Quotes & Sayings About Contests

I don't care at all about the mainstream; I don't care about popularity contests; I don't care about who's got the biggest-selling album; and I don't care about glossy production. — Phil Anselmo

We need to recapture the gospel glow of the early Christians who were nonconformists in the truest sense of the word ... Their powerful gospel put an end to such barbaric evils as infanticide and bloody gladiatorial contests. Finally, they captured the Roman Empire for Jesus Christ. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Elections, for their part, are typically popularity contests rather than measures of candidates' relative competency or effectiveness. Imagine if scientific truth were determined according to which scientist was most popular. To be successful, scientists would have to be charismatic and attractive - and human knowledge would suffer terribly. — Nathan Myhrvold

I was always doing something physical. My brothers and I used to have handstand contests. We'd walk around the projects on our hands and see who could get the farthest. I was always playing football with them, basketball or racing in the street. — Florence Griffith Joyner

In any contest between power and patience, bet on patience. — William Prescott

I was not ambitious as a child. My father encouraged me to enter competitions and contests, which became very much part of my life. I was not the typical teenager. I was very closed, shy and didn't hangout with my friends at disco's. My parents wanted me at home. Singing became my life, I traveled a lot on the job, and my job became my dream. — Laura Pausini

It is the contest that delights us, and not the victory. — Blaise Pascal

We improve ourselves by victory over our self. There must be contests, and you must win. — Edward Gibbon

Jude had witnessed all of this with the dejected respect one had for people with destructive talents, like winning hamburger-eating contests. — Eleanor Henderson

One great idea of the biblical revelation is that God is manifest in the ordinary, in the actual, in the daily, in the now, in the concrete incarnations of life, and not through purity codes and moral achievement contests, which are seldom achieved anyway ... We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking ... The most courageous thing we will ever do is to bear humbly the mystery of our own reality. — Richard Rohr

He (King Philip) wanted as many Greeks as possible to take part in the festivities in honour of the gods, and so planned brilliant musical contests and lavish banquets for his friends and guests. Out of all Greece he summoned his personal guest-friends and ordered the members of his court to bring along as many as they could of their acquaintances from abroad. — Diodorus Siculus

If you're a boy, any display of sensitivity is gay. Compassion is gay. Crying is supergay. Reading is usually gay. Certain songs and types of music are gay. 'Enola Gay' would certainly be thought gay. Love songs are gay. Love itself is incredibly gay, as are any other heartfelt emotions. Singing is gay, but chanting is not gay. Wanking contests are not gay. Neither is all-male cuddling during specially designated periods in football matches, or communal bathing thereafter. (I didn't invent the rules of gay - I'm just telling you what they are.) — Gavin Extence

He no longer dreamed of storms, nor of women, nor of great occurrences, nor of great fish, nor fights, nor contests of strength, nor of his wife. He only dreamed of places now and the lions on the beach. They played like young cats in the dusk and he loved them as he loved the boy. He never dreamed about the boy. He simply woke, looked out the open door at the moon and unrolled his trousers and put them on. — Ernest Hemingway,

Day-to-day political debates are also contests between metaphors. Citizens are not rational and pay no attention to facts, except as they fit into frames, and the frames are "fixed in the neural structures of [their] brains." In George W. Bush's first term, for example, he promised tax relief, which frames taxes as an affliction, the reliever as a hero, and anyone obstructing him as a villain. — Steven Pinker

Then in June, something truly magical happened. I discovered book bloggers. I had no idea such people existed. They just read books and write about them. And I don't mean "just." These people take times out of their busy lives to talk about books and have contests and connect with followers and writers and other readers. — Amanda Hocking

When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies in me; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tombs of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow; when I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the men that divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind. When I read the several dates of the tombs, of some that died yesterday, and some six hundred years ago, I consider that great Day when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance together — Joseph Addison

I can't read music. Instead, I'd do stuff inside the piano, do harmonics and all kinds of crazy things. They used to put me in these annual piano contests down at Long Beach City College, and two years in a row, I won first prize - out of like 5,000 kids! — Eddie Van Halen

She takes a breath and holds it. In middle school the girls used to have contests to see who could hold their breath the longest; Alice once held it until she fainted. — Erika Swyler

I never see problems. I always see challenges. By definition, a problem is something unwelcome or harmful, whereas a challenge is a contest. Contests can be won; and, I love winning. — Wayne Gerard Trotman

I think politics in general are just like a popularity contest but McCain is just ... old. — D. L. Hughley

We old athletes carry the disfigurements and markings of contests remembered only by us and no one else. Nothing is more lost than a forgotten game. — Pat Conroy

Profound as race prejudice is against the Negro American, it is not practically as far-reaching as the prejudice against women. For stripping away the sentimentality which makes Mother's Day and Best American Mother Contests, the truth is that women suffer all the effects of a minority. — Pearl S. Buck

Famous archer, Howard Hill won all of the 267 archery contests he entered. He could hit a bullseye at 50 feet, then split first arrow with the second. Would it be possible for you to shoot better than him? YES, if he were blindfolded! How can you hit a target you can't see? Even worse, how can you hit a target you don't even have!? You need to have GOALS in your life! — Zig Ziglar

Elections in India are not contests between personalities. They are ultimately battles involving political parties; promises and pledges that political parties make; the vision and programmes that political parties bring to the table. So although, Modi's style is 'I, me, myself,' I don't think 2014 elections as a Modi versus Rahul contest. — Jairam Ramesh

Electoral contests have nothing but polls, which is why people have grown so obsessed with them; we're desperate for an objective rendering of what is happening and what may happen. — John Podhoretz

The social [media channel] isn't about beauty contests and popularity contests. They're a distortion, a caricature of the real thing. It's about trust, connection, and community. That's what there's too little of in today's mediascape, despite all the hoopla surrounding social tools. The promise of the Internet wasn't merely to inflate relationships, without adding depth, resonance, and meaning. It was to fundamentally rewire people, communities, civil society, business, and the state - through thicker, stronger, more meaningful relationships. That's where the future of media lies. — Umair Haque

I have always had my doubts about any form of divine intervention in sports contests. The power of prayer may be remarkable in many other arenas, but why should God want my team to win instead of the other side? Isn't it insulting to request God to even take an interest in baseball? — Roger Ebert

Role-playing games are contests in which the players usually cooperate as a group to achieve a common goal rather than compete to eliminate one another from play ... Role games ... bring players together in a mutual effort ... — Gary Gygax

The present assault upon capital is but the beginning. It will be but a stepping-stone to others, larger and more sweeping, till our political contests will become a war of the poor against the rich. — Stephen J. Field

Women on the way up generally fail to win popularity contests. The only compensation is that once you're there you will become very well liked. — Lois Wyse

Those pissing contests are how lords judge one another's strength, and woe to any man who shows his weakness. A woman must needs piss twice as hard, if she hopes to rule. And — George R R Martin

To be a good sportsman, one must be a stoic and never show rancor in defeat, or triumph in victory, or irritation, no matter what annoyance is encountered. One who can not help sulking, or explaining, or protesting when the loser, or exulting when the winner, has no right to take part in games or contests. — Emily Post

A country which accepts wars as contests between good and evil is suffering from the delusion that the morality play symbolizes real political conflicts. — Pauline Kael

I'm not in a contest. I make movies. I'm not a racehorse ... — George Lucas

As Darwin noted, "It is certain that with almost all animals there is a struggle between the males for the possession of the female." When males of a species battle it out directly, be it through the clashing antlers of deer, the stabbing horns of the stag beetle, the head butting of stalk-eyed flies, or the bloody battles of massive elephant seals, they win access to females by driving off competitors. Selection will favor any trait that promotes such victories so long as the increased chance of getting mates more than offsets any reduced survival. This kind of selection produces armaments: stronger weapons, larger body size, or anything that helps a male win physical contests. — Jerry A. Coyne

Throughout high school, I peddled my eggs, had a vendor stand at the local curb market - precursor to today's farmers' markets - and competed in 4-H contests and interscholastic debate. — Joel Salatin

She remembered one of her boyfriends asking, offhandedly, how many books she read in a year. "A few hundred," she said.
"How do you have the time?" he asked, gobsmacked.
She narrowed her eyes and considered the array of potential answers in front of her. Because I don't spend hours flipping through cable complaining there's nothing on? Because my entire Sunday is not eaten up with pre-game, in-game, and post-game talking heads? Because I do not spend every night drinking overpriced beer and engaging in dick-swinging contests with the other financirati? Because when I am waiting in line, at the gym, on the train, eating lunch, I am not complaining about the wait/staring into space/admiring myself in reflective surfaces? I am reading!
"I don't know," she said, shrugging. — Eleanor Brown

There are no contests in the Art of Peace. A true warrior is invincible because he or she contests with nothing. Defeat means to defeat the mind of contention that we harbor within. — Morihei Ueshiba

It falls into this difficulty without any fault of its own. It begins with principles, which cannot be dispensed with in the field of experience, and the truth and sufficiency of which are, at the same time, insured by experience. With these principles it rises, in obedience to the laws of its own nature, to ever higher and more remote conditions. But it quickly discovers that, in this way, its labours must remain ever incomplete, because new questions never cease to present themselves; and thus it finds itself compelled to have recourse to principles which transcend the region of experience, while they are regarded by common sense without distrust. It thus falls into confusion and contradictions, from which it conjectures the presence of latent errors, which, however, it is unable to discover, because the principles it employs, transcending the limits of experience, cannot be tested by that criterion. The arena of these endless contests is called Metaphysic. — Immanuel Kant

A politician, a man engaged in party contests, must be an opportunist. Let us give up saying that word as if it contained a slur. If you want to win in party action, I take it for granted that you want to lure the majority to your side. I never heard of any man in his senses who was fishing for a minority. — Woodrow Wilson

I love to deal with doctrines and events. The contests of men about men I greatly dislike. — James A. Garfield

I'm allergic to latex and it makes me break out in a rash so most condoms are out for me because the last thing any of us wants is a vagina rash. The alternative is the ones made of sheepskin, but it always creeps me out because does that mean Victor and I are having sex with a sheep? A dead sheep, actually. So it's bestiality and necrophilia. And a three-way, I think. I actually mentioned that to Victor and he immediately booked a vasectomy, which is sweet because it's nice that he cares about me. He claimed it was less his caring and more "I'd rather have my nuts cut off than have to listen to you talk about having three-ways with dead sheep." But now I have all these leftover condoms. They make great water balloons though and I bet they'd be really good for championship bubblegum-blowing competitions. Really chewy sheep bubblegum. That might be cheating. I don't know the rules about bubblegum contests. — Jenny Lawson

Our human landscape is overburdened with competitions and contests. Art need not be a contest. Art is a personal quest for quality. Quality is the forerunner of acceptance. Character is the forerunner of quality. Be your own discriminating connoisseur. — Robert Genn

What dire offence from am'rous causes springs,
What mighty contests rise from trivial things, ... — Alexander Pope

These have been the most successful years I've ever had. I've been placing well in the contests but more importantly I've been enjoying them. I think those two things go hand-in-hand. — Kelly Clark

It's not a contest, and I ain't on no conquest for no mate. — Eminem

All values must be won by contest, and after they have been won, they must be defended. — Jim Rohn

Oh, man," Jason said. "Wait till I tell Piper. Hey, since I'm all alone in my cabin too, you and I can share a table in the dining hall. We can team up for capture the flag and sing-along contests and - " "Are you trying to scare me away? — Rick Riordan

I never count countries. Travel is not a contest. — Andrew Evans

My point is that the admirable men of those times, the Cochranes, Byrons, Falconers, Seymours, Boscawens and the many less famous sailors from whom I have in some degree compounded my characters, are best celebrated in their own splendid actions rather than in imaginary contests; that authenticity is a jewel; and that the echo of their words has an abiding value. — Patrick O'Brian

The adoption of gloves for all contests will do more to preserve the practice of boxing than any other conceivable means. It will give pugilism new life, not only as a professional boxer's art, but as a general exercise. — John Boyle O'Reilly

In a day and age when there are so many culinary competitions - ranging from contests of taste to those of technique - The World Food Championships will be the ultimate food competition. — Adam Richman

If we seek merely swollen, slothful ease and ignoble peace, if we shrink from the hard contests where men must win at the hazard of their lives and at the risk of all they hold dear, then bolder and stronger peoples will pass us by, and will win for themselves the domination of the world. — Theodore Roosevelt

Legislators are interested in their pet projects, getting re-elected, and popularity contests. — Bud Grant

[I]t must be owned, that liberty is the perfection of civil society; but still authority must be acknowledged essential to its very existence: and in those contests, which so often take place between the one and the other, the latter may, on that account, challenge the preference. Unless perhaps one may say (and it may be said with some reason) that a circumstance, which is essential to the existence of civil society, must always support itself, and needs be guarded with less jealousy, than one that contributes only to its perfection, which the indolence of men is so apt to neglect, or their ignorance to overlook. — David Hume

I was winning awards, getting raises, lecturing college classes, appearing on TV shows, and judging journalism contests. And then I wrote some stories that made me realize how sadly misplaced my bliss had been. The reason I'd enjoyed such smooth sailing for so long hadn't been, as I'd assumed, because I was careful and diligent and good at my job... The truth was that, in all those years, I hadn't written anything important enough to suppress. — Gary Webb

I did not and do not want my life tied up in cloak-and-dagger bullshit, dead guys, or pissing contests with either the testosterone crowd in there or some prissy-assed Earl Grey-drinking, scone-munching major who isn't even my freaking boss. I don't know you and I don't give a rat's ass if you trust me. — Jonathan Maberry

Elections are not a beauty contest. It is all about tolerance. — Vladimir Franz

I skate all the time, but it's silly for me to do contests when MTV is giving me a boatload of money. — Bam Margera

Sometimes ... we suffer from the tyranny of comparison. Contests, competitions, thrive on it. Who cares? — Robert Genn

I have a lot of ideas and I want to be able to work. To me, it's like one of these contests where you get five minutes in a supermarket to take anything off the shelves you want and try to fill your cart up as much as you can. That's the way I look at my work. — George Lucas

There are in truth three states of the converted: the beginning, the middle, and the perfection. In the beginning they experience the charms of sweetness; in the middle the contests of temptation; and in the end the fullness of perfection. — Pope Gregory I

Photography is a contest between a photographer and the presumptions of approximate and habitual seeing. The contest can be held anywhere ... — John Szarkowski

In the Christian combat, not the striker, as in the Olympic contests, but he who is struck, wins the crown. This is the law in the celestial theatre, where the Angels are the spectators. — Saint John Chrysostom

When a person pauses in mid-sentence to choose a word, that's the best time to jump in and change the subject! It's like an interception in football! You grab the others guy's idea and run the opposite way with it! The more sentences you complete, the higher your score! The idea is to block the other guy's thoughts and express your own! That's how you win!

Conversations aren't contests!

Ok, a point for you, but I'm still ahead. — Bill Watterson

These are the three things - volume of sound, modulation of pitch, and rhythm - that a speaker bears in mind. It is those who do bear them in mind who usually win prizes in the dramatic contests; and just as in drama the actors now count for more than the poets, so it is in the contests of public life, owing to the defects of our political institutions. — Aristotle.

If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, top-heavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it. Peace, Montag. Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant' with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change. — Ray Bradbury

A call for authors... to arms!!!
(Actually, to pens.) O_O

Check out my latest blog post (via my profile), for more faboo 411!!!

Fear ye NOT the contest!!! — William McDonald

I've been asked to do 'American Idol' and 'X Factor.' I'm an Ed McMahon kind of girl. 'Star Search?' I'm in, all day long. It felt more authentic, and the market wasn't oversaturated with karaoke contests. — Pink

I'm past competing in pissing contests. My jet stream is now more of a trickle. The only contest I'd win is the number of trips to the bathroom it takes to purge a 32oz soda. — Brian MacLearn

To presume a want of motives for such contests as an argument against their existence, would be to forget that men are ambitious, vindictive, and rapacious. To look for a continuation of harmony between a number of independent, unconnected sovereignties in the same neighborhood, would be to disregard the uniform course of human events, and to set at defiance the accumulated experience of ages. The causes of hostility among nations are innumerable. There are some which have a general and almost constant operation upon the collective bodies of society. Of this description are the love of power or the desire of pre-eminence and dominion - the jealousy of power, or the desire of equality and safety. There are — Alexander Hamilton

Take away the contests of the martyrs, and you have taken away their crowns. — Saint Ambrose

There was no question about it- the girl in the photograph was staggeringly beautiful. She was Miss Canal Zone, a runner-up in the Miss Universe Contest
and in fact far more beautiful than the winner of the contests. Her beauty had frightened the judges. — Kurt Vonnegut

I don't know one of my friends who is considered a conservative who has not had to go back and thoroughly think through everything. You do a lot of soul-searching - 'cause we are not going to win any popularity contests. — Clarence Thomas

I was like, what the hell is my life coming to? I'm a trained actor! I've done Shakespeare and here I am having farting contests with an imaginary dog! — Matthew Lillard

Most jury trials are contests between the rich and poor. — Clarence Darrow

My husband, a.k.a. Swede, and I both come from athletic backgrounds, so once we identified the goal - get book published - we attacked it. At any given time, I would have my writing out in 25 various forms - either contests, mentoring critiques, agent/publisher queries, etc. — Kresley Cole

I really idolize everything my sisters do,so I went into singing contests and won also. That's how I really got into singing. — Coco Lee

Polybius foresaw Rome's decadence. "All things are subject to decay and change," he wrote. "When a state, after having passed with safety through many and great dangers, arrives at the highest degree of power, and possesses an entire and undisputed sovereignty, it is manifest that the long continuance of prosperity must give birth to costly and luxurious manners, and that the minds of men will be heated with ambitious contests, and become too eager and aspiring in the pursuit of dignities. And as those evils are continually increased, the desire of power and rule, and the imagined ignominy of remaining in a subject state, will first begin to work the ruin of the republic; arrogance and luxury will afterwards advance it; and in the end the change will be completed by the people; when the avarice of some is found to injure and oppress them, and the ambition of others swells their vanity, and poisons them with flattering hopes. — Anonymous

Any chance I had to get in front of people - amateur talent contests at movie houses like the Broadway, the president - I took. — Frankie Avalon

We have won so many contests, leveled so many barriers, that the changes wrought by the women's movement are widely viewed as irreversible, even by feminism's most committed antagonists. Yet, as women near the finish line, we are distracted. We have stopped to gather glittery trinkets from an apparent admirer. The admirer is the marketplace, and the trinkets are the bounty of a commercial culture, which has deployed the language of liberation as a new and powerful tool of subjugation. — Susan Faludi

In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong. God cannot be for, and against the same thing at the same time. — Abraham Lincoln

I would run to rejoin the children. Especially when it was time for the kite-flying contests- where the boys would skilfully try to cut down their competitors' kite strings. It plunges. It was beautiful, and also a bit melancholy for me to see the pretty kittens sputter to the ground.
Maybe it was because I could see a future that would be cut down just like those kites- simply because I was a girl. — Malala Yousafzai

We ask what is the origin of marriage, and we are told that like the right of property, after many wars and contests, it has gradually arisen out of the selfishness of barbarians. — Plato

A little while back, I won a couple of contests and was crowned the Funniest Kid Comic in all of New York. Not just New York City, but the whole state! — James Patterson

All brave men love; for he only is brave who has affections to fight for, whether in the daily battle of life, or in physical contests. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Mass is vital to a bodybuilder's physique. But it is the shape and the quality of this mass that win contests. — Arnold Schwarzenegger

Competing is intense among humans, and within a group, selfish individuals always win. But in contests between groups, groups of altruists always beat groups of selfish individuals. — E. O. Wilson

I like to think that faith has been a part of my life since I was a lot younger. It's definitely a part of my athletic career. I always wear a cross on my goggles during contests when I'm doing something gnarly. It's a reminder that I've got someone else helping me out. — Nick Goepper

Do send out a newsletter when you have a new book out or are going on tour. Also list relevant event dates and notifications of contests you are running. — M.J. Rose

A clean, hard-fought wrestling match is the most honest of athletic contests. There is no technological interventions, no teammates to blame, no panel of judges to bias the score. In wrestling, you compete or you quit. No alibis. I like that — Dan Gable

The time given to athletic contests and the injuries incurred on the playing field are part of the price which the English-speaking race has paid for being world conquerors. — Henry Cabot Lodge

You're a rule person," he said.
"My sister was a cheater. It sort of became necessary."
"She cheated at this game?"
"She cheated ateverything ," I said. "When we played Monopoly, she always
insisted on being banker,
then helped herself to multiple loans and 'service fees' for every real estate
transaction. I was, like, ten or
eleven before I played at someone else's house and they told me you couldn't do
that."
He laughed, the sound seeming loud in all the quiet. I felt myself smiling,
remembering.
"During staring contests," I said, "she always blinked.Always . But then she'd
swear up and down she
hadn't, and make you go again, and again. And when we played Truth, she lied.
Blatantly. — Sarah Dessen

I was 15 when I got my first job as a proofreader for an advertising agency in the City, earning £12 a week. But by then, I was already playing darts tournaments every weekend, regularly winning the £50 first prize. By the time I was 16 and winning two or three contests a weekend, I ditched the agency job and concentrated on darts. — Eric Bristow

In the transfer society, the general public is not only poorer but also less contented, less autonomous, more rancorous, and more politicized. Individuals take part less often in voluntary community activities and more often in belligerent political contests. Genuine communities cannot breathe in the poisonous atmosphere of redistributional politics. — Robert Higgs

I am always amazed when I hear people saying that sport creates goodwill between the nations, and that if only the common peoples of the world could meet one another at football or cricket, they would have no inclination to meet on the battlefield. Even if one didn't know from concrete examples (the 1936 Olympic Games, for instance) that international sporting contests lead to orgies of hatred, one could deduce it from general principles ... There cannot be much doubt that the whole thing is bound up with the rise of nationalism - that is, with the lunatic modern habit of identifying oneself with large power units and seeing everything in terms of competitive prestige. — George Orwell

I liked the way they treated the first, second, and third place finishers equally. It was an amazing year. I only entered two song contests this year; I won one and placed second in the other. And I entered each of them a day or two before the deadline. — Arthur Godfrey

Less than seventy-five years after it officially began, the contest between capitalism and socialism is over: capitalism has won. — Robert Heilbroner

I foresee a great funeral contest over me. — Alexander The Great

There is not a greater discovery of pride in the world than in the contests of our wills with the will of God. — John Flavel