Quotes About Competition

Fiercely competitive TV channels covered the story of the breaking city as "Breaking News." Nobody pointed out the irony.

Reading the papers, it was often hard to tell when people were referring to Viagra (which was competing for second place on the front pages) and when they were talking about the nuclear bomb—"We have superior strength and potency." (This was our minister for defense after Pakistan completed its tests.)

In the interests of separation, Black women have been taught to view each other as always suspect, heartless competitors for the scarce male, the all-important prize that could legitimize our existence. This dehumanizing denial of self is no less lethal than the dehumanization of racism to which it is so closely allied.

And I won 'em back fair and square. So what are you going to do about it? Want to fight? Who wants the first bloody nose?

If the rest of them can survive only by destroying us, then why should we wish them to survive? . . . Nothing can make it moral to destroy the best. One can't be punished for being good. One can't be penalized for ability.

The businessman who wishes to gain a market by throttling a superior competitor, the worker who wants a share of his employer's wealth, the artist who envies a rival's higher talent - they're all wishing facts out of existence and destruction is the only means of their wish. If they pursue it, they will not achieve a market, a fortune, or an immortal fame - they will merely destroy production

It's a law of survival, isn't it?—to seek the best. I didn't come for your sake. I came for mine.

everything that lifts people above their fellows arouses both emulation and jealousy.

She took the Saturday Review's 1962 test, "Your Literary I.Q.," and outscored VN by a long shot;

One of the most incredible secrets of science fiction (although one not too closely guarded) is the fact that 99 percent of its authors do not know even the titles and authors of today's learned works, but still they want to top these scholars with their knowledge of the year 6000.

The factors that contributed to my becoming a mathematician are complex, no doubt, but one major factor was talent, without which I could have accomplished in my profession no more than could a hunchback in a championship track-and-field competition.

The beauty part of business warfare, unless your business is importing cocaine from Colombia or covering up a nuclear fuel spill in the Midwest, is that there is rarely any actual blood involved. Maybe that's why we can forgive Sun Tzu now and then for being such a careful sissy-boy. His guys were playing with live ammo, not cell phones and BlackBerrys.

Because business, in many ways, is like politics or beauty pageants. The talented do, at times, rise to the top. But those with guts, gumption, unbounded energy, hot desire, and the ability to push people around do very well, too, even the ugly ones.

If you find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics suck.

Ultimately, however, whether it is mother, wife, or child who keeps a man going, or whether a woman focuses her self-sacrifice on parent, husband, or child, the simultaneous connection and contrast between nurturing within the family and competition outside it leads to a profound sense of loneliness.

He'd gotten into a fight with his sister, Splayfoot, over a particularly juicy dwarf willow he'd found. Just as he had prised the branches from the ground and had begun to strip them of their succulent leaves, the calf had come bustling over to him and had tried to push him away so she could get at the willow herself. His willow.

London had had a subway system since 1863, but New York had not yet gone underground for at least two reasons. For one thing, New York was built on solid rock, and tunneling through the Manhattan schist presented enormous engineering obstacles. For another, during the years when "Boss" Tweed had the city in his grip, Tweed and his "ring" controlled the surface transportation lines and wanted no competition.

I always wanted to be on a sports team like that. I'm not sure why, but I always thought it would be fun to have "glory days".

Olympics are a warped, watered-down version of the only worthy contest between nations: war

We are playing the most artistic and beautiful game man ever devised. Of course I'll cunting well cheat.

The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race….It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn't compete, and would be superseded

In the year 2025, the best men don't run for president, they run for their lives. . . .

What Darwin was too polite to say, my friends, is that we came to rule the earth not because we were the smartest, or even the meanest, but because we have always been the craziest, most murderous motherfuckers in the jungle.

Any game looks straight if everyone is being cheated at once.