Quotes & Sayings About Competitive Sports

Beauty is not the goal of competitive sports, but high-level sports are a prime venue for the expression of human beauty. The relation is roughly that of courage to war.
The human beauty we're talking about here is beauty of a particular type; it might be called kinetic beauty. Its power and appeal are universal. It has nothing to do with sex or cultural norms. What it seems to have to do with, really, is human beings' reconciliation with the fact of having a body. — David Foster Wallace

I wouldn't give one iota to make a trip from the cradle to the grave unless I could live in a competitive world. — Adolph Rupp

Slow parents understand that childrearing should not be a cross between a competitive sport and product-development. It is not a project; it's a journey. Slow parenting is about giving kids lots of love and attention with no conditions attached. — Carl Honore

We need to look at our nannying, mollycoddled, politically correct culture in my view, which stops kids from going out and playing competitive sport. I also think we need to look at the shear fatness of the regulations which control people who want to help kids play sport. — Boris Johnson

Competition is great for everyone. Sports can teach you so much at an early age, including camaraderie and sportsmanship. Competition aspect is something I've always been big on - I always wanted to compete in something. It was swimming for many years, then I moved on to basketball. I had to find a way to channel my competitive energy, so I'm lucky that basketball worked out for me. — Tim Duncan

I do genuinely believe that young people who play sport at a competitive level, sensibly controlled, sensibly organised, that has to be a good thing. It will teach them to win, it will teach them to lose with dignity and magnanimity - all the things you want. It's a pretty good metaphor for life. — Sebastian Coe

I cannot consider fighting in competitive Manly Fun any more than I can consider pitting my running, swimming or climbing body against other bodies. Nothing, then, or now, arouses me or will ever arouse me from a perfect disinterest in ball games. — Hal Porter

I like to think about music as a sport. But only in terms of golf, as far as the course being music and me being the golfer. So it's competitive but only with yourself. With the last one doing well, it made it a challenge to feel like I was improving in some way. — Panda Bear

The sport of competitive memorizing is driven by a kind of arms race where every year somebody comes up with a new way to remember more stuff more quickly, and then the rest of the field has to play catch-up. — Joshua Foer

I perhaps could have been somewhat better. One of the interesting things about playing competitive sports as a child is that you confront your own limitations rather starkly at a certain point. — David Foster Wallace

One of the reasons I'm an actor is because I was no physical specimen as a child. I wasn't athletic and didn't have any prowess in that regard. Growing up in Kentucky, most little boys were trying to get into sports, and it was very competitive, so that was not to be. But I did want to do something. — Michael Shannon

To be successful in anything, a person must always want to be better, not only than your opponent but better than your last performance. Done correctly, being competitive is a wonderful way to always try to be a better person by learning from your mistakes and capitalizing on your successes. — Hale Irwin

Competitive Skaters must be prepared for a lot of work, challenges, self-discipline, and motivation. The desire must be there, but more importantly, your love for the sport. — Oksana Baiul

I love tennis! I've always felt like this because it is such a classy sport with a great, competitive flair to it. — Roger Federer

The trick with hip-hop-hip-hop is a sport. The only music that's really, really close to a sport. It starts off, "My DJ's better than yours. I can out-rap you, I can out-dance you, my graffiti piece is better than you." It's very competitive. — Ice-T

Professional tennis has become an extremely physical and unbelievably competitive sport. Injuries are the bane of tennis players, and it goes with the territory. — Sania Mirza

Competition is key to developing players. The only practice environment in which you truly develop a player is a competitive arena. — Anson Dorrance

It's a very competitive thing, pro sports. The hardest thing in pro sports is staying up there. — Joe Gibbs

I want to see where I measure up against everyone in the world and everyone who has ever competed in the sport, and there's that innate sense of wanting to challenge myself. I'm competitive in all aspects. — Ashton Eaton

Once one recognizes the value of having difficult obstacles to overcome, it is a simple matter to see the true benefit that can be gained from competitive sports. In tennis who is it that provides a person with the obstacles he needs in order to experience his highest limits? His opponent, of course! Then is your opponent a friend or an enemy? He is a friend to the extent that he does his best to make things difficult for you. Only by playing the role of your enemy does he become your true friend. Only by competing with you does he in fact cooperate! No one wants to stand around on the court waiting for the big wave. In this use of competition it is the duty of your opponent to create the greatest possible difficulties for you, just as it is yours to try to create obstacles for him. Only by doing this do you give each other the opportunity to find out to what heights each can rise. — Zach Kleiman

I probably went into sports with a sense of competitiveness and came out of it even more competitive. — Mike Duke

I think as a 20-year-old you expect life to always be easy. You get given a good hand and the chance to race in Formula One. You think the driver can make the difference, can make up for everything else within the team. But that is not the case. You are racing in such a competitive sport so that doesn't happen. — Jenson Button

But my point is that competitive eating is a real sport, and I considered taking it up. But when I thought about what this would mean sitting around for hours, stuffing my face with unhealthy food I realized it was basically the same thing as journalism. — Dave Barry

I don't know anything that builds the will to win better than competitive sports. — Richard M. Nixon

Bringing more large sporting events to Africa would help the continent develop sports policies and at the same time optimize its peoples' chances of achieving competitive success. — Richard Attias

It is quite easy to debase the sport, change its values, dilute its ethics and destroy its traditional associations with quietness, relaxation and the opportunity to think. Angling is not a competitive sport. The fisherman'- s only real competition is with his quarry and his only real challenge is the challenge to himself. Nothing can add to this, but the blight of interhuman competition can certainly detract from it. — Roderick Haig-Brown

It's the nature of the beast, playing sports on the ski team and how competitive all of us are. I want to beat everybody's time. — Ted Ligety

Running is perhaps the most fundamental of all sports, and it is economically the least costly to perform. As a consequence, it is the most democratic and most competitive of all sports because individual merit can prevail despite economic equality. It is a sport for everyone, the whole world over. — Bernd Heinrich

Fencing is a funny sport. Competitive fencing is not really very applicable to the stage world unless you're fighting with a rapier during the Renaissance, you know? — Kris Holden-Ried

Many high school students are under so much competitive pressure. They are sometimes taught that if they don't have a 4.0 GPA, score in the 99th percentile on admissions tests, and demonstrate leadership in sports and participate in clubs, they won't get into college anywhere. Even highly credentialed professionals get caught up in this. — Elizabeth Thornton

Everybody recognises that giving young people competitive outlet through sport is a very good thing. — Sebastian Coe

My mom played every sport possible. My dad is 'extremely' competitive. You can't even play Ping-Pong with him. — Kate Upton

Masters of one art have mastered all because they have mastered themselves. With dominion over both mind and muscle, they demonstrate power, serenity, and spirit. They not only have talent for their sport, they have an expanded capacity for life. The experts shine in the competitive arena; the masters shine everywhere. — Dan Millman

I missed being considered an athlete and having that competitive drive, and missed having something to work for every day. I'd taken two and a half years away from the sport and was out of shape. I wanted to get back to where I was in 2008. — Shawn Johnson

Competitive sports keep alive in us a spirit and vitality. Sports teach the strong to know when they are weak and the brave to face themselves when they are afraid; to be proud and unbowed in defeat, and yet humble and gentle in victory; to master ourselves before we attempt to master others; to learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep; and to give the predominance of courage over timidity. — Douglas MacArthur

I won't have any competitive instincts in any sports, other than golf. I can't see being competitive in sports any more. — Michael Jordan

Writing is not a competitive sport. Everyone that writes has his or her own voice. — Raymond E. Feist

I'm not a huge soccer fan, but I follow the sport. I played in high school, a little bit in college, played on various club teams most of my life, and all three of my sons are competitive soccer players and far better than I ever was. — Hampton Sides

It's easy, given the times we live in and the implicit messages we absorb each day, to equeate a good life with having a lot and doing a lot. So it's also easy to fall into believing that our children, if they are to succeed in life, need to be terrific at everything, and that it's up to us to make sure that they are-to keep them on track through tougher course loads, more activities, more competitive sports, more summer programs. But in all our well-intentioned efforts to do the right thing for our children, we may be failing to provide them with something that is truly essential-the time and space they need to wake up to themselves, to grow acquainted with their own innate gifts, to dream their dreams and discover their true natures. — Katrina Kenison

I'd just like to be good at sports. I'm extremely competitive with absolutely nothing to back it up. — Kaitlin Olson

Zen students see themselves as athletes. Their competitive sport is enlightenment; only with enlightenment do we compete. — Frederick Lenz

I have found life highly competitive. I accept it. It is useless, merely a hypocritical humbug, to sincerely wish your opponent to win. If you are out to win you are better not wanting to know your opponent, much less grow to like him - and wish him, honestly success over you. I have never functioned that way. — Percy Cerutty

The Lord calls us to love everybody. Every day it's a challenge. Within this sport, I'm called to love everybody. That means that every single German or Canadian that I want to beat, I still have to love. That means competing the way God wants me to compete. That means doing things that might not necessarily be seen as giving me a competitive advantage but instead doing what God would want me to do. — Elana Meyers

I mean, if you pause over what it means at the age of 76 that Eleanor Roosevelt wrote, the happiest single day of her life was the day she made the first team at field hockey. Field hockey is a team sport. Field hockey is a knockabout - I mean, picture Allenswood, the swamps of north London. It's a messy sport. So she really enjoyed playing this rough-and-tumble sport in the mud of Allenswood, a team sport. And she was very competitive. And she loved being competitive, and she loved to win. And that, I think, was all of the things that Allenswood enabled. — Blanche Wiesen Cook

Any physical practice can be a competitive sport. What level you can take postures to create the maximum challenge and show your maximum skill, maximum control - it's not a combat game. It's a benefit to you. — Rajashree Choudhury

I'm a competitive person and I love the challenge of mastering new things. — Sasha Cohen

In wheelchair sports, people thought athletes with disabilities were courageous and inspirational. They never give them credit for simply being competitive. — Jean Driscoll

Wrestling is such a competitive sport worldwide. — Kurt Angle

I feel like I'm the most competitive driver in the motorhome lot. No matter what it is - whether we're racing, playing another sport or deciding who can run to that sign and back faster - I feel like I'm the most competitive person alive. — Denny Hamlin

I love the sport and being competitive. — Zara Phillips

The competition is a big part of it [racing] - the passion you have for the sport and the knowledge you have. You're not just going to wake up one day and say, " think I'll do something different." This is what I've done my whole life. My competitive nature and my passion for the sport, those are the things that keep you wanting to do better. — Bobby Labonte

I love the competitive aspect of it [business]. It's like playing chess. Why do people play chess? Knowing the realm of moves? Even when you get to be a chess master, there are other chess masters you want to beat or outperform. And to me business is just a sport that I love to compete in; a continuous intellectual challenge that really motivates me. — Mark Cuban

It's the quintessential Greek sport: harmonious, competitive, agonizing, nautical, and above all, intelligent. It combines Odysseus's brains and brawn and love of the sea with the tactical precision of the Spartan pikeman. — Barry S. Strauss

Creating deluxe cuisine is like playing a sport. Always competitive. Always challenging. And if you slow down a bit, you can no longer return to the top level. — Joel Robuchon

Theater is such a collaborative art. Hollywood is a competitive sport. — Rocky Carroll

In a world as competitive as ours, the child who does not get a decent education is condemned to the fringes of society. I think all Australians agree that this is intolerable. So we must demand as much of our schools as we do of our sports teams - and ensure that they keep the Australian dream alive for every child. — Rupert Murdoch

In Los Angeles, parenting is a competitive sport. From Beverly Hills baby boutiques to kids' yoga classes, L.A. fuses high style, industrial-strength materialism, and parental outsourcing into our own unique version of child-rearing. — Shawn Amos

I've always thought that my exposure to competitive sports helped me a great deal in the operating room. It teaches you endurance, and it teaches you how to cope with defeat, and with complications of all sort. I think I'm a well-coordinated person, more than average, and I think that came through my interest in sports, and athletics ... Playing basketball You have to make decisions promptly, and that's true in the operating room as well. — Denton Cooley

UFC is not a competitor to the WWE because we are entertainment and UFC is competitive sport. It's very different. — Stephanie McMahon

I was told over and over again that I would never be successful, that I was not going to be competitive and the technique was simply not going to work. All I could do was shrug and say "We'll just have to see". — Dick Fosbury

There are two aspects to being competitive; one is to do with sports, and the other is about technical skills. Being able to recollect the moves and apply them when necessary is a critical aspect. — Viswanathan Anand

So I developed very early a massive inferiority complex, and I've told the story often about how that inspired me later in life to get involved in other things, because I couldn't out-do my brothers in sports, and it's a very competitive relationship. — George J. Mitchell

I try to stay level-headed and it's always the way I've been. Sometimes your personality out in the real world, you want to take that into your sport because that's where you feel comfortable. You never want to try to do something that's not you or you don't feel comfortable doing. That's where you get in trouble. It's the only way I've played sports and done things. I'm low-key, but I'm very competitive and hate to lose. — Eli Manning

Soccer is a great game, and the rich variety of styles and passions that come with being truly global makes the World Cup a nonpareil event in the universe of competitive sport. — Serge Schmemann

I know how difficult my rookie year in the NFL was and I know how competitive this sport is. — Troy Aikman

Competitive rowing is an undertaking of extraordinary beauty preceded by brutal punishment. Unlike most sports, which draw primarily on particular muscle groups, rowing makes heavy and repeated use of virtually every muscle in the body, despite the fact that a rower, as Al Ulbrickson liked to put it, "scrimmages on his posterior annex." And rowing makes these muscular demands not at odd intervals but in rapid sequence, over a protracted period of time, repeatedly and without respite. On one occasion, after watching the Washington freshmen practice, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Royal Brougham marveled at the relentlessness of the — Daniel James Brown

The sport is definitely growing, and has become much more competitive. When I started, you were either a former swimmer or runner who took up triathlons. Now, you have a generation of triathletes coming up that started competing at a young age - these are the people that will change the game. — Timothy O'Donnell

Only three or four outs directly affect the outcome of any given game ... One of the greatest challenges of pitching is to recognize these critical situations and rise to the occasion with consistency and a competitive spirit. — Tom Seaver

There's nothing masculine about being competitive. There's nothing masculine about trying to be the best at everything you do, nor is there anything wrong with it. I don't know why a female athlete has to defend her femininity just because she chooses to play sports. — Rebecca Lobo

The shift from the perception of the child as innocent to the perception of the child as competent has greatly increased the demands on contemporary children for maturity, for participating in competitive sports, for early academic achievement, and for protecting themselves against adults who might do them harm. While children might be able to cope with any one of those demands taken singly, taken together they often exceed children's adaptive capacity. — David Elkind

You cannot have that attitude of where I am going to tuck my tail between my legs and go home. You have to keep going back for more. That's why cycling is a very competitive sport. You have to have determination and drive to train hard and put forth a good effort. — Robin Farina

I played college soccer before I was hurt, and just to be able to jump back into something that you could be so competitive at or you can achieve, to get to the Paralympics, that's the first really big achievement that you can have. It's the second biggest sporting event in the world. To be a part of it and to get a medal for that, it's unreal. — Mark Zupan

Lamborghini CEO Stephan Winkelmann said at the signing ceremony in Rome with Premier Matteo Renzi that the Italian package was the most competitive, and beat out a rival bid from Slovakia. The deal is expected to create 500 jobs at Lamborghini's factory near Bologna, reinforcing the country's long-suffering auto sector. The Urus SUV, which was unveiled as a concept at the Beijing Auto Show in 2012, broadens Lamborghini's offerings beyond its Aventador and Huracan sports cars. It is expected to be on the market in 2018. — Anonymous

That's what Major League Baseball's steroid scandal was all about, the hidden harm in competitive sports that sends the wrong message to the young. — Suzanne Fields

There is no sport as competitive as business. It's 24 by 7 by 365 by forever. — Mark Cuban

I've been an athlete all my life. I was a competitive figure skater, and then when I realized skating was not an adult sport I took up tennis and played that quite seriously from the time I was about 18. — Condoleezza Rice

When I was in high school I asked myself at one point: "Why do I care if my high school's team wins the football game? I don't know anybody on the team, they have nothing to do with me ... why am I here and applaud? It does not make any sense." But the point is, it does make sense: It's a way of building up irrational attitudes of submission to authority and group cohesion behind leadership elements. In fact it's training in irrational jingoism. That's also a feature of competitive sports. — Noam Chomsky

In and of itself, sports may be trivial, but as a symbol of the American way of life, it has enormous weight. We are seen, worldwide, as an enormously competitive, enthusiastic people who work as hard as we play and play as hard as we work. When baseball - which has traditionally canceled one day of games for huge national celebrations or disasters - stops play for six days, that has reverberations in the national consciousness. — Thomas Boswell

Men's competitive team sports focus on the balance between individual achievement and team achievement with the emphasis on team achievement. — Warren Farrell

Televisa is the largest media company in the Spanish-speaking world, and the steps we have taken, which extend the tenure of our exclusive access to Televisa's premium Spanish-language telenovelas, sports, sitcoms, reality series, news programs and feature films, put Univision in a stronger competitive position. — Randy Falco

First of all, it would be great for world football to have a competitive Chinese team as China traditionally has deep relation to sports in general. — Berti Vogts

I stay healthy - I mean, I've got a sports background and an athletic background. I was in competitive sports since the age of five. I was a personal trainer before I was an actor and a personal trainer for the first few years while I was acting and getting my thesis. — Neil Jackson

School failed me, and I failed the school. It bored me. The teachers behaved like Feldwebel (sergeants). I wanted to learn what I wanted to know, but they wanted me to learn for the exam. What I hated most was the competitive system there, and especially sports. Because of this, I wasn't worth anything, and several times they suggested I leave. — Albert Einstein

I've been lucky to ride 10 different horses at the Olympics. I'd like to think that of all of them, Big Ben - who was inducted into the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame - would still be competitive in the contemporary sport. — Ian Millar

If you do what you did yesterday you'll be beaten. If you do today what others are doing you'll be competitive. To win you much be doing today what others will be doing tomorrow. — Robert De Castella

The weird thing about rap is that you don't get compared in the same way that athletes do, even though it's probably the most competitive sport in music. In basketball, they look at a player and say: 'This guy was the best in his prime at this sport.' But in rap it's not until you're dead or retired that people think about it like that. — Chance The Rapper

Tennis is such an individual and competitive sport, but it is great being part of a team and getting to know the girls outside of tennis - even though we are all competing for the same thing! — Dominika Cibulkova

Dancing was my sport when I was younger. So I chose that over everything. And then, I just had to keep going because it became a competitive thing. But I'm not trying to impress anyone anymore. Dancing is more like my art, now. — Heather Morris

The ability to learn faster than your competitors may be only sustainable competitive advantage. — Arie De Geus