Our life is not really a mutual helpfulness; but rather, it’s fair competition cloaked under due laws of war; it’s a mutual hostility.
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, Essayist
You find that you have peace of mind and can enjoy yourself, get more sleep, and rest when you know that it was a one hundred percent effort that you gave—win or lose.
—Gordie Howe (1928–2016) Canadian Ice-Hockey Player
Adversaries in law strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
We want to be first; not first if, not first but; but first!
—John F. Kennedy (1917–63) American Head of State, Journalist
The medals don’t mean anything and the glory doesn’t last. It’s all about your happiness. The rewards are going to come, but my happiness is just loving the sport and having fun performing.
—Jackie Joyner-Kersee (b.1962) American Athlete
You have to defeat a great players aura more than his game.
—Pat Riley (b.1945) American Basketball Player, Coach
If you make every game a life and death proposition, you’re going to have problems. For one thing, you’ll be dead a lot.
—Dean Smith (1931–2015) American Basketball Coach
No wise combatant underestimates their antagonist.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
Our business in life is not to get ahead of others but to get ahead of ourselves – to break our own records, to outstrip our yesterdays by our today, to do our work with more force than ever before.
—Stewart B. Johnson
In this game, by trying to win; you automatically lose.
—Ruth Ross
It has meant a lot to me to challenge the best players in the world and to beat them. And it means a lot to me to be out here and fighting for the title and, you know, it hurts not to win it.
—Andre Agassi (b.1970) American Tennis Player
Men often compete with one another until the day they die; comradeship consists of rubbing shoulders jocularly with a competitor.
—Edward Hoagland (b.1932) American Essayist, Novelist
Regardless of how you feel inside, always try to look like a winner. Even if you are behind, a sustained look of control and confidence can give you a mental edge that results in victory.
—Arthur Ashe (1943–93) American Tennis Player
So long as the system of competition in the production and exchange of the means of life goes on, the degradation of the arts will go on; and if that system is to last for ever, then art is doomed, and will surely die; that is to say, civilization will die.
—William Morris (1834–96) British Designer, Craftsman, Poet, Writer
A man comes to measure his greatness by the regrets, envies and hatreds of his competitors.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
And what is the greatest number? Number one.
—David Hume (1711–76) Scottish Philosopher, Historian
It is better for a woman to compete impersonally in society, as men do, than to compete for dominance in her own home with her husband, compete with her neighbors for empty status, and so smother her son that he cannot compete at all.
—Betty Friedan (1921–2006) American Feminist Author, Lecturer
Without the spur of competition we’d loaf out our life.
—Arnold Glasow (1905–98) American Businessman
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 the time. Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.
There is no room for second place. There is only one place in my game, and that’s first place.
—Vince Lombardi, Jr. (1913–70) American Football Player, Coach
The weakness of an enemy forms part of our own strength.
—Common Proverb
You must play boldly to win.
—Arnold Palmer (1929–2016) American Professional Golfer
By competition the total amount of supply is increased, and by increase of the supply a competition in the sale ensues, and this enables the consumer to buy at lower rates. Of all human powers operating on the affairs of mankind, none is greater than that of competition.
—Henry Clay (1777–1852) American Politician
A horse never runs so fast as when he has other horses to catch up and outpace.
—Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso) (c.43 BCE–c.18 CE) Roman Poet
He can run but he can’t hide.
—Joe Louis (1914–81) American Sportsperson
Everybody pulls for David, nobody roots for Goliath.
—Wilt Chamberlain (1936–99) American Basketball Player
This is a tough game. There are times when you’ve got to play hurt, when you’ve got to block out the pain.
—Shaquille O’Neal (b.1972) American Sportsperson
Competition is what keeps me playing the psychological warfare of matching skill against skill and wit against wit.
—Lou Brock (1939–2020) American Baseball Player
What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight; it’s the size of the fight in the dog.
—Unknown
One cannot play chess if one becomes aware of the pieces as living souls and of the fact that the Whites and the Blacks have more in common with each other than with the players. Suddenly one loses all interest in who will be champion.
—Anatol Rapoport (1911–2007) Russian-born American Mathematical Psychologist
So you wish to conquer in the Olympic Games, my friend? And I, too… But first mark the conditions and the consequences. You will have to put yourself under discipline; to eat by rule, to avoid cakes and sweetmeats; to take exercise at the appointed hour whether you like it or not, in cold and heat; to abstain from cold drinks and wine at your will. Then, in the conflict itself you are likely enough to dislocate your wrist or twist your ankle, to swallow a great deal of dust, to be severely thrashed, and after all of these things, to be defeated.
—Epictetus (55–135) Ancient Greek Philosopher
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