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Who really said it

Winning isn't a sometime thing; it's an all the time thing

Attributed to Vince Lombardi 1913–1970 · Green Bay Packers head coach, 1959–1967
Attributed In copyright

This is genuinely Lombardi’s sentence, not one of the fakes: it opens What It Takes to Be Number One, the speech his family publishes in full on the official Vince Lombardi site ↗, and Wikiquote’s editors single it out as “something he did say.” What is missing is a pin: the estate’s text carries no date, occasion or citation, no recording of the speech is known to survive, and we could not tie the wording to a dated contemporaneous transcript — so we log it as attributed rather than verified.

Last verified 25 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Unconfirmed quote & credit

“Winning isn't a sometime thing; it's an all the time thing” Vince Lombardi, opening of "What It Takes to Be Number One" (speech, undated; text published by the Lombardi family). Attributed: no dated transcript or recording of the speech has been located. Quotle.info · Verbatim: “Winning is not a sometime thing; it's an all the time thing. You don't win once in a while; you don't do things right once in a while; you do them right all of the time. Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.”

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Family of Vince Lombardi c/o Luminary Group LLC). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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In context

Evoking the world of Vince Lombardi — NFL head coach, Green Bay Packers and Washington. Theme: "Winning isn't a sometime thing; it's an all the time thing". 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 "Winning isn't a sometime thing; it's an all the time thing". 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

The source, as far as it goes

Attributed source
What It Takes to Be Number One
Speaker
Vince Lombardi, head coach, Green Bay Packers
Date
Undated. Speakola labels its copy of the text “1961, Green Bay”; the Lombardi family’s own site gives no date, occasion or citation.
Primary record
None located. Speakola notes there is no surviving audio of the speech, and the widely shared “Lombardi” clip is an actor paraphrasing it.

Winning is not a sometime thing; it’s an all the time thing. You don’t win once in a while; you don’t do things right once in a while; you do them right all of the time. Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing. opening of the speech

As published by the Family of Vince Lombardi. The popular one-line form contracts “is not” to “isn’t” and stops after the first sentence — which is why the second half, the part that actually explains the line, is almost never quoted.

The full “What It Takes to Be Number One” text on the official Vince Lombardi site

How we checked it

  • Wikiquote ↗ does not give this line its own sourced entry. It appears inside the note under the Misattributed heading for “Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing,” where editors write that Lombardi “always denied he had said this although it is close to something he did say: ‘Winning isn’t a sometime thing; it’s an all the time thing.’”
  • The Lombardi family’s official site ↗ prints the sentence as the opening of What It Takes to Be Number One and repeats a shortened form on its quotes page — in both places without a date, venue or citation.
  • Speakola ↗ reproduces the same text, credits it to vincelombardi.com, files it under “1961, Green Bay, Wisconsin,” and adds the caution that there is no surviving audio of the speech — the voice in the popular video is an actor doing a paraphrase.
  • Steven J. Overman’s peer-reviewed study in Football Studies (October 1999), held by the LA84 Foundation ↗, lists “Winning is not a sometime thing. It is an all-the-time thing” in a footnote among Lombardi’s own quotes on winning — genuine, but without a discrete citation of its own.
In copyright

The line comes from a speech Lombardi delivered during his coaching career and first published long after 1931, so it is not in the public domain. The text is published and licensed by his estate: vincelombardi.com ↗ carries the footer “© 2026 Family of Vince Lombardi c/o Luminary Group LLC” and directs licensing enquiries to Luminary Group.

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

What goes wrong with this one

Nobody steals this line from Lombardi — it goes wrong in three quieter ways: it gets swapped for a quote that isn’t his, its wording drifts, and at least one large aggregator has filed it under the wrong Lombardi.

Red Sanders conflation

Ask most people for Lombardi’s line about winning and you get “Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.” Quote Investigator ↗ ascribes that one to 1950s UCLA coach Henry Russell “Red” Sanders, and Wikiquote ↗ files it under Misattributed — noting Lombardi “always denied he had said this although it is close to something he did say”: the “sometime thing” sentence.

Vince Lombardi Jr. wrong person

Goodreads ↗ files a copy of the quote under Vince Lombardi Jr., the coach’s son, rather than the coach. The son edited and republished his father’s material, which is very likely how the credit slid one generation down.

the aggregators paraphrase

The estate’s own text reads “Winning is not a sometime thing; it’s an all the time thing” on vincelombardi.com ↗, while its quotes page renders the same idea as “Winning is not a sometime thing, it is an all the time thing. You don’t do things right once in a while…you do them right all the time.” Elsewhere it becomes “an all-time thing” — the form LibQuotes ↗ prints. The popular “Winning isn’t a sometime thing” is a contraction of the estate’s “is not.”

The thought and the phrasing are Lombardi’s — the Lombardi family ↗ publish it as the opening of What It Takes to Be Number One — but the speech comes to us as an undated text with no surviving recording, so we credit it to him without claiming a source we cannot show you.

Context

Why this one keeps getting tangled up

Lombardi has two famous sentences about winning, and the public keeps merging them. One is “Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing” — the one he is most often credited with, the one Quote Investigator ↗ traces to UCLA coach Red Sanders, and the one Lombardi later tried to walk back. The other is this one, which is his, and which almost nobody can source.

That asymmetry is the whole story of the page. The Sanders line has been chased through newspapers, a 1953 Hollywood script and two chapters of David Maraniss’s biography. “Winning is not a sometime thing” has had no comparable investigation — it simply appears, fully formed, at the top of a speech text that the Lombardi family publishes and that Speakola ↗ reproduces with the blunt editorial note that no audio of the speech survives at all.

His most quotable line about consistency is the one nobody has managed to date.

Read the full story

Steven J. Overman’s 1999 article in Football Studies is the closest thing to a scholarly audit. It documents that Lombardi opened the Packers’ 1959 training camp with the “only thing” formulation, that he later offered an apologia — “I have been quoted as saying, ‘Winning is the only thing’. That’s a little out of context” — and it lists “Winning is not a sometime thing. It is an all-the-time thing” in a footnote among his other statements on winning, without assigning it a discrete source.

The speech text itself contains an internal clue about its earliest possible date: Lombardi says he has “finished second twice in my time at Green Bay,” which places the version we have somewhere inside his Packers tenure. That is an observation about the text, not a documented date, and we have not used it to fix one.

Explore

Filed under

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

Success Work Character

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.

Vince Lombardi — Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Separates this line, which editors call “something he did say,” from the “only thing” quote Lombardi denied.
Quote Origin: Winning Isn't Everything; It's the Only Thingquoteinvestigator.com

Quote Investigator ascribes the far more famous rival line to UCLA coach Red Sanders, not Lombardi.
Overman, “Winning Isn't Everything. It's the Only Thing” (1999)digital.la84.org

Peer-reviewed Football Studies article; lists the “sometime thing” wording among Lombardi’s own quotes on winning.
What It Takes to Be Number One — official sitevincelombardi.com

The Lombardi family’s own text of the speech this line opens, published with no date or citation.
Vince Lombardi speech transcriptspeakola.com

Reproduces the speech and warns that no audio survives — the viral “Lombardi” clip is an actor paraphrasing.
Winning isn't everything; it's the only thingen.wikipedia.org

Background on the rival quote, Red Sanders, and how it attached itself to Lombardi.

About the speaker

Who was Vince Lombardi?

Vince Lombardi

1913–1970 · NFL head coach, Green Bay Packers and Washington

Vincent Thomas Lombardi (June 11, 1913 – September 3, 1970) coached at St. Cecilia High School, Fordham and West Point before running the New York Giants’ offense from 1954 to 1958. As head coach of the Green Bay Packers from 1959 to 1967 he won five NFL championships in seven years, including the first two Super Bowls, and he returned to the sideline in Washington in 1969. His off-season speaking career made him the most-quoted coach in America — and, because so much of that speaking survives only as text passed hand to hand, one of the most loosely quoted.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

How to cite this

Vince Lombardi, “What It Takes to Be Number One” (speech, undated), text published by the Family of Vince Lombardi at vincelombardi.com ↗. Catalogued among Lombardi’s own statements on winning in Steven J. Overman, “‘Winning Isn’t Everything. It’s the Only Thing’: The Origin, Attributions and Influence of a Famous Football Quote,” Football Studies 2, no. 2 (October 1999): 77–99.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Winning isn't a sometime thing; it's an all the time thing’?” Last verified 25 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/winning-isnt-a-sometime-thing-its-an-all-the-time-thing/

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