quotations about competition
Stiff competition
If I go up you take me higher
CHEAP TRICK
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"Stiff Competition"
You have a real life if and only if you do not compete with anyone in any of your pursuits.
NASSIM NICHOLAS TALEB
The Bed of Procrustes
The only way to beat the competition is to stop trying to beat the competition.
W. CHAN KIM & RENEE MAUBORGNE
Blue Ocean Strategy
To maintain that competition is the sole method by which superiority can be tested and established leads to the inference that competition is a thing so beneficial that, so far as possible, it should be allowed to rage unchecked. But competition is in itself largely due to artificial causes; and it is not true that the competitive spirit is the source of all progressive development, even in the natural sphere. Competition is very far indeed from always leading to upward movement.... The effect of competition is to prevent any form from attaining its maximum development, and to maintain a certain comparatively low level for all forms that succeed in surviving.
SIDNEY LOW
The Living Age, vol. 263
Competition has been shown to be useful up to a certain point and no further, but cooperation, which is the thing we must strive for today, begins where competition leaves off.
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
The Roosevelt Reader: Selected Speeches
Life is not a competition. No one has to lose for someone else to win. A true blessing blesses everyone.
DONNA GODDARD
Waldmeer
Competition is a complex thing. It brings out the best and the worst in all participants. It refines the technique and sharpens the mind, body and spirit.
HERB PEREZ
"The Nature of Sport,", Black Belt Magazine, May 1999
Competition, in and of itself, is neither good nor bad. If a person or group seeks a desired objective to the exclusion of such higher ethics as truth and fairness, the seeking indeed is unhealthy. However, if a person or group seeks a desired objective while remaining true to high ethical standards, the pursuit will be a healthy growth experience.
PHILIP SOLOMONS
The Rotarian, May 1988
Focus on competition has always been a formula for mediocrity.
DANIEL BURRUS
attributed, Checklist for Life for Graduates
While competition isn't without its upheaval--what with companies that go out of business and jobs that disappear--it is essential in producing the progress and innovations that have benefited our lives.
KIRK TYSON
Competition in the 21st Century
Competition is in the genes of all living things. Watch a flower compete for its share of sunlight or watch the goldfish in your aquarium. Infants and small children compete without knowing it. Remember how the queen bee wins? Competition is the spice of life and the soul of progress. How else can quality rise to the top?
CHARLES T. CLARK
The Rotarian, May 1988
Our life is not a mutual helpfulness; but rather, cloaked under due laws-of-war, named ' fair competition ' and so forth, it is a mutual hostility.
THOMAS CARLYLE
"Gospel of Mammonism,", Past and Present
Thank God for competition. When our competitors upset our plans or outdo our designs, they open infinite possibilities of our own work to us.
GIL ATKINSON
Competition isn't all there is to life and isn't even all there is to business life.
PATRICK HOVERSTADT & LUCY LOH
Patterns of Strategy
Competition is a rude yet effective motivation.
TOBA BETA
Master of Stupidity
Competition, which is said to be "the life of trade," when pushed too far, is no less the death of it--and of the soul.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
We say that competition never made initiative. That if any initiative has survived under competition it has only done so because it is more powerful than competition. Competition don't pay initiative. It pays theft.
HORACE TRAUBEL
The Conservator, October 1912
All you have to do is play better than the other guy and things go well. If you don't play better than the other players then somebody takes your place. Now a lot of guys, in this day and time with the transient nature of the sport, as soon as the competition gets too good, they want out.
BILL PARCELLS
This dream that men shall cease to waste strength in competition and shall come to pool their powers of production is coming to pass all over the earth.
JANE ADDAMS
Twenty Years at Hull-House
In a competitive culture, a child is told that it isn't enough to be good--he must triumph over others. Success comes to be defined as victory, even though these are really two very different things. Even when the child manages to win, the whole affair, psychologically speaking, becomes a vicious circle. The more he competes, the more he needs to compete to feel good about himself. It's like drinking salt water to slake a thirst.
ALFIE KOHN
"The Case Against Competition", Working Mother, September 1987