Quotes About Competition

David Foster Wallace believed that 'high-level sports are a prime venue for the expression of human beauty.' They are also, it is sad to say, an arena for the darker aspects of human nature.

Wrestling was more her kind of sport.

Very well," replied Auntie Flip. "I came ninety-seventh!" "Congratulations. Ninety-seventh!" "Thank you." Flip blushed with pride. "How many entrants were there?" "Ninety-eight," replied Frank.

24 A 2010 study in the Journal of Sports Sciences noted that between 1989 and 1997, the average length of the Tour de France rose from 3,285km to 3,944km (2,040–2,450 miles) and featured 17,000m (55,770 feet) of additional climbing. Average speeds should have slowed by 11.3% during this time. They improved by 4.5%.

The summer Olympic Games 2012 in London was the first no-needle games –

No one forced us to dope, but in the end, you were either in or out: you couldn't survive in the sport without doing it.

There are two sides to any war-game, Your Highness, and the other side is trying to win, too.

After just three days, the system so mastered the game that it was able to beat the prior version of AlphaGo a hundred games out of a hundred.

In my whole career, I've never seen this type of race that you had to wait for the last day. There's so many teams that are involved. You've got to smile because we're in it.

The defender must first think defensively, but he must also think offensively. For an attacker it is the other way around. Somewhere they meet.

John snatched the rebound, spun, jumped, slammed. He pumped his fist in victory. "Ring it up! Two hundred seventy-four to one thirty-seven!" In John's game, each shot is worth one hundred and thirty-seven points.

Sorry, Dave. My grandpa used to tell me, toward the end when he was going crazy, that talking through a dog ain't like talking through a sausage. Molly is in here with me and I gotta compete with the barker.

John snatched the rebound, spun, jumped, slammed. He pumped his fist in victory. "Ring it up! Two hundred seventy-four to one thirty-seven!" In John's game, each shot is worth one hundred and thirty-seven points. "If I had a dime for every basket I made today, you'd still suck!

he thought that human beings are, by and large, rather nasty. They can rarely be bothered to help one another, he noted, but are quick to seize any opportunity to do each other down.9 Moreover there was a bias in the world of which he had become acutely aware: most people were ignorant, and nothing provoked the hostility of the ignorant as much as people who knew more than they did.10 Although

In my most recent novel, The Eros Project, I have called this age–old habit of people of making war and preying upon each other simply the War. This use is close to what Hobbes identified as the war of all against all, which he thought to be the natural state of man.

But if you come to define success, in both business and in life, as philosophers and religions have for millennia, by the satisfaction derived from work itself and not the degree of attention you receive for it, people like Johns and Canby—the Invisibles—offer a model you would do well to follow. Ask yourself: Do I want to be on a treadmill of competition with others, or do I want to find lasting reward by challenging myself?

The Olympics remain the most compelling search for excellence that exists in sport, and maybe in life itself.

Market share determines who is right and who is wrong. Mind share asks what is possible. This

The human race. No winners, just slower losers.

All racers are runners, but not all runners are racers.

If you make every game a life-and-death proposition, you're going to have problems. For one thing, you'll be dead a lot.

If you make every game a life-and-death thing, you're going to have problems. You'll be dead a lot.

Play hard. Play smart. Play together.

I'm jealous, of course. He's got a rich, pretty debutante and all I've got is a stiffy for the little brunette with the curly hair out there.