45 Competition Quotes to Ignite Your Competitive Spirit

1. “Competition is always a good thing. It forces us to do our best.” – Nancy Pearcey

2. “The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.” - Willie Nelson

3. "Competition has been shown to be useful up to a certain point and no further, but cooperation, which is the thing we must strive for today, begins where competition leaves off." - Franklin D. Roosevelt

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

5. “A horse never runs so fast as when he has other horses to catch up and outpace.” - Ovid

6. "A successful competition for me is always going out there and putting 100 percent into whatever I'm doing. It's not always winning. People, I think, mistake that it's just winning. Sometimes it could be, but for me, it's hitting the best sets I can, gaining confidence, and having a good time and having fun." - Simone Biles

7. "Without competition, the spectacular development of technology that we have seen in the last one hundred years in this country would not have happened." - Lee R. Raymond

8. "Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best; it removes all that is base. All men are afraid in battle. The coward is the one who lets his fear overcome his sense of duty. Duty is the essence of manhood." - George S. Patton

9. "Your competition is not other people but the time you kill, the ill will you create, the knowledge you neglect to learn, the connections you fail to build, the health you sacrifice along the path, your inability to generate ideas, the people around you who don't support and love your efforts, and whatever god you curse for your bad luck." - James Altucher

10. "Competition is the best form of motivation." - Cordae

11. "Competition is always a good thing. It forces us to do our best. A monopoly renders people complacent and satisfied with mediocrity." - Nancy Pearcey

12. "The healthiest competition occurs when average people win by putting above average effort." - Colin Powell

13. "You learn so much from competition you gain confidence every time you have to step up and perform" - Natalie

14. "Competition brings out the best in products and the worst in people." - David Sarnoff

15. "Competition is like a treadmill. If you stand still, you get swept off. But when you run, you can never really get ahead of the treadmill and cover new terrain - so you never run faster than the speed that is set." - Raghuram Rajan

1. "Competition is not only the basis of protection to the consumer, but is the incentive to progress." - Herbert Hoover

2. “Companies that solely focus on competition will die. Those that focus on value creation will thrive.” - Edward de Bono

3. “If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete.” - Jack Welch

4. “The best way to kill competition is to partner it.” - Siddharth Joshi

5. “The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time.” - Henry Ford

6. "In the long run, your human capital is your main base of competition. Your leading indicator of where you're going to be 20 years from now is how well you're doing in your education system." - Bill Gates

7. “In business, the competition will bite you if you keep running; if you stand still, they will swallow you.” - Victor Kiam

8. "The most meaningful way to differentiate your company from your competition, is to do an outstanding job with information." - Bill Gates

9. "It's competition that forces companies to get out of their complacency." - John Mackey

10. "Control your expenses better than your competition. This is where you can always find the competitive advantage." - Sam Walton

1. "There are victories of the soul and spirit. Sometimes, even if you lose, you win." - Elie Wiesel

2. "Sooner or later, those who win are those who think they can." - Paul Tournier

3. "The will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to reach your full potential... these are the keys that will unlock the door to personal excellence." - Confucius

4. "We have to keep winning and looking good and keep fighting the best competition out there." - Errol Spence Jr.

5. "We want to be first; not first if, not first but; but first!" - John F. Kennedy

6. "Live daringly, boldly, fearlessly. Taste the relish to be found in competition - in having put forth the best within you." - Henry J. Kaiser

7. "Life is a competition not with others, but with ourselves. We should seek each day to live stronger, better, truer lives; each day to master some weakness of yesterday; each day to repair a mistake; each day to surpass ourselves." - David B. Haight

8. "If you're a true warrior, competition doesn't scare you. It makes you better." - Andrew Whitworth

9. "You have competition every day because you set such high standards for yourself that you have to go out every day and live up to that." - Michael Jordan

10. "Believing that your competition is stronger and better than you pushes you to better yourselves." - Simon Sinek

11. "It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog." - Mark Twain

12. "Winning isn't getting ahead of others, it is getting ahead of yourself." - Roger Staubach

13. "You can't control what the other athlete is going to do; you can't control anything except for your competition and how you execute the race or how you execute the task." - Michael Johnson

14. "For me, half the joy of achieving has been the struggle and the fight, the pitting myself against the world and all its competition - and winning." - Conrad Veidt

15. "The ultimate victory in competition is derived from the inner satisfaction of knowing that you have done your best and that you have gotten the most out of what you had to give." - Howard Cosell

1. "Real learning comes about when the competitive spirit has ceased." - Jiddu Krishnamurti

2. "Competitive spirit is still at a premium. The more you win, the better you play, the more money you make, so they all have that in mind." - Wayne Gretzky

3. "It's a rough and tumble game whenever power is involved - people's ambitions, their desires, their competitive spirit will often push them to play outside the rules. It's dramatic, it's interesting, and I think it's something we can all identify with to a degree." - Beau Willimon

4. "Society asks of most men more than sheer intellect ability-it demands also moral hardiness, self-discipline, a competitive spirit and other qualities that in more old-fashioned terms we might simply call character." - Julius Adams Stratton

5. "I mentioned the non-competitive spirit explicitly, because these days, excellence is a fashionable concept. But excellence is a competitive notion, and that is not what we are heading for: we are heading for perfection." - Edsger Dijkstra