’m not going to make every shot. Sometimes I try to make the right play, and if it results in a loss, I feel awful. I don’t feel awful because I have to answer questions about it. I feel awful in that locker room because I could have done something more to help my teammates win.”
71. “I learn from winning because it’s much easier to point out things when you lose. But I think the alternate competitors can point out a lot of things when you win.”
72. “Losing a basketball game hurts but when you see what you’ve been through, you look on it and say well if this is the worst thing that can happen to me, then I’m okay.”
73. “I have short goals―to get better every day, to help my teammates every day―but my only ultimate goal is to win an NBA championship. It’s all that matters. I dream about it. I dream about it all the time, how it would look, how it would feel. It would be so amazing.”
74. “I do have motivation. A lot of motivation.”
75. “I love watching track and field―the 4×100 relay, the 100-meter dash, the 200-meter dash. To see what they’re able to do, I love watching that.”
76. “I’m like a superhero. Call me Basketball Man.”
77. “I do pilates and yoga to stay in front of the curve. I feel like it’s helping me. Does it work for everybody? I don’t know. I’m not a guru on how to be in the best condition. Let me sit here and tell you that. But it works for me.”
78. “Yoga isn’t just about the body, it’s also about the mind and it’s a technique that has really helped me.”
79. “I laugh and joke, but I don’t get distracted very easily.”
80. “You know, my family and friends have never been yes-men: ‘Yes, you’re doing the right thing, you’re always right.’ No, they tell me when I’m wrong, and that’s why I’ve been able to stay who I am and stay humble.”
81. “My father wasn’t around when I was a kid, and I used to always say, ‘Why me? Why don’t I have a father? Why isn’t he around? Why did he leave my mother?’ But as I got older I looked deeper and thought, ‘I don’t know what my father was going through, but if he was around all the time, would I be who I am today?’”
82. “In the next 15 or 20 years, I hope I’ll be the richest man in the world. That’s one of my goals. I want to be a billionaire. I want to get to a position where generation on generation don’t have to worry about nothing. I don’t want family members from my kids to my son’s kids to never have to worry. And I can’t do that now just playing basketball.”
83. “For me, already being part of a single-parent household and knowing it was just me and my mom, you’d would wake up times and hope that the next day you’d be able to be alongside your mother because she was out trying to make sure that I was taken care of. But all I cared about was her being home.”
84. “My mom and I have always been there for each other. We had some tough times, but she was always there for me.”
85. “Basketball is my passion, I love it. But my family and friends mean everything to me. That’s what’s important. I need my phone so I can keep in contact with them at all times.”
86. “I need music. It’s like my heartbeat, so to speak. It keeps me going no matter what’s going on―bad games, press, whatever!”
87. “When I miss you, sometimes I listen to music or look at pictures of you, not to remind me of you but to make me feel as if I’m with you. It makes me forget the distance and capture you.”
88. “People who say, ‘It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all’ never felt a broken heart.”
89. “Certain money is not always good money. It could be just being at the wrong place at the wrong time. I mean, if you have your priorities in check then for the most part it’s easy.”
90. “My childhood was never great. We moved from place to place a lot. There were times when we had no definite place to stay. So, a basic level of security was not always there. Therefore, when you finally make it out, and you become who I am, you’re humbled by the memories of those situations.”
91. “The modern athlete is an individual corporation. I’m not quite sure it’s very good for sport, or good for , or those different things that sport says it’s about. This is about business.”
92. “There are always people always asking you for something. But I feel like I have a foundation. I have a supporting cast where it doesn’t bother me too much.”
93. “It’s humbling to know that you have fans all over America and all over the world and they want you to play on their respective basketball team. It’s very humbling that they respect the way I play the game of basketball. I can’t discredit that. I can’t say I don’t enjoy it because you put in a lot of hard work to have fans. And for me to be a role model and for me to have fans all over is great. It’s very humbling.”
94. “I am just happy to be part of the Nike family.”
95. “Akron, Ohio, is my home. I will always be here. I’m still working out at my old high school.”
96. “I always believed that I’d return to Cleveland and finish my career there.”
97. “My relationship with Northeast Ohio is bigger than basketball. I didn’t realize that four years ago. I do now.”
98. “I never thought basketball was going to be my future. I just wanted to play because it gets you girls.”
99. “In fourth grade, I missed 82 days of school. Out of 160.”