Competition Is A Good Thing Quotes & Sayings

Mark Twain was so good with crowds that he became, in competition with singers and dancers and actors and acrobats, one of the most popular performers of his time. It is so unusual, and so psychologically unlikely, too, for a great writer to be a great performer, too ... — Kurt Vonnegut

I think Curtis is finally getting his drive back, his passion for the game, ... I think he's starting to enjoy that competition again. That's what drives us all out here that feeling of being able to hit a good shot in a tough situation. — Jay Haas

The supermarket is still open; it won't close till midnight. It is brilliantly bright. Its brightness offers sanctuary from loneliness and the dark. You could spend hours of your life here, in a state of suspended insecurity, meditating on the multiplicity of things to eat. Oh dear, there is so much! So many brands in shiny boxes, all of them promising you good appetite. Every article on the shelves cries out to you, take me, take me; and the mere competition of their appeals can make you imagine yourself wanted, even loved. But beware - when you get back to your empty room, you'll find that the false flattering elf of the advertisement has eluded you; what remains is only cardboard, cellophane and food. And you have lost the heart to be hungry. — Christopher Isherwood

Good developers like seeing their products sell in large quantities. They enjoy the competition of doing a better job than the other company, especially if the other company has more people on the project and they're entrenched and people are saying that we don't have a chance of getting in there and ... and doing well. — Bill Gates

It's not good to focus on one person or two persons about being your rivals. The important thing is just to train hard and be ready for the competition and to prepare for the races so that in case of anything that comes out, you are able to handle it. — David Rudisha

Renegade scientists and totalitarian loonies are not the folks most likely to abuse genetic engineering. You and I are-not because we are bad but because we want to do good. In a world dominated by competition, parents understandably want to give their kids every advantage ... The most likely way for eugenics to enter into our lives is through the front door as nervous parents ... will fall over one another to be first to give Junior a better set of genes. — Arthur Caplan

He who fails to know his real and true competitor shall never be able to give a good account of his stewardship in life! Your true and real competitor is your real and true solemn duty to your Maker! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

I want a life of good sport, good people and the competition that goes with it. — Randy Lerner

Competition to further the world of pursuing ego=bad. Competition to improve both capabilities and processes = good. — Pearl Zhu

America breeds ambition and while that can be a good thing, sometimes it's not. Ambition also breeds competition and that can be a very bad thing. People become chronically preoccupied with competing and don't know when to stop. It can become unhealthy. — Chaka Khan

For my first pretty big international competition and the Olympics, I think I did pretty well. Medals aren't everything. It's all about you going out there and having a good time. I feel proud of myself. — Kimmie Meissner

The thing you fail to grasp is that people are not basically good. We are basically selfish. We shove and clamour and cry for adoration, and beat down everyone else to get it. Life is a competition of prattling peacocks enraptured in inane mating rituals. But for all our effacing and self-importance, we are all slaves to what we fear most. You have so very much to learn. Here. Let me teach you. — Christopher Nolan

It feels amazing - really, really great! It was so nice to be out there and be cherished by all the people. It has been a great event, the best you can experience as an athlete. We are very happy with how everything has worked out in the competition. Everything was very good and we're really happy we accomplished our goal. — Margaretha Sigfridsson

Because up to sixteen years old you feel gymnastics more. You can show your emotion, grace, like woman gymnastics, not kid's gymnastics. I feel I have good shape, and I can do it elements everything, but, it's not competition for me. — Olga Korbut

Honestly, I don't know enough about what's a good timeslot and what isn't. Either you have a timeslot where nobody is really tuning in, which isn't good, or you're in a good hour, and then you've got a lot of competition. — Jason Katims

A good career is a long-lasting career. When you're there in every competition doing a good job you're a part of an elite, and that's the most important thing. — Blanka Vlasic

The rushed existence into which industrialized, commercialized man has precipitated himself is actually a good example of an inexpedient development caused entirely by competition between members of the same species. Human beings of today are attacked by so-called manager diseases, high blood pressure, renal atrophy, gastric ulcers, and torturing neuroses: they succumb to barbarism because they have no more time for cultural interests. — Konrad Lorenz

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

My entire life, I've never been able to understand the concept of not being happy or excited when others were successful or had something good happen to them. It quite honestly is a concept that I cannot grasp. — Dan Pearce

We have more ways to get our news than ever, which is supposed to be a good thing, because more competition is supposed to challenge you to do better. However, in this social media age, what is has done is allowed the information business to be a free- rein free-for-all. Old rules of journalistic integrity have been thrown out the window. Everyone has been given the conch, and no one knows what to do with it. Instead of using the new-media landscape to spur us to higher quality, we have instead become sloppier than ever: Tweet first, research later. Post first, rescind later. Guess first, confirm later. — Luvvie Ajayi

At times, competition can be a good thing. But a person's value isn't something that can be ranked, is it? — Hotaru Odagiri

Life is not a competition. No one has to lose for someone else to win. A true blessing blesses everyone. A fragmented love which makes others lose will eventually turn upon itself and destroy the very thing which was being so carefully guarded. An open-hearted love will follow a course which can only lead somewhere good. — Donna Goddard

Airlines go in the long run at the competition to reason. For the passenger the competition is good, because each competitor tries to undercut the other one. — Niki Lauda

We're a society of brats, fighting over the same toys. That, for me, is the closest we come to be inherently evil as a people. It leads to selfishness, inflexibility, and impatience -- among so many other traits that are ugly and harmful. We're combative, competitive, petty, and suffer from one fatal flaw that I can never get my head around. We recognize behavior in others that makes us insane, while turning right around and doing the exact thing to someone else. — Trevor D. Richardson

The real thing that keeps men and women apart, is fear. Women blame men and men blame women, but the culprit is fear, women are afraid of one thing, men are afraid of a different thing; the fears of women have to do with losing while the fears of men have to do with not being good enough for something. One is loss, the other is insecurity. Men are innately more insecure than women and women are innately more needful of companionship than men. It's good for both men and women to be able to recognize and identify these fears not only within themselves, but within each other, and then men and women will see that they really do need to help each other. It's not a game, it's not a competition, the two sexes need one another. — C. JoyBell C.

Anyone living, especially your peers, is a threat. You're judging them, they're judging you. This sort of criticism is as close to human nature as you can get. That can be a good thing sometimes. Jealously, rancor, competition, those can be good things in art. But it mostly puts you in a dangerous and disadvantageous position, and one that just takes away from you so much. — Raymond Pettibon

That's how a team works. You help the people around you, and everybody's better off for it. The crazy thing is that most of those guys wanted to be astronauts, too, but they never saw it as a competition. We were on the same team, where you want everyone around you to be as successful as possible, because in some way or another their success will become your success. It's good karma - what goes around comes around. — Mike Massimino

"No one is doing what we're doing." This is a bummer of a lie because there are only two logical conclusions. First, no one else is doing this because there is no market for it. Second, the entrepreneur is so clueless that he can't even use Google to figure out he has competition. Suffice it to say that the lack of a market and cluelessness is not conducive to securing an investment. As a rule of thumb, if you have a good idea, five companies are going the same thing. If you have a great idea, fifteen companies are doing the same thing. — Guy Kawasaki

Writers aren't in competition with one another. It isn't a zero sum game. If you have a good book, a good cover, a good product description, and a low price, you can sell well. — J.A. Konrath

New York is an ugly city, a dirty city. Its climate is a scandal, its politics are used to frighten children, its traffic is madness, its competition is murderous.
But there is one thing about it - once you have lived in New York and it has become your home, no place else is good enough. — John Steinbeck

Incumbents don't like it, but political competition is a good thing. Incumbents usually outspend challengers by better than 3 to 1. Super PACs, which tend to support challengers, have nullified some of this advantage. — Bradley A. Smith

Be wary of feeling as through there is not enough room at the table. Oftentimes a female Chinese-American might feel as through she is in competition with another Chinese-American woman writer of the same generation. A writer friend of mine calls it the "There Can Only Be One ... " syndrome. This isn't "Survivor." The more good writers, of all walks of life and all ethnicities and persuasions, the better. — ZZ Packer

Competition is good because we need to educate customers, and Ozon.ru itself will not be able to do it. — Maelle Gavet

The pressure people put on themselves and the rivalry between the teams is much more marked. And I think that's a good thing. As long as that rivalry remains within the spirit of competition, it con only spur everyone on. — Eric Cantona

Perfectionism doesn't believe in practice shots. It doesn't believe in improvement. Perfectionism has never heard that anything worth doing is worth doing badly
and that if we allow ourselves to do something badly we might in time become quite good at it. Perfectionism measures our beginner's work against the finished work of masters. Perfectionism thrives on comparison and competition. It doesn't know how to say, "Good try," or "Job well done." The critic does not believe in creative glee
or any glee at all, for that matter. No, perfectionism is a serious matter. — Julia Cameron

You and many outstanding inventors and writers have striven for the ideal and have thereby helped yourself do remarkably well. REBT, therefore, does not oppose competition or striving for outstanding achievement. It advocates task-perfection, not self-perfection." "What does that mean?" "It means that you can try to be as good, or even as perfect, as you can - at any project or task. You can try to make it ideal. But you are not a good person if it is perfect. You are still a person who completed a perfect project, but never a good person for doing so." "How, then, do I become an incompetent or bad person?" "You don't! When you do incompetent or evil acts, you become a person who acted badly - never a bad person. — Albert Ellis

Markets do not automatically generate trust, cooperation or collective action for the common good. Quite the contrary: it is in the nature of economic competition that a participant who breaks the rules will triumph - at least in the short run - over more ethically sensitive competitors. — Tony Judt

It is the fear of the past; a fear not merely of the evil in the past, but of the good in the past also. The brain breaks down under the unbearable virtue of mankind. There have been so many flaming faiths that we cannot hold; so many harsh heroisms that we cannot imitate; so many great efforts of monumental building or of military glory which seems to us at once sublime and pathetic. The future is a refuge from the fierce competition of our forefathers. — G.K. Chesterton

Think of business as a good game. Lots of competition and a minimum of rules. You keep score with money. — Bill Gates

Screw the competition - focus on good customer service. — Richard Branson

Competition is good for consumers for the simple reason that it compels producers to offer better deals - lower prices, better quality, new products, and more choice. — John Vickers

There is no need of any competition with anybody. U R yourself, and as U R, U R perfectly good. Accept urself — Osho

Most bacteriologists were trained as medical men - Burnet himself had been, before going into bacteriological research - and "their interest in general biological problems was very limited." They cared about curing and preventing diseases, which was well and good; less so about pondering infection as a biological phenomenon, a relationship between creatures, equal in fundamental importance to such other relationships as predation, competition, and decomposition. — David Quammen

Competition is good and has served us well. — Harold H. Greene

I found that competition was supposed to be a menace and that a good manager circumvented his competitors by getting a monopoly by artificial means. — Henry Ford

Good dog," Nick said. "That's one of the tricks I've taught him, shaking water on girls so they back into my arms."
"Really! How smart of Rocky - and you, of course."
"That's another thing I've been wanting to tell you," he said, turning me to face him. "I'm tired of getting jealous of my dog. I mean, he has nice eyes, but so do I."
I looked from Rocky's golden eyes to Nick's laughing green ones.
"I didn't enjoy the way Rocky got to stick close to you while I played Holly's boyfriend. He's going to have some competition from now on."
"Oh, yeah? Are you good at retrieving sticks?"
"I'm good at stealing kisses," Nick said, then proved it. — Elizabeth Chandler

Competition is always a good thing. It forces us to do our best. A monopoly renders people complacent and satisfied with mediocrity. — Nancy Pearcey

I met Tiger Woods, and I looked in his eyes - and I saw Derek Jeter. They don't have to tell people they're good. They just prove it by the way they love the competition. — Joe Torre

I have great artistry, I can spin well, I have good footwork, and I can jump. I can do the quad jump, and I've done it multiple times in competition. It's definitely a jump that I have in my arsenal. I like to think of myself as the complete skater. — Jeremy Abbott

It's good to have high-quality competition. It helps drive research forward at a faster pace. — Shuji Nakamura

Close girlfriends I don't have necessarily, as an actress. Perhaps there is a thing of competition there, you know, when you're doing the same things, and you're the same age. I could be with younger actors, but woman of my age probably - there is and there isn't, one doesn't like to think of it, but I think there is a sense of competition. Which is good, also. — Charlotte Rampling

The book of nature is like the Bible: Everyone reads into it what they want, from tolerance to intolerance, and from altruism to greed. It's good to realize, though, that if biologists never stop talking of competition, this doesn't mean they advocate it, and if they call genes selfish, this doesn't mean that genes actually are. Genes can't be any more "selfish" than a river can be "angry," or sun rays "loving." Genes are little chunks of DNA. At most, they are "self-promoting," because successful genes help their carriers spread more copies of themselves. — Frans De Waal

Don't ever let anyone tell you that something is too competitive. Once you subtract the people who don't work very hard, or the people who aren't as good as you, your competition shrinks dramatically. — Maggie Mason

For winning the competition Chloe and Liz were throwing me a "party" at Chloe's parents' hotel.What this really meant was that Chloe would suck face with Gavin,Liz would suck face with Davis,and I would keep the onion dip company.No one would notice my BOY TOY butt.It was sweet of Chloe and Liz to intendto celebrate my win and show me a good time,even if I knew it wouldn't work out that way. — Jennifer Echols

My Emmy competition is awfully good. My stomach is already in knots. The problem is that I don't drink, so I can't calm myself that way. I wish I could be better at pretending I don't care. — Jim Parsons

Life is a kind of Chess, with struggle, competition, good and ill events. — Benjamin Franklin

A good boxing competition gives one the sight of fine men in their prime, trained to the ounce, showing the highest skill, pluck and endurance in carrying out their attack and defence under strict rules of fair play and good temper. — Robert Baden-Powell

How easily we get trapped in that which is not essential - in looking good, winning at competition, gathering power and wealth - when simply being alive is the gift beyond measure. — Parker J. Palmer

What motivates Olympic athletes to train for years for one event - in some cases, for just seconds of actual competition? It's the same thing that kept my friend Pete nosing around old bookstores for years. It's the same thing that makes a person venture out of a comfortable job to start a new business. We see it in the artist who spends day after day in a studio chipping away at a block of stone. Look closely and you'll find it in the shopper who passes up the good deal in search of the best deal. It's one of the things that makes us most human. We consciously pursue what we value. It's not simply a matter of being driven by biology or genetics or environmental conditioning to satisfy instinctive cravings. Rather, we perceive something, prize it at a certain value, then pursue it according to that assigned value because we were created that way. This ability to perceive, prize, and pursue is part of our essential humanness, and it's the essence of ambition. — Dave Harvey

Personally I think that competition should be encouraged in war and sport and business, but that it makes no sense in the arts. If an artist is good, nobody else can do what he or she does and therefore all comparisons are incoherent. — Edward St. Aubyn

I think I tried to separate indoors and out. And so when he beat me indoors, I did not see that as letting anybody down, I saw it as a good head to head competition, and so it was. It was fine. — Ralph Boston

The best athlete wants his opponent at his best. The best general enters the mind of his enemy. The best businessman serves the communal good. The best leader follows the will of the people. All of the embody the virtue of non-competition. Not that they don't love to compete, but they do it in the spirit of play. In this they are like children and in harmony with the Tao. — Laozi

Train the body and develop stamina and endurance. But the spirit of competition and power that presides over them is not good, it reflects a distorted vision of life. The root of the martial arts is not there. — Taisen Deshimaru

I entered a songwriting competition, I didn't win, and one of the judges on the panel was an A&R man at a record label that had no other acts and I signed to them. We sent my demo out to five people and David Kahne got back to me that day, and said I think you're amazing I want to start with you tomorrow. He was like my Harvard reach school, I couldn't believe it. I was really excited. It was the first time anyone of any importance said I was good and I ran with that validation for a long time. — Lana Del Rey