372 Competition Quotes

Sporting chivalrous contest helps knit the bonds of peace between nations. Therefore may the Olympic flame never expire.

Certainly the most diverse, if minor, pastime of literary life is the game of Find the Author.

I wanted to be the first to win three Oscars, but Miss Hepburn has done it. Actually it hasn't been done. Miss Hepburn only won half an Oscar. If they'd given me half an Oscar I would have thrown it back in their faces. You see, I'm an Aries. I never lose.

I usually never stay at the board after a game. Especially against Spassky. I made a dumb suggestion and he refuted it instantly! I know I'm going to have to play him some day and it was really stupid to look like such a jerk in front of him.

Americans like a winner. If you lose, you're nothing. I'm going to win, though. It's good for the match that Spassky has a plus score against me. We've met five times. He's won three times and we've drawn twice. But I'm a stronger player and a long match favors me.

The turning point in my career came with the realization that Black should play to win instead of just steering for equality.

I play honestly and I play to win. If I lose, I take my medicine.

Let's play. I'm willing to play anywhere.

If you don't win, it's not a great tragedy - the worst that happens is that you lose a game.

The Russians have held my title for ten years and they're going to be in for it when I win the Championship. They're going to have to wait and play under my conditions.

There was open collusion between the Russian players. They agreed ahead of time to draw the games they played against each other. Every time they drew they gave each other half a point.

It's not quite as important who you beat as that you end up on top.

My goal is the same as every year - to not hurt myself.

Charlie Chaplin and I would have a friendly contest: Who could do the feature film with the least subtitles?

Before you try to keep up with the Joneses, be sure they're not trying to keep up with you.

Games give you a chance to excel, and if you're playing in good company you don't even mind if you lose because you had the enjoyment of the company during the course of the game.

It's never just a game when you're winning.

I aim to be a competitive nation.

Big oil, big steel, big agriculture avoid the open marketplace. Big corporations fix prices among themselves and thus drive out of business the small entrepreneur. Also, in their conglomerate form, the huge corporations have begun to challenge the very legitimacy of the state.

It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.

When I see an Alfa Romeo go by, I tip my hat.

Business is never so healthy as when, like a chicken, it must do a certain amount of scratching around for what it gets.

Competition is the keen cutting edge of business, always shaving away at costs.

The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time.

Competition is not only the basis of protection to the consumer, but is the incentive to progress.

There was not after all a single kind of strife, but on earth there are two kinds: one of them a man might praise when he recognized her, but the other is blameworthy.

Gentlemen, when the enemy is committed to a mistake we must not interrupt him too soon.

Sports is human life in microcosm.

The ultimate victory in competition is derived from the inner satisfaction of knowing that you have done your best and that you have gotten the most out of what you had to give.

My grandfather once told me that there were two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was much less competition.

An organization's ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.

When your opponent is drowning, throw the son of a bitch an anvil.

If you were surprised when Nixon resigned, just watch what happens when I whup Foreman's behind!

Joe Frazier is so ugly that when he cries, the tears turn around and go down the back of his head.

Wouldn't it be a beautiful world if just 10 percent of the people who believe in the power of love would compete with one another to see who could do the most good for the most people?

Fifteen referees. I want fifteen referees to be at this fight because there ain't no one man who can keep up with the pace I'm gonna set except me. There's not a man alive who can whup me. I'm too fast. I'm too smart. I'm too pretty. I should be a postage stamp. That's the only way I'll ever get licked.

I'll beat him so bad he'll need a shoehorn to put his hat on.

If you even dream of beating me you'd better wake up and apologize.

A horse never runs so fast as when he has other horses to catch up and outpace.

I am not one of those who think that coming in second or third is winning.

Fighting battles is like courting girls: those who make the most pretensions and are boldest usually win.

The unrestricted competition so commonly advocated does not leave us the survival of the fittest. The unscrupulous succeed best in accumulating wealth.

If a man can beat you, walk him.

When a batter swings and I see his knees move, I can tell just what his weaknesses are then I just put the ball where I know he can't hit it.

In our small chess community in Marylebone it would be mock modesty on my part to deny that I have built up for myself a considerable name without ever actually having won a single game. Even the best players are sometimes beaten, and that is precisely what happens to me.

Hosting the Oscars is like making love to a beautiful woman - it's something I only get to do when Billy Crystal's out of town.

I'm going to work so that it's a pure guts race at the end, and if it is, I am the only one who can win it.

Some people create with words or with music or with a brush and paints. I like to make something beautiful when I run. I like to make people stop and say, 'I've never seen anyone run like that before.' It's more than just a race, it's a style. It's doing something better than anyone else. It's being creative.

Somebody may beat me, but they are going to have to bleed to do it.

Something inside of me just said 'Hey, wait a minute, I want to beat him,' and I just took off.

The praise of ancient authors proceeds not from the reverence of the dead, but from the competition and mutual envy of the living.

I have been up against tough competition all my life. I wouldn't know how to get along without it.

Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy.

I am a sporting man. I always like to give trains and aeroplanes a fair chance of getting away.

It ain't over 'til it's over.

Hulk Hogan, what'cha gonna do when The Rock runs wild on you? But you see Hogan, The Rock's gonna tell what's gonna happen. He's gonna tell you exactly what you're gonna do. You're gonna feel electricity like you've never felt before, electricity that's happened like never before. You will hear 70,000 strong chanting your name, chanting The Rock's name. Hulk Hogan, you will see the People's Elbow come crashing down on your chest. And Hogan, above all else, above all else, you will, you will, you will, you will, you will, good god almighty you will smell what The Rock is cooking!

Thou shalt not covet, but tradition Approves all forms of competition.

Each for himself is still the rule We learn it when we go to school- The devil take the hindmost, O!

All that matters on the chessboard is good moves.

There are tough players and nice guys, and I'm a tough player.

It's just you and your opponent at the board and you're trying to prove something.

Don't even mention losing to me. I can't stand to think of it.

I don't have a sense of entitlement or that I deserve this. You'd be surprised at the lack of competition between nominees- I think a lot of it's imposed from the outside. Can I have my champagne now?

We must scrunch or be scrunched.

Look at The Rock's competition! Look at him! It looks like a big monkey came down here, took a crap, and out came Mankind!

Now, Bad Ass, you run your mouth about SummerSlam. Well, here's the situation. The Rock says this: if the Rock hits you, he'll kill you. If he misses, the wind behind the punch will give you pneumonia and you'll die anyway, so the choice is yours, jabroni!

The Rock is going to lay the smack down all over your candy ass!

It would clearly not be an improvement to build all houses exactly alike in order to create a perfect market for houses, and the same is true of most other fields where differences between the individual products prevent competition from ever being perfect.

There is, in a competitive society, nobody who can exercise even a fraction of the power which a socialist planning board would possess.

KISS is the number-one American band in gold-record sales. In the world, only the Beatles and the Stones are ahead of us. Every other band should be wiping my ass. The line forms over there to the left.

He who is enamored of himself will at least have the advantage of being inconvenienced by few rivals.

Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting.

Whoever claims that economic competition represents 'survival of the fittest' in the sense of the law of the jungle, provides the clearest possible evidence of his lack of knowledge of economics.

Politics is like boxing - you try to knock out your opponents.

Unless you think you can do better than Tolstoy, we don't need you.

It all goes so fast, and character makes the difference when it's close.

Ambition is like love, impatient Both of delays and rivals.

I started out very quiet and I beat Mr. Turgenev. Then I trained hard and I beat Mr. de Maupassant. I've fought two draws with Mr. Stendhal, and I think I had an edge in the last one. But nobody's going to get me in any ring with Mr. Tolstoy unless I'm crazy or I keep getting better.

Sister is probably the most competitive relationship within the family, but once the sisters are grown, it becomes the strongest relationship.

Ain't no reason for me to kill nobody in the ring, unless they deserve it.

In a competition of love we'll all share in the victory, no matter who comes first.

To be a great champion you must believe you are the best. If you're not, pretend you are.

You never win the silver. You only lose the gold.

'People who live in the past generally are afraid to compete in the present. I've got my faults, but living in the past is not one of them. There's no future in it.'

'You give us the pitching some of these clubs have and no one could touch us, but God has a way of not arranging that, because it's not as much fun.'

'The sense of urgency is real for me, because the window of opportunity is closing. Gotta get back to the Super Bowl, gotta get back there and win it.'

Winning isn't everything, but it beats anything in second place.

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary.

The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil. We see before us a huge community of producers the members of which are unceasingly striving to deprive each other of the fruits of their collective labor - not by force, but on the whole in faithful compliance with legally established rules.

By being a racing driver you are under risk all the time. By being a racing driver means you are racing with other people. And if you no longer go for a gap that exists, you are no longer a racing driver because we are competing, competing to win. And the main motivation is to compete for victory, it's not to come 3rd, 4th, 5th or 6th. I race to win as long as I feel it's possible. Sometimes you get it wrong? Sure, it's impossible to get it right all the time. But I race designed to win, as long as I feel I'm doing it right.

Don't judge yourself by somebody else's standards. You will always lose.

Those who see their lives as spoiled and wasted crave equality and fraternity more than they do freedom. If they clamor for freedom, it is but freedom to establish equality and uniformity. The passion for equality is partly a passion for anonymity: to be one thread of the many which make up a tunic; one thread not distinguishable from the others. No one can then point us out, measure us against others and expose our inferiority. They who clamor loudest for freedom are often the ones least likely to be happy in a free society. The frustrated, oppressed by their shortcomings, blame their failure on existing restraints. Actually, their innermost desire is for an end to the 'free for all.' They want to eliminate free competition and the ruthless testing to which the individual is continually subjected in a free society.