Attribution to Rockne sometime in the 1920s mentioned in Safire's Political Dictionary (2008) by William Safire, p. 401, but there is no definite mention of this yet located prior to the 1980s; in The Yale Book of Quotations by Fred R. Shapiro, a similar remark is credited to Arnold "Red" Auerbach, based on a 1965 citation in the Mansfield News Journal [Ohio]: "Show me a good loser, and I'll show you a loser."
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Show me a good and gracious loser, and I'll show you a failure.
— Knute Rockne
What It Means
This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Show me a good and gracious loser, and I'll show you a failure." in the context of "Attribution to Rockne sometime in the 1920s mentioned in Safire's Political Dictionary (2008) by William Safire, p. 401, but there is no definite mention of this yet located prior to the 1980s; in The Yale Book of Quotations by Fred R. Shapiro, a similar remark is credited to Arnold "Red" Auerbach, based on a 1965 citation in the Mansfield News Journal [Ohio]: "Show me a good loser, and I'll show you a loser."" to mean that wisdom is timeless.
Source: Wikiquote: "Knute Rockne" (Disputed)
The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
About Knute Rockne
Knute Kenneth Rockne (4 March 1888 – 31 March 1931) was a Norwegian-American football player and coach at the University of Notre Dame, regarded as one of the greatest coaches in college football history. He helped to popularize the forward pass and made the Notre Dame Fighting Irish a major factor in college football.
About Knute Rockne
Knute Kenneth Rockne (4 March 1888 – 31 March 1931) was a Norwegian-American football player and coach at the University of Notre Dame, regarded as one of the greatest coaches in college football history. He helped to popularize the forward pass and made the Notre Dame Fighting Irish a major factor in college football.
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