This page was started to share some of my personal favorite quotes. There are some great dog quotes, but they aren’t only about dogs. I have always enjoyed quotes that were inspirational, motivational, or really made you think. I enjoy applying them where I can in my life; often with my dogs. The author will be credited when and where I know who it was that said it. If you have a favorite you’d like to share, email it to me. This page will be updated from time to time with new quotes going on the top of the page.

“We do not rise to the level of our expectations. We fall to the level of our training.”
~Archilochus, Greek soldier circa 650 BC

“A correction becomes abuse not by what is done, but by effect of what is done; when it is excessive and unnecessary to what is needed to correct or educate; and stops, slows, impedes, or reverses progress.”
~Nate Harves

“The greater the loyalty of a group toward the group, the greater is the motivation among the members to achieve the goals of the group, and the greater the probability that the group will achieve its goals.”
~Rensis Likert

“To become truly great, one has to stand with people, not above them.”
~Charles de Montesquieu

“The Wolf says might makes right. The Sheepdog says might alone isn’t strength, and compassion isn’t weakness.

~ Lt. Col Dave Grossman, military / law enforcement motivational speaker and author of the book “On Killing”

“Courage is the discovery that you may not win, and trying when you know you can lose.”
~Tom Krause

“I closed my eyes and concentrated. I locked the doors to those rooms tight. Their floorboards don’t squeak anymore, or at least not as much; ’cause I try not to let my thoughts walk on them. But every now and then, through no doing of my own, a little lamp is lit in them. And even though I don’t go in to check on it, the light still escapes a tiny little bit beneath the crack of the door. This is okay; I wouldn’t want it to stay dark in there all of the time.”
~Nate Harves

“There comes a point in your life when you realize:
who matters,
who never did,
who won’t anymore…
and who always will.
So, don’t worry about people from your past….there’s a reason why they didn’t make it to your future.”
~unknown

An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me”, he said to the boy.

“It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”

The grandson thought about it for a moment and then asked the old man, “Grandfather, which wolf will win?”

The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one I feed.” .”

~Native American legend

“Dogs have given us their absolute all. We are the center of their universe. We are the focus of their love and faith and trust. They serve us in return for scraps. It is without a doubt the best deal man has ever made.”
~Roger Caras

“A hungry dog hunts best.”
~Lee Trevino

“Anyone can become angry – that is easy, but to be angry with the right person at the right time, and for the right purpose and in the right way – that is not within everyone’s power and that is not easy.”
~Aristotle

Jeff M: “I bought a puppy one time from Germany, that was out of a Bundessieger, and it ended up having the dwarfism gene. It was really small and looked ridiculous.”

Mike D: “I think you caught whatever it had.”

~A funny exchange one day at our schutzhund club

“She never begins an attack, nor, when once engaged, ever surrenders: She is therefore an emblem of magnanimity and true courage. … she never wounds ’till she has generously given notice, even to her enemy, and cautioned him against the danger of treading on her.”
~Benjamin Franklin, on the famous “Don’t Tread On Me” flag

“If you are successful, you may win false friends and true enemies. Succeed anyway.”
~Mother Teresa

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”
~Aldous Huxley

“For those who fight for it, life has a flavor the protected will never know.”
~Teddy Roosevelt

“It doesn’t matter what you can do, it matters what you will do.”
~Chad Reynolds, 8th grade son of my good friend, Les Reynolds

“Great spirits have always experienced violent opposition from mediocre minds.”
~Albert Einstein

“The nation that will insist on drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking done by cowards.”
~Sir William Francis Butler

“It is not the critic who counts;
Not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, Whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood,
Who strives valiantly,
Who errs and comes up short again and again…
Who spends himself in a worthy cause;
Who, at the best knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement;
And who at the worst, if he fails, at LEAST fails while daring greatly.”
~Teddy Roosevelt

“If we weren’t all crazy, we’d go insane.”
~Jimmy Buffett

“They were a hard-driven, hardworking crowd inured to the hardest living, and they found their recreation in hard drinking and hard fighting.”
~Allen Barra

“Out of every one hundred men you send me, ten of them shouldn’t even be here!
Eighty are nothing more than targets!
Nine of them are real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they the battle make.
Ah, but one…
One is a warrior!
And I must find him; for he will bring the others home!”
~Heraclitus, from Greece

“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
for he today that sheds his blood with me, shall be my brother.”
~William Shakespeare

“We have a greater moral responsibility to act than those who live in ignorance. Once you become knowledgeable you have an obligation to do something about it.”
~Unknown

“If the work I make with my dog is shit, I am a shitty handler. If the work is good, then it must be because of the dog.”
~Unknown, sent from a friend in the Czech Republik

“The most striking feature of the correctly bred German Shepherd are firmness of nerves, attentiveness, unshockability, tractability, watchfulness, reliability and incorruptibility together with courage, fighting tenacity, and hardness.”
~Captain Max von Stephanitz

“The day my dog doesn’t have a problem on the track is the day my dog doesn’t learn something.”
~Juergen Ritzi

“Today your dog passes SchH2 like driving through a yellow light.”
~an SV Judge to an unknown handler

“The only thing two dog trainers can agree on is what the third dog trainer is doing wrong.”
~Anne Kent

“People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered; Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of being selfish, having ulterior motives; Be kind anyway. If you are successful, you will win some false friends and true enemies; succeed anyway. If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; be honest and frank anyway. What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight; Build anyway. If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous; be happy anyway. The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow; do good anyway. Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough; Give the world the best you’ve got anyway. You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God; It was never between you and them anyway.”
~Mother Teresa

“You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.”
~Abraham Lincoln

“Agga-shigga-dra, bitches.”
~Gabor Szilasi (with a slight twist on a Hungarian drinking toast)

“You know son, if at any point in a man’s life he can say he has one true friend, then he is a lucky man.”
~Harold “Bid” Harves

We Have A Secret

“We have a secret, you and I that no one else shall know. For who but I can see you lie, each night in fire glow?
And who but I can reach my hand before we go to bed, and feel the living warmth of you and touch your silken head?
And only I walk woodland paths and see ahead of me, your agile form racing with the wind so young again, and free.
And only I can see you swim in every brook I pass, and when I call, no one but I can see the bending grass.”
~Pet Loss Poem, Author Unknown

“I miss 100% of the shots I don’t take.”
~Wayne Gretzky

“He was my friend.”
~Nate Harves, after the loss of the Grimm Dog.

“To be a great champion you must believe you are the best. If you’re not, pretend you are.”
~Muhammad Ali

“Right now, you are just a tiny little puppy…but someday, men will tremble in your presence.”
~Nate Harves

“I can’t believe that God put us on this earth to be ordinary.”
~Lou Holtz

“I’m so optimistic I’d go after Moby Dick in a row boat and take the tartar sauce with me. “
~Zig Ziglar

“We acquire the strength we have overcome.”
~Ralph Waldo Emerson