Skip to main content

Daily Inspiration Quote by Julie Harris

"I don't know much about football but everyone seems to say that it is all about possession"

About this Quote

A sly confession doubles as a jab: by leading with "I don't know much about football", Julie Harris gets to play the innocent while teeing up a clean, devastating reduction of the sport to a single word. It’s actorly misdirection. She lowers expectations, then lands a line that’s less about Xs and Os than about what people want sports to mean.

"Everyone seems to say" is the tell. Harris isn’t claiming expertise; she’s quoting a cultural chorus, the kind of received wisdom that floats around parties and pundit panels. That distancing lets her critique the cliché without sounding preachy. The punch is "possession" - a term that in football is both technical (time of control) and faintly moral, even romantic. Possession is ownership, dominance, keeping something away from someone else. When you treat the game as "all about possession", you’re also naming a worldview: win by controlling, not creating; protect, don’t risk; hold, don’t feel.

Coming from an actress, the subtext gets sharper. Acting, at its best, is the opposite of possession: it’s surrender to scene partners, to timing, to uncertainty. Harris implicitly contrasts the messy human exchange of performance with the tidier fantasy of control that fans and commentators project onto football. The line works because it’s small talk that slips into social commentary: a gentle, almost throwaway observation that exposes how easily we turn a complicated, communal spectacle into a story about who gets to keep the ball - and by extension, who gets to keep power.

Quote Details

TopicWitty One-Liners
SourceHelp us find the source
Cite

Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Harris, Julie. (2026, January 17). I don't know much about football but everyone seems to say that it is all about possession. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-dont-know-much-about-football-but-everyone-70172/

Chicago Style
Harris, Julie. "I don't know much about football but everyone seems to say that it is all about possession." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-dont-know-much-about-football-but-everyone-70172/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I don't know much about football but everyone seems to say that it is all about possession." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-dont-know-much-about-football-but-everyone-70172/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.

More Quotes by Julie Add to List
I don't know much about football but everyone seems to say
Click to enlarge Portrait | Landscape

About the Author

USA Flag

Julie Harris (born December 2, 1925) is a Actress from USA.

28 more quotes available

View Profile

Similar Quotes

Rush Limbaugh, Entertainer
Rush Limbaugh