Quotes & Sayings About Competing Against The Best

My first novel, 'You Lost Me There,' has been described as a beach read. Tough bracket, beach reads. There's not much room for mistakes when you're competing against the sun for a person's attention. — Rosecrans Baldwin

I want to thank all the fans for their support over the years. Keep supporting the Knicks, we're moving in the right direction here and we will be exciting to watch and competing against the best in the NBA. Come back to the Garden for those exciting games. — John Starks

My father offered me a dollar for every pound I would lose as a kid. It didn't work. And it doesn't really work in the long run. Who are you competing against? It's you. You need to be doing this for you and only you. — Richard Simmons

I think it is just the way he has changed the game overall and his own game because there are so many situations he has faced. He is now competing mostly against himself, like most great cricketers do. I think he has mastered all of them. The only challenge he has is to beat himself every time he walks out there because he has done almost everything. — Kumar Sangakkara

I heard - " I began.
"I let you hear," he cut me off.
I shut my mouth, closed the door, and leaned back against it. The corners of his lips turned up as if at some private amusement, and for a moment I thought we were having one of those silent conversations.
You think it's safe to close yourself in with the Beast?
If you think I'm afraid of you, you're wrong.
You should be afraid.
Maybe you should be afraid of me. Go ahead, piss me off, Barrons. See what happens.
Little girl thinks she's all grown up now.
His mouth moved into a smile that I've grown familiar with over the past few months, shaped of competing tensions: part mockery, part pissed off, and part turned on. Men are so complicated. — Karen Marie Moning

When movies work or a TV series, when they really work, it's because of the collaborative effort. Competition is the death knell for anything, in my opinion. Especially in Hollywood. When actors are competing against each other, or when directors are competing against actors, it's usually the beginning of the end. — Rocky Carroll

I learned how to play football and I got pretty good at it. I enjoyed being on a team with other girls. In Hollywood, girls are always competing against one another, so it was nice to be on a team with other girls for a change. — Nikki Ziering

It's not really about the competition. Your biggest challenge in a race is yourself. You're often racing against time. You're frequently running everything through your mind. You're always competing against preconceived ideas. It's not really the person next to you that you worry about. — Summer Sanders

I thought back on my running career at Oregon. I'd competed with, and against, men far better, faster, more physically gifted. Many were future Olympians. And yet I'd trained myself to forget this unhappy fact. People reflexively assume that competition is always a good thing, that it always brings out the best in people, but that's only true of people who can forget the competition. The art of competing, I'd learned from track, was the art of forgetting, and I now reminded myself of that fact. You must forget your limits. You must forget your doubts, your pain, your past. You — Phil Knight

We last longer if we compete against ourselves for the good of others instead of competing against others for the good of ourselves. — Simon Sinek

An outcast has all possibilities of greatness..
Rejected, he has nothing to lose while using his talents..
Competing with his own talents and only against himself... — Abha Maryada Banerjee

In football I enjoyed competing and wanted to be the best. That was also part of it. There were quite a few factors. I loved the game, it was a great way to socialize and I liked playing against girls because it meant competing on a level playing field. — Hope Powell

I just like to play anything that's competitive. If I'm not competing against somebody, then I might as well play something I can enjoy. — Seimone Augustus

You're competing against other guys because ultimately there's only one starter, and all of us want to be that guy at some point. That's the way I approach it. Control what I can control and just be the best I can be each day. — Scott Tolzien

When one doesn't want the limelight, but is also creative in developing whatever it is they are, then you can have two equal people that aren't competing against each other. I think when you are in the same field, it's difficult to leave it outside and not compete. Then when the doors are closed; that pervades everything. — Tori Amos

We are alive for a certain period of time in any given lifetime. We are competing against time. It is a race to see if we can wake up before we go to sleep again. That is the challenge. — Frederick Lenz

Shooting in real-life situations helps actors because they're competing against the noise and the wind. Out of that comes things that shift and change, in terms of tone, but not in terms of re-honing the whole sequence. — Tony Scott

Philanthropic leaders genially speak of complementing government, not competing with it as if monopoly were good and competition destructive-thus unwittingly conspiring against the public interest. — Richard Cornuelle

When you reach that elite level, 90 percent is mental and 10 percent is physical. You are competing against yourself. Not against the other athlete. — Dick Fosbury

The key to competing and surviving against Wal-Mart is to focus your business into a niche or pocket where you can leverage your strengths in the local marketplace. — Michael Bergdahl

If you want to minimize the possibility of unexpected breakthroughs, tell people they will receive no resources at all unless they spend the bulk of their time competing against each other to convince you they know in advance what they are going to discover. — David Graeber

I think we're really good about pushing each other in practice and we have high tempo and I feel like we have some of the best players in the world so just competing against one another and getting in there and pushing each other around and getting ready for that physical style of game coming up, we have to play hard and pretend it's a game. — Cherie Piper

It's always hard to find the best friends in the locker room because we are all competing against each other - but the real friends you are going to definitely find off the court because we are competitors in between. — Tomas Berdych

I love competing against the best players. I have a huge challenge, and that's to win a U.S. Open and complete the Grand Slam. I enjoy that challenge. Every year it comes around, I get excited to try to conquer that opportunity. I love it. — Phil Mickelson

everything you do needs to work on a three-year time horizon, then you are competing against a lot of people. But if you are willing to invest on a seven-year time horizon, you are now competing against a fraction of those people, because very few companies are willing to do that. Just by lengthening the time horizon, you can engage in endeavors that you could never otherwise pursue. At Amazon we like things to work in five — Gerardo Giannoni

When you're part of something special, you have to cherish it and defend it against many outside distractions and temptations. But nothing is more potent or deceptive than the competing interests or another great opportunity. In those moments when priorities clash, always stay guided by your values, not your perceived necessities. Necessities exist in a state of mind that will not last, whereas values are transcendent and enduring. — Adam Braun

There will be ribbons in a range of colors with placings noted and records kept. Ribbons aren't worth much more than that; they're only a symbol. It's your partnership that mattered. That the two of you spent weekends challenging yourselves to improve, always competing against your last show, and balancing winning and losing into a place of faith and trust. That the two of you built a special relationship that made a difference, if not in the huge world, certainly in your own hearts. You persevered through joy and pain, thrill and dread, and in the end, there was a place that the two of your shared. Ribbons say it was worth celebrating. In a world where horses struggle, suffer, and die for the whims of humans, it says that you saw past the surface and shared breath and heart with another soul. You lifted your eyes higher. — Anna Blake

If everything you do needs to work on a three-year time horizon, then you're competing against a lot of people. But if you're willing to invest on a seven-year time horizon, you're now competing against a fraction of those people ... Just by lengthening the time horizon, you can engage in endeavors that you could never otherwise pursue — Jeff Bezos

Trusting in Jesus requires that you surrender every competing hope. For the Israelites, it was the call to abandon the worship of any other god and entrust their lives to the one true God (see Ex. 20:3). For the disciples Peter, James, and John, it meant surrendering their livelihoods as fishermen the moment after pulling in their most profitable catch ever and following Jesus (Luke 5:11). For each of us, it means trusting his promise of forgiveness and not working to try to pay off our own debt. It means trusting his cleansing and not hiding in shame (1 John 1:9). It means clinging to God's steadfast love, his grace upon grace to us in Jesus Christ, as our only hope, the only true remedy against idolatry.40 — Mike Wilkerson

Although in skating you compete with other people, anyone who achieves a certain level of success is first and foremost competing against themselves. And for me the idea that I could always do better, learn more, learn faster, is something that came from skating. But I carried that with me for the rest of my life. — Vera Wang

They all start competing against Lincoln as the greatest president. And the [library] building becomes the symbol, the memorial to that dream. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

I'm competing, Kennedy," he breathes against my neck. "And I'm going to win."
Zart, Lindy (2014-11-20). Roomies (p. 154). Kindle Edition. — Lindy Zart

I was never happy that my injuries cut my career short and ultimately forced my decision to step away from tennis. I have enjoyed my time away from the court, a period that has allowed me to experience a different side of life. However, I miss the game and the challenge of competing at the highest level of tennis, and I want to gauge whether I can stay healthy and compete against today's top players. — Martina Hingis

My dad always told me to play hard and know that the people you're competing with and against are working just as hard or harder. So don't let them out-work you. — Tim Hudson

What you really are afraid of is that you're competing against somebody who is rich and irrational. I mean, it used to be a given, a saying in the industry: Don't ever bid against Rupert Murdoch for anything Rupert wants, because if you win you lose. You will have paid way too much. — John C. Malone

Of course, competition against others is there, but it should serve to challenge you. To show you how well other people are competing against themselves. — Innocent Mwatsikesimbe

But for a younger generation of conservative operatives who would soon rise to power ... They were true believers who meant what they said, whether it was 'No New Taxes' or 'We are a Christian Nation.' In fact, with their rigid doctrines, slash-and-burn style, and exaggerated sense of having been aggrieved, this new conservative leadership was eerily reminiscent of some of the New Left's leaders during the sixties. As with their left-wing counterparts, this new vanguard of the right viewed politics as a contest not just between competing policy visions, but between good and evil. Activists in both parties began developing litmus tests, checklists of orthodoxy, leaving a Democrat who questioned abortion increasingly lonely, any Republican who championed gun control effectively marooned. In this Manichean struggle, compromise came to look like weakness, to be punished or purged. You were with us or you were against us. You had to choose sides. — Barack Obama

The principle is competing against yourself. It's about self-improvement, about being better than you were the day before. — Steve Young

You first compete with yourself before competing against others; if you cannot beat your last best result, do not be surprised if it seems difficult to compete against external competitors. — Archibald Marwizi

When the corporation's investment capital becomes impatient for growth, good money becomes bad money because it triggers a subsequent cascade of inevitable incorrect decisions. Innovators who seek funding for the disruptive innovations that could ultimately fuel the company's growth with a high probability of success now find that their trial balloons get shot down because they can't get big enough fast enough. Managers of most disruptive businesses can't credibly project that the business will become very big very fast, because new-market disruptions need to compete against nonconsumption and must follow an emergent strategy process. Compelling them to project big numbers forces them to declare a strategy that confidently crams the innovation into a large, existing, and obvious market whose size can be statistically substantiated. This means competing against consumption. — Clayton M Christensen

And yet, in each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie for a single egg.
Multiply those odds by countless generations, against the odds of your ancestors being alive; meeting; siring this precise son; that exact daughter ... Until your mother loves a man she has every reason to hate, and of that union, of the thousand million children competing for fertilization, it was you, only you, that emerged. To distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air to gold ... that is the crowning unlikelihood. The thermo-dynamic miracle. — Alan Moore

I think when you talk about competing against others, the problem is that you refer to something that's been done already and try to beat it. — Shigeru Miyamoto

Principles describe rights; policies describe goals. But rights are trumps. They have a 'threshold weight' against community goals. They should not be squashed by a competing community goal. — Raymond Wacks

Being doped is a pleasure you pay for. There was always opium there for the people
in the end it tainted their whole faith. If the Church had not always stood so watchfully behind the ruling powers, there would not have been such attacks against everything it stood for
although of course it may have been competing with them for the first place among the rulers, as in the Middle Ages. Whenever it was a question of keeping the serfs, and then the paid slaves down, the dope-dealers came unfailingly to the help of the oppressors. — Ernst Bloch