44 Inspiring Competition Quotes

In the vibrant world of competition, whether in sports, business, or personal pursuits, the drive to excel and push boundaries is a powerful force. This dynamic energy is often fueled by the wisdom and insights of those who have faced challenges head-on and emerged victorious. Our collection of the top 44 inspiring competition quotes serves as a testament to the resilience, determination, and passion that come with the spirit of rivalry. These quotes not only capture the essence of competition but also motivate us to embrace challenges, learn from our setbacks, and strive for excellence. Dive into these nuggets of wisdom and let them ignite your competitive spirit, guiding you toward achieving your goals with renewed vigor and a strategic mindset.

1. “Never compete with someone who has nothing to lose.” - Baltasar Gracian

2. “Anyone who imagines they can work alone winds up surrounded by nothing but rivals, without companions. The fact is, no one ascends alone.” - Lance Armstrong

3. “CHORONZON: I am a dire wolf, prey-stalking, lethal prowler.MORPHEUS: I am a hunter, horse-mounted, wolf-stabbing.CHORONZON: I am a horsefly, horse-stinging, hunter-throwing.MORPHEUS: I am a spider, fly-consuming, eight legged.CHORONZON: I am a snake, spider-devouring, posion-toothed.MORPHEUS: I am an ox, snake-crushing, heavy-footed.CHORONZON: I am an anthrax, butcher bacterium, warm-life destroying.MORPHEUS: I am a world, space-floating, life-nurturing.CHORONZON: I am a nova, all-exploding... planet-cremating.MORPHEUS: I am the Universe -- all things encompassing, all life embracing.CHORONZON: I am Anti-Life, the Beast of Judgment. I am the dark at the end of everything. The end of universes, gods, worlds... of everything. Sss. And what will you be then, Dreamlord?MORPHEUS: I am hope.” - Neil Gaiman

4. “Take someone who doesn't keep score,who's not looking to be richer, or afraid of losing,who has not the slightest interest evenin his own personality: he's free.” - Rumi Jalalu'l-Din

5. “Has she glanced you way yet?"Twice," Nick said on a note of satisfaction.Meaning?"Nick glanced at him. "She's not completely disinterested."I see Moreland. That makes it an even half dozen hanging out for a rich wife. Four looking for their second. Rossman, the old satyr, certainly isn't likely to be much competition. What in the hell does he think he's doing anyway? He must be sixty."Basking, I should think. She hasn't given him the cold shoulder yet," Nick responded coolly.” - Jaide Fox

6. “Play to win, not "not to lose".” - Dondi Scumaci

7. “Might not too much investment in teaching Shelley mean falling behind our economic competitors? But there is no university without humane inquiry, which means that universities and advanced capitalism are fundamentally incompatible. And the political implications of that run far deeper than the question of student fees.” - Terry Eagleton

8. “Anytime you find someone more successful than you are, especially when you're both engaged in the same business - you know they're doing something that you aren't.” - Malcolm X

9. “Real learning comes about when the competitive spirit has ceased.” - J. Krishnamurti

10. “Homo economicus was surreptitiously taken as the emblem and analogue for all living beings. A mechanistic anthropomorphism has gained currency. Bacteria are imagined to mimic "economic" behavior and to engage in internecine competition for the scarce oxygen available in their environment. A cosmic struggle among ever more complex forms of life has become the anthropic foundational myth of the scientific age.” - Ivan Illich

11. “Law is made by the winner to preserve victory over the loser.” - Toba Beta [Betelgeuse Incident]

12. “There's a lot of good things about England, but I don't want to tell you too many of them.” - Michael Clarke

13. “I don't know where this pressure came from. I can't blame my parents because it has always felt internal. Like any other parent, my mother celebrated the A grades and the less-than-A grades she felt there was no need to tell anybody about. But not acknowledging the effort that ended in a less than perfect result impacted me as a child. If I didn't win, then we wouldn't tell anyone that I had even competed to save us the embarrassment of acknowledging that someone else was better. Keeping the secret made me think that losing was something to be ashamed of, and that unless I was sure I was going to be the champion there was no point in trying. And there was certainly no point to just having fun.” - Portia De Rossi

14. “If you're not gonna go all the way, why go at all?” - Joe Namath

15. “Jealousy is love in competition.” - Toba Beta

16. “It’s not just tougher out there. It’s become a situation where the contest is how much you can destroy the system, rather than how much you can make it work. It makes no difference if you have a ‘D’ or an ‘R’ after your name. There’s no sense that this is about democracy, and after the election you have to work together, and knit the country together. The people in the game now just think to the first Tuesday in November, and not a day beyond it.” - Peter Hart

17. “When healthy competition prevails -- you come out to play and you play to win.” - Lorii Myers

18. “I am convinced that the jealous, the angry, the bitter and the egotistical are the first to race to the top of mountains. A confident person enjoys the journey, the people they meet along the way and sees life not as a competition. They reach the summit last because they know God isn’t at the top waiting for them. He is down below helping his followers to understand that the view is glorious where ever you stand.” - Shannon Alder

19. “ If two people share one, their destinies become intertwined. They'll remain a part of each other's lives no matter what.” - Tetsuya Nomura

20. “Everything is a contest. All dealings among men are a contest in which some will succeed and others fail. And some are failing quite spectacularly.” - Brandon Sanderson

21. “Since I became a novelist I have discovered that I am biased. Either I think a new novel is worse than mine and I don’t like it, or I suspect it is better than my novels and I don’t like it.” - Umberto Eco

22. “High-quality web content that's useful, usable, and enjoyable is one of the greatest competitive advantages you can create for yourself online.” - Kristina Halvorson

23. “And here it becomes evident that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an over-riding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state that it has to feed him instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie; in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society.The essential condition for the existence, and for the sway of the bourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labor. Wage-labor rests exclusively on competition between the laborers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the laborers, due to competition, by their revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of modern industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.” - Karl Marx

24. “Competition has been shown to be usefulup to a certain point and no further,but cooperation, which is the thingwe must strive for today,begins where competition leaves off.” - Franklin D. Roosevelt

25. “If you want to find the real competition, just look in the mirror. After awhile you'll see your rivals scrambling for second place.” - Criss Jami

26. “Will tossed the bloody cloth aside. “And you wonder why we aren’t friends.” “I just wondered,” Gabriel said, in more subdued voice, “if perhaps you have ever had enough.” “Enough of what?” “Enough of behaving as you do.” Will crossed his arms over his chest. His eyes glistening dangerously. “Oh, I can never get enough,” he said. “Which, incidentally, is what your sister said to me when─” The carriage door flew open. A hand shot out, grabbed Will by the back of his shirt, and hauled him inside.” - Cassandra Clare

27. “There has been among us, particularly in America, an adolescent competitiveness—a feeling that life is a race in which the victory of one must mean the defeat of the other. No one can measure how much personal unhappiness and inner cowardice have come from this immaturity of our social outlook, this childlike comparison, this absurd rivalry in every area of life. As our democracy becomes more mature, men have a chance of growing up and of realizing that every person is needed and has some contribution to make.” - Joshua Loth Liebman

28. “Strategy is about out-thinking your competition. Mark Zuckerberg, while at Harvard, built a website called Facemash ‘for fun’. Even today, Facebook believe that ‘done is better than perfect’.” - Max Mckeown

29. “Well, with that filly in my line of vision blushing like a virgin, something in me was bound to stand at attention. And my walking legs were occupied.” - A.G. Starling

30. “A deceitful man will go as far as to trample all over a woman’s reputation and spirit, in order to prove to his ex-love that he was faithful. The irony, is he is still in love with his ex and the new woman in his life doesn’t even realize it.” - Shannon L. Alder

31. “Certainly sand was not suitable for life. Yet, was a stationary condition absolutely indispensable for existence? Didn't unpleasant competition arise precisely because one tried to cling to a fixed position? If one were to give up a fixed position and abandon oneself to the movement of the sands, competition would soon stop. Actually, in the deserts flowers bloomed and insects and other animals lived their lives. These creatures were able to escape competition through their great ability to adjust--for example, the man's beetle family. While he mused on the effect of the flowing sands, he was seized from time to time by hallucinations in which he himself began to move with the flow.” - Kobo Abe

32. “The fiercely competitive are fierce because they don’t see themselves as competitive.” - George Hammond

33. “Resorting to lying or cheating in any competition amounts to conceding defeat.” - George Hammond

34. “I don't understand women that call themselves a "bitch". It doesn't empower a woman. Rather, it reveals to everyone that you were deeply hurt at one time. Because of the pain your still carrying, you will continue to hurt anyone that reminds you of those moments when you let your guard down and were fooled. Sadly, it sends a clear message to the observant that you are still hurt. If only women would realize that "we all" have moments of stupidity then they would stop comparing themselves to the masses.” - Shannon L. Alder

35. “Conception is not some genteel, quiet pastime; it’s a fierce and unforgiving team sport.” - Barbara Natterson-Horowitz

36. “There is no competition of sounds between a nightingale and a violin.” - Dejan Stojanovic

37. “Man is not, by nature, deserving of all that he wants. When we think that we are automatically entitled to something, that is when we start walking all over others to get it.” - Criss Jami

38. “Moderate giftedness has been made worthless by the printing press and radio and television and satellites and all that. A moderately gifted person who would have been a community treasure a thousand years ago has to give up, has to go into some other line of work, since modern communications put him or her into daily competition with nothing but the world's champions.” - Kurt Vonnegut

39. “Cruel people offer pity when they no longer feel threatened. However, kind people offer compassion and understanding regardless.” - Shannon L. Alder

40. “Managers’ responsibility is to ensure that people deliver the expected results, which are the company’s strategy. The company’s strategy, in turn, determines its competitive advantage. So, if a manager does a poor job of motivating employees’ productivity, the enterprise is a weak competitor. ” - Anna Stevens

41. “Excitement is impossible where there is no contest.” - Henry Cabot Lodge

42. “The best way to kill competition is to partner it” - siddharth joshi

43. “Competitiveness always rests on the assumption of a life-and-death struggle.” - Hugh Nibley

44. “Nobody loves the rat race, but nobody can think of anything else—Satan has us just where he wants us.” - Hugh Nibley