Quotes About Competition

The "money game" we still call investment management evolved in recent decades from a winner's game to a loser's game because a basic change occurred in the investment environment: The market came to be overwhelmingly dominated by investment professionals—all knowing the same superb information, having huge computer power, and striving to win by outperforming the market they collectively completely dominate.

I think it inevitably follows, that as new species in the course of time are formed through natural selection, others will become rarer and rarer, and finally extinct. The forms which stand in closest competition with those undergoing modification and improvement will naturally suffer most.

Natural Selection almost inevitably causes much Extinction of the less improved forms of life and induces what I have called Divergence of Character.

A grain in the balance will determine which individual shall live and which shall die - which variety or species shall increase in number, and which shall decrease, or finally become extinct.

As natural selection acts by competition, it adapts the inhabitants of each country only in relation to the degree of perfection of their associates; so that we need feel no surprise at the inhabitants of any one country, although on the ordinary view supposed to have been specially created and adapted for that country, being beaten and supplanted by the naturalised productions from another land.

The expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the Survival of the Fittest is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient.

Look at a plant in the midst of its range! Why does it not double or quadruple its numbers? We know that it can perfectly well withstand a little more heat or cold, dampness or dryness, for elsewhere it ranges into slightly hotter or colder, damper or drier districts. In this case we can clearly see that if we wish in imagination to give the plant the power of increasing in numbers, we should have to give it some advantage

Sexual selection acts in a less rigorous manner than natural selection. The latter produces its effects by the life or death at all ages of the more or less successful individuals.

This preservation of favourable variations and the rejection of injurious variations, I call Natural Selection.

I fully agree with all that you say on the advantages of H. Spencer's excellent expression of 'the survival of the fittest.' This, however, had not occurred to me till reading your letter. It is, however, a great objection to this term that it cannot be used as a substantive governing a verb; and that this is a real objection I infer from H. Spencer continually using the words, natural selection. (Letter to A. R. Wallace July 1866)

This preservation of favourable individual differences and variations, and the destruction of those which are injurious, I have called Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest.

For forms existing in larger numbers will always have a better chance, within any given period, of presenting further favourable variations for natural selection to seize on, than will the rarer forms which exist in lesser numbers.

there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be NATURALLY SELECTED.

the power to charm the female has sometimes been more important than the power to conquer other males in battle. LAWS

We will now discuss in a little more detail the Struggle for Existence

As the species of the same genus usually have, though by no means invariably, much similarity in habits and constitution, and always in structure, the struggle will generally be more severe between them, if they come into competition with each other, than between the species of distinct genera.

I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term natural selection, in order to mark its relation to man's power of selection. But the expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer, of the Survival of the Fittest, is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient.

In the latter country alone, very many (probably several hundred) square miles are covered by one mass of these prickly plants, and are impenetrable by man or beast. Over the undulating plains, where these great beds occur, nothing else can now live. Before their introduction, however, the surface must have supported, as in other parts, a rank herbage. I doubt whether any case is on record of an invasion on so grand a scale of one plant over the aborigines.

Dos animales caninos, en tiempo de hambre, luchan mutuamente por conseguir el alimento que necesitan; pero la planta que nace en los linderos del desierto lucha por la existencia contra la sequía, aunque con más propiedad se diría que depende de la humedad.

El muérdago depende del manzano y de otros pocos árboles, pero solamente en sentido muy artificial puede decirse que lucha con estos árboles, porque si en el mismo árbol crecen muchos de estos parásitos, el árbol languidece y muere. Pero de algunos muérdagos que producen semillas y que crecen juntamente en la misma rama puede decirse con más razón

What natural selection cannot do, is to modify the structure of one species, without giving it any advantage, for the good of another species; and though statements to this effect may be found in works of natural history, I cannot find one case which will bear investigation.

las variaciones y diferencias individuales favorables, y la destrucción de aquellas que son nocivas, es lo que hemos llamado selección natural o supervivencia de los más aptos.

pero la selección natural no puede modificar la estructura de una especie, sin darle ninguna ventaja, para provecho de otra especie;

Comme il naît beaucoup plus d'individus de chaque espèce qu'il n'en peut survivre; comme, en conséquence, la lutte pour l'existence se renouvelle à chaque instant, il s'ensuit que tout être qui varie quelque peu que ce soit de façon qui lui est profitable a une plus grande chance de survivre; cet être est ainsi l'objet d'une sélection naturelle.