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Who really said it

There's a lot of blood, sweat and guts between dreams and success

Attributed to Bear Bryant 1913–1983 · American college football coach, Alabama
Attributed Rights unconfirmed

The line is credited to Bryant almost everywhere it appears, and it sounds like him. But we could not find a contemporary printing: the only citation Wikiquote gives is a 2012 blog post listing fifty Bryant quotes, which is a repetition rather than a source.

Last verified 26 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

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Unconfirmed quote & credit

“There's a lot of blood, sweat and guts between dreams and success” Attributed to Bear Bryant (1913–1983). Widely credited, but no contemporary source has been documented. — quotle.info

Can you use it?

We couldn’t establish where this was first published, so there’s no rights status to give. Credit it as shown above — just don’t present it as public domain, and get permission for commercial or published reuse.

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the world of Bear Bryant — American college football coach, Alabama. Theme: "There's a lot of blood, sweat and guts between dreams and success". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "There's a lot of blood, sweat and guts between dreams and success". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

A quote with no paper trail

Credited to
Paul William “Bear” Bryant
Best-known citation
A 2012 online list of Bryant quotations
Contemporary printing
None found
Status
Widely attributed, undocumented

There's a lot of blood, sweat and guts between dreams and success.

We have no earlier or fuller context to offer, because we could not find an appearance of the line in Bryant’s lifetime. That absence is the honest finding here.

Wikiquote: Bear Bryant

How we verified this

  • Wikiquote’s Bear Bryant page ↗ lists the line in its main Quotes section, but the only citation attached is a 2012 post on a college-football blog titled “Top Fifty Quotes From Bear Bryant” — a compilation, not a record of him saying it.
  • Quote Investigator ↗ has traced exactly one Bryant saying, and it is not this one, so no specialist has established a first appearance.
  • We searched the Library of Congress’s Chronicling America newspaper corpus for “blood, sweat and guts” and for “between dreams and success” and found no match. That corpus thins out sharply after the early 1960s, so this is weak evidence of absence rather than proof — we note it as a search we ran, not as a verdict.
  • Bryant’s own autobiography, Bear ↗, is catalogued at the Internet Archive as a 1975 Little, Brown printing, but it is lending-restricted, so we could not search it for the line.

Because we could not identify where or when this wording first appeared, we make no claim about its copyright status. If it was first printed in Bryant’s lifetime it would almost certainly be in copyright; we simply do not know, and would rather say so than guess.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

Credited everywhere, sourced nowhere

Nobody else is claiming this line, and nothing suggests Bryant did not say it. What is missing is any record of him saying it.

A 2012 blog list No primary source

The citation Wikiquote ↗ attaches is a 2012 web post collecting fifty Bryant quotations. A list of quotes repeats an attribution; it does not document one.

No specialist finding Not investigated

Quote Investigator ↗ has published on only one Bryant saying — the “size of the dog in the fight” line — and has not looked at this one.

Treat it as attributed rather than documented: entirely plausible, thoroughly repeated, and so far unsupported by any source printed while Bryant was alive.

Context

Why an undocumented quote still matters

Bryant won six national championships at Alabama and retired in 1982 holding the record for most wins by a college football coach, so a maxim about grinding toward a goal fits him about as well as a quote can fit anyone. That plausibility is exactly what lets an unsourced line travel.

It is a useful reminder that “sounds like him” is not evidence. Most famous coach quotations reach us through motivational posters rather than transcripts, and the posters do not keep receipts.

“Sounds like him” is not evidence.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Work Success Resilience

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Wikiquote: Bear Bryanten.wikiquote.org

The quotation and the 2012 blog citation attached to it, plus better-sourced Bryant lines for comparison.
Wikipedia: Bear Bryanten.wikipedia.org

His 25 years at Alabama, six national championships, and the wins record he held at retirement.
Quote Investigator: Bear Bryantquoteinvestigator.com

The single Bryant saying QI has traced — evidence of how little of his quotable output has been checked.
Bear: The Hard Life and Good Timesarchive.org

Bryant’s autobiography, catalogued at the Internet Archive as a 1975 Little, Brown printing. Lending-restricted.

The author

About Bear Bryant

Bear Bryant

1913–1983 · American college football coach, Alabama

Paul William “Bear” Bryant coached the Alabama Crimson Tide from 1958 to 1982, winning six national championships and thirteen conference titles, and retired holding the record for the most wins of any coach in college football history. He got the nickname as a teenager for agreeing to wrestle a carnival bear. He is one of the most quoted figures in American sport and one of the least well documented.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

The primary source (Chicago)

Attributed to Paul W. “Bear” Bryant; no contemporary printing located. Listed in Wikiquote, “Bear Bryant,” citing a 2012 online compilation of Bryant quotations.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘There's a lot of blood, sweat and guts between dreams and success’?” Last verified 26 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/theres-a-lot-of-blood-sweat-and-guts-between-dreams-and/

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