Quotes about competition
page 8

Kenneth Chenault photo

“I want to win the right way. I’m very competitive. I’ve got a strong will to win, but I want to win the right way. That’s my focus.”

Kenneth Chenault (1951) American business executive

A Principled Leader (2004)
Context: After 9-11, I told our senior management team that this was a tremendous leadership challenge that each of us was facing and I wanted them to be courageous. I wanted them to be decisive, to not shirk away from taking tough actions. I also told them to be compassionate. If the organization believed that they were not compassionate, particularly in these times, they would lose their privilege to lead. I wouldn’t be the one to take away their leadership – the organization – the people — would. Compassion can be offered without sacrificing a sense of urgency or a strong will to win. That’s one of the values I believe in very strongly, and I talk about it in the organization. I want to win the right way. I’m very competitive. I’ve got a strong will to win, but I want to win the right way. That’s my focus.<!-- ** p. 17

Theodore Roszak photo

“The final stage of life… offers us the opportunity to detach from competitive, high-consumption priorities… At that point, life itself—the opportunity it offers for growth, for intellectual adventure, for the simple joys of love and companionship, for working out our salvation—comes to be seen as our highest value. …That is what I have always assumed it means to be countercultural.”

Theodore Roszak (1933–2011) American social historian, social critic, writer

The Making of an Elder Culture (2009)
Context: The final stage of life... offers us the opportunity to detach from competitive, high-consumption priorities... At that point, life itself—the opportunity it offers for growth, for intellectual adventure, for the simple joys of love and companionship, for working out our salvation—comes to be seen as our highest value.... That is what I have always assumed it means to be countercultural.

John F. Kennedy photo

“We are unwilling to impose our system on any unwilling people — but we are willing and able to engage in peaceful competition with any people on earth.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1963, American University speech
Context: Let us reexamine our attitude toward the cold war, remembering that we are not engaged in a debate, seeking to pile up debating points. We are not here distributing blame or pointing the finger of judgment. We must deal with the world as it is, and not as it might have been had the history of the last 18 years been different. We must, therefore, persevere in the search for peace in the hope that constructive changes within the Communist bloc might bring within reach solutions which now seem beyond us. We must conduct our affairs in such a way that it becomes in the Communists' interest to agree on a genuine peace. Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy — or of a collective death-wish for the world. To secure these ends, America's weapons are nonprovocative, carefully controlled, designed to deter, and capable of selective use. Our military forces are committed to peace and disciplined in self- restraint. Our diplomats are instructed to avoid unnecessary irritants and purely rhetorical hostility. For we can seek a relaxation of tension without relaxing our guard. And, for our part, we do not need to use threats to prove that we are resolute. We do not need to jam foreign broadcasts out of fear our faith will be eroded. We are unwilling to impose our system on any unwilling people — but we are willing and able to engage in peaceful competition with any people on earth.

Peter Kropotkin photo

“As to the sudden industrial progress which has been achieved during our own century, and which is usually ascribed to the triumph of individualism and competition, it certainly has a much deeper origin than that.”

Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1902)
Context: As to the sudden industrial progress which has been achieved during our own century, and which is usually ascribed to the triumph of individualism and competition, it certainly has a much deeper origin than that. Once the great discoveries of the fifteenth century were made, especially that of the pressure of the atmosphere, supported by a series of advances in natural philosophy — and they were made under the medieval city organization, — once these discoveries were made, the invention of the steam-motor, and all the revolution which the conquest of a new power implied, had necessarily to follow... To attribute, therefore, the industrial progress of our century to the war of each against all which it has proclaimed, is to reason like the man who, knowing not the causes of rain, attributes it to the victim he has immolated before his clay idol. For industrial progress, as for each other conquest over nature, mutual aid and close intercourse certainly are, as they have been, much more advantageous than mutual struggle.

“I like business because it is competitive.”

William Feather (1889–1981) Publisher, Author

"Why I Like Business" in Manitowoc Herald-Times (21 July 1927), p. 3 http://www.newspapers.com/newspage/8420770/
Context: I like business because it is competitive. Business keeps books. The books are the score cards. Profit is the measure of accomplishment, not the ideal measure, but the most practical that can be devised.
I like business because it compels earnestness. Amateurs and dilettantes are shoved out. Once in you must fight for survival or be carried to the sidelines.
I like business because it requires courage. Cowards do not get to first base.
I like business because It demands faith. Faith in human nature, faith in one's self, faith in one's customers, faith in one's employees.
I like business because it is the essence of life. Dreams are good, poetical fancies are good, but bread must be baked today, trains must move today, bills must be collected today, payrolls met today. Business feeds, clothes and houses man.
I like business because it rewards deeds and not words.
I like business because it does not neglect today's task while it is thinking about tomorrow.
I like business because it undertakes to please, not to reform.
I like business because it is orderly.
I like business because it is bold in enterprise.
I like business because it is honestly selfish, thereby avoiding the hypocrisy and sentimentality of the unselfish attitude.
I like business because it is promptly penalized for its mistakes, shiftlessness and inefficiency.
I like business because its philosophy works.
I like business because each day is a fresh, adventure.

“Technological competition ignites total war, which means it is not possible to contain the effects of a new technology to a limited sphere of human activity…”

Neil Postman (1931–2003) American writer and academic

Technopoly: the Surrender of Culture to Technology (1992)
Context: Technological competition ignites total war, which means it is not possible to contain the effects of a new technology to a limited sphere of human activity... What we need to consider about the computer has nothing to do with its efficiency as a teaching tool. We need to know in what ways it is altering our conception of learning, and how, in conjunction with television, it undermines the old idea of school.

Sinclair Lewis photo

“What I fight in Zenith is the standardization of thought, and, of course, the traditions of competition.”

Babbitt (1922)
Context: What I fight in Zenith is the standardization of thought, and, of course, the traditions of competition. The real villains of the piece are the clean, kind, industrious Family Men who use every known brand of trickery and cruelty to insure the prosperity of their cubs. The worst thing about these fellows is that they're so good and, in their work at least, so intelligent. You can't hate them properly, and yet their standardized minds are the enemy. ~ Ch. 7

Rupert Boneham photo

“Competition is good.”

Rupert Boneham (1964) American mentor, television personality, and politician

Rupert on the Issues (2011)

Alex Salmond photo

“The public interest is not served by parties incapable of defining their driving principles and standing their ground. Politics is either about the competition of ideas or it is about nothing.”

Alex Salmond (1954) Scottish National Party politician and former First Minister of Scotland

Strategic objectives of new Government (May 23, 2007)
Context: I do not favour the mushy ground of false consensus. The public interest is not served by parties incapable of defining their driving principles and standing their ground. Politics is either about the competition of ideas or it is about nothing. But just as the public interest is served by that competition, so it is ultimately better served by thoughtful reflection rather just than knee-jerk reaction.

Eugene V. Debs photo

“Competition was natural enough at one time, but do you think you are competing today?”

Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) American labor and political leader

The Issue (1908)
Context: Competition was natural enough at one time, but do you think you are competing today? Many of you think you are. Against whom? Against Rockefeller? About as I would if I had a wheelbarrow and competed with the Santa Fe from here to Kansas City.

“We now stand face to face with the main objection so often raised against all endeavours to remedy industrial and social diseases by the expansion of public control. …The strife, danger, and waste of industrial competition are necessary conditions to industrial vitality.”

J.A. Hobson (1858–1940) English economist, social scientist and critic of imperialism

The Evolution of Modern Capitalism: A Study of Machine Production (1906), Ch. XVII Civilisation and Industrial Development
Context: We now stand face to face with the main objection so often raised against all endeavours to remedy industrial and social diseases by the expansion of public control.... The strife, danger, and waste of industrial competition are necessary conditions to industrial vitality.<!--section 11, p. 417

Alan Watts photo
Gustave de Molinari photo

“What special reason is there that the production of security cannot be relegated to free competition?”

Gustave de Molinari (1819–1912) Belgian political economist and classical liberal theorist

Source: The Production of Security (1849), p. 24
Context: But why should there be an exception relative to security? What special reason is there that the production of security cannot be relegated to free competition? Why should it be subjected to a different principle and organized according to a different system?

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. photo
Ludwig von Mises photo

“The particular interests of the entrepreneurs and capitalists also demand interventionism to protect them against the competition of more efficient and active men. The free development of the market economy is to be recommended, not in the interest of the rich, but in the interest of the masses of the people.”

Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973) austrian economist

Ch. VII : The Economic, Social, and Political Consequences of Interventionism § 1. The Economic Consequences https://fee.org/resources/interventionism-an-economic-analysis-2#economic
Interventionism: An Economic Analysis https://fee.org/resources/interventionism-an-economic-analysis/ (1940)
Context: The unhampered market economy is not a system which would seem commendable from the standpoint of the selfish group interests of the entrepreneurs and capitalists. It is not the particular interests of a group or of individual persons that require the market economy, but regard for the common welfare. It is not true that the advocates of the free-market economy are defenders of the selfish interests of the rich. The particular interests of the entrepreneurs and capitalists also demand interventionism to protect them against the competition of more efficient and active men. The free development of the market economy is to be recommended, not in the interest of the rich, but in the interest of the masses of the people.

Konrad Lorenz photo

“The competition between human beings destroys with cold and diabolic brutality…. Under the pressure of this competitive fury we have not only forgotten what is useful to humanity as a whole, but even that which is good and advantageous to the individual….”

pp 45-47
Civilized Man's Eight Deadly Sins (1973)
Context: The competition between human beings destroys with cold and diabolic brutality.... Under the pressure of this competitive fury we have not only forgotten what is useful to humanity as a whole, but even that which is good and advantageous to the individual.... One asks, which is more damaging to modern humanity: the thirst for money or consuming haste... in either case, fear plays a very important role: the fear of being overtaken by one's competitors, the fear of becoming poor, the fear of making wrong decisions or the fear of not being up to snuff.

LeBron James photo
Alex Jones photo
Georg Simmel photo

“The eighteenth century called upon man to free himself of all the historical bonds in the state and in religion, in morals and in economics. Man’s nature, originally good and common to all, should develop unhampered. In addition to more liberty, the nineteenth century demanded the functional specialization of man and his work; this specialization makes one individual incomparable to another, and each of them indispensable to the highest possible extent. However, this specialization makes each man the more directly dependent upon the supplementary activities of all others. Nietzsche sees the full development of the individual conditioned by the most ruthless struggle of individuals; socialism believes in the suppression of all competition for the same reason. Be that as it may, in all these positions the same basic motive is at work: the person resists to being leveled down and worn out by a social technological mechanism.”

Georg Simmel (1858–1918) German sociologist, philosopher, and critic

Original: (de) Mag das 18.Jahrhundert zur Befreiung von allen historisch erwachsenen Bindungen in Staat und Religion, in Moral und Wirtschaft aufrufen, damit die ursprünglich gute Natur, die in allen Menschen die gleiche ist, sich ungehemmt entwickele; mag das 19.Jahrhundert neben der bloßen Freiheit die arbeitsteilige Besonderheit des Menschen und seiner Leistung fordern, die den Einzelnen unvergleichlich und möglichst unentbehrlich macht, ihn dadurch aber um so enger auf die Ergänzung durch alle anderen anweist; mag Nietzsche in dem rücksichtslosesten Kampf der Einzelnen oder der Sozialismus gerade in dem Niederhalten aller Konkurrenz die Bedingung für die volle Entwicklung der Individuen sehen - in alledem wirkt das gleiche Grundmotiv: der Widerstand des Subjekts, in einem gesellschaftlich-technischen Mechanismus nivelliert und verbraucht zu werden.
Source: The Metropolis and Mental Life (1903), p. 409

Joseph Addison photo
Arthur James Balfour photo
Joseph Chamberlain photo
Joseph Chamberlain photo
Bernie Sanders photo
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar photo
Paul Volcker photo
Ken Clarke photo

“When we negotiate trade agreements in the future, we will be pressing other countries to open up their public procurement processes to genuine, fair, international competition. It would be totally ridiculous to abandon that principle now to give into not only constituency pressures, which I understand, but otherwise nationalist nonsense that ought to be ignored.”

Ken Clarke (1940) British Conservative politician

Speech https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2018-03-26/debates/C8342F96-62B1-40CC-AB4A-03AFBC46ACBB/UKPassportContract#contribution-8F9BEBCD-C76E-4950-A915-40D5123A853E in the House of Commons (26 March 2018) on the awarding of the contract for the production of new UK passports to Franco-Dutch firm Gemalto
2018

Krystal Ball photo
Gustave de Molinari photo

“If the roused and insurgent consumers secure the means of production of the salt industry, in all probability they will confiscate this industry for their own profit, and their first thought will be, not to relegate it to free competition, but rather to exploit it, in common, for their own account. They will then name a director or a directive committee to operate the saltworks, to whom they will allocate the funds necessary to defray the costs of salt production. Then, since the experience of the past will have made them suspicious and distrustful, since they will be afraid that the director named by them will seize production for his own benefit, and simply reconstitute by open or hidden means the old monopoly for his own profit, they will elect delegates, representatives entrusted with appropriating the funds necessary for production, with watching over their use, and with making sure that the salt produced is equally distributed to those entitled to it. The production of salt will be organized in this manner.This form of the organization of production has been named communism.When this organization is applied to a single commodity, the communism is said to be partial.When it is applied to all commodities, the communism is said to be complete.But whether communism is partial or complete, political economy is no more tolerant of it than it is of monopoly, of which it is merely an extension.”

Gustave de Molinari (1819–1912) Belgian political economist and classical liberal theorist

Source: The Production of Security (1849), p. 31

Vladimir Putin photo
Milton Friedman photo
Alec Douglas-Home photo
Vladimir Lenin photo
J. Howard Moore photo
J. Howard Moore photo
J. Howard Moore photo
Albert Einstein photo
Michael Parenti photo
Harold Wilson photo
Hugh Gaitskell photo
George Fitzhugh photo
Benjamin Creme photo
Enoch Powell photo
Enoch Powell photo
Franklin D. Roosevelt photo

“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 (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

Speech at the People's Forum in Troy, New York http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/_resources/images/msf/msf00015 (March 3, 1912)
1910s

Teng Chia-chi photo

“We hope to accomplish sustainable progress through positive competition (between Taiwan and Mainland China) based on mutual understanding, respect and cooperation, despite the differences caused by long-term separation.”

Teng Chia-chi (1956) Taiwanese politician

Teng Chia-chi (2018) cited in " Taipei-Shanghai Twin-City Forum opens in Taipei http://focustaiwan.tw/news/acs/201812200006.aspx" on Focus Taiwan, 20 December 2018

David Lloyd George photo
C. L. R. James photo
Liam Fox photo
Johann Most photo
Friedrich Engels photo
Friedrich Engels photo
Edward Bellamy photo
Elizabeth Warren photo
Roberto Saviano photo

“Unlawful revenue which, after being conveniently cleaned, is then reinvested within the legal economy: polluting it, corrupting it, forging it, killing it. Whether it’s reinvested in the London property market, in Parisian restaurants, or in hostels on the French Riviera. Drug trafficking money will buy homes that honest folk can no longer afford; it will open shops that will sell at more competitive prices than legitimate shops; it will start businesses that can afford to be more competitive than clean businesses. But one thing must be clear: these businesses are not interested in being successful; the main purpose for which they were created was to launder money, turning money that shouldn’t even exist into clean and usable money. In silence, illegal assets are moving around and undermining our economy and our democracies. In silence. But it doesn’t stop here; organised crime is providing us with a winning economic model. Organised crime is the only segment of global economy to have not been affected by the financial crisis; to have profited from the crisis, to have fed on the crisis, to have contributed to the crisis. And it’s in the crisis that it finds its satellite activities, such as usury, gambling, counterfeiting. But the most important – and most alarming – aspect of this issue is that it’s exactly in times of crisis that criminal organisations find their safe haven in banks.”

Roberto Saviano (1979) Italian journalist, writer and essayist

Dirty Money in London event (2016)

Mark Hunt photo
Michael E. Porter photo
Mark Satin photo

“From the United States there seemed to be not one but many different kinds of movements developing … as well as a number of ideologies that already then seemed to be in competition with one another: the social ecology of Murray Bookchin, the new-age politics of Mark Satin, the appropriate technology of Amory Lovins, the ecofeminism of Carolyn Merchant, to name some of those that I became acquainted with.”

Mark Satin (1946) American political theorist, author, and newsletter publisher

Jamison, Andrew (2001). The Making of Green Knowledge: Environmental Politics and Cultural Transformation. Cambridge University Press, p. 5. ISBN 978-0-521-79252-3. The author is discussing the period of the late 1970s.
New Age and Green activism

Piero Manzoni photo
Paul Scholes photo

“For me, Paul Scholes has been the best midfield player in the Premier League. By a mile. He has the lot. He scores and creates goals, he can pass the ball, he can head it, and rounds all this off with a competitive streak.”

Paul Scholes (1974) English footballer

http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/my-all-time-xi-alan-shearer-1505383
Alan Shearer

Roger Federer photo
Robert Greene photo
Robert Greene photo

“Creating this feeling of validation is the golden key that will unlock people’s defenses. And we cannot survive and thrive in this highly competitive world without possessing such a power.”

Robert Greene (1959) American author

Chap. 7 : Soften People’s Resistance by Confirming Their Self-opinion
The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

Will Durant photo

“The principle of the family was mutual aid; but the principle of society is competition, the struggle for existence, the elimination of the weak and the survival of the strong.”

Will Durant (1885–1981) American historian, philosopher and writer

Source: Fallen Leaves (2014), Ch. 2 : On Youth

Mack Horton photo

“It feels like all my hard work has paid off and being able to back up with two big competitions this year has given me more confidence for the future and I'm really excited to see how far I can go.”

Mack Horton (1996) Australian freestyle swimmer

24 August 2014. "Mack Horton presented the Georgina Hope Foundation Rising Star of the Australian Swim Team". http://swimswam.com/mack-horton-presented-georgina-hope-foundation-rising-star-australian-swim-team/
Quote

Marilyn Ferguson photo
Max Haiven photo
Marilyn Ferguson photo

“The ideology of work and the ethics of effort therefore become cover for ultra-competitive egoism and careerism: the best succeed, the others have only themselves to blame; hard work should be encouraged and rewarded, which therefore means we should not subsidize the unemployed, the poor and all the other 'layabouts.'”

André Gorz (1923–2007) austrian philosopher

This ideology (which in Europe finds its most overt expression in Thatcherism) is strictly rational, as far as capitalism is concerned: the aim to motivate a workforce which cannot easily be replaced (for the moment, at least) and control it ideologically for want of a means of controlling it physically. In order to do this, it must preserve the work-force's adherence to the work ethic, destroy the relations of solidarity that could bind it to the less fortunate, and persuade it that by doing as much work as possible it will best serve the collective interest as well as its own private interests. It will thus be necessary to conceal the fact that. there is an increasing structural glut of workers and an increasing structural shortage of secure, full-time jobs; in short, that the economy no longer needs everyone to work - and will do so less and less. And that; as a consequence, the 'society of work' is obsolete: work can no longer serve as the basis for social integration. But, to conceal these facts it is necessary to find alternative explanations for the rise in unemployment" and the decrease in job security. It will thus be asserted that casual labourers and the unemployed are not serious about looking for work; do not possess adequate skills, are encouraged to be idle by over~ generous dole payments and so on. And, it will be added, these people are all paid far too much for the little they are able to do, with the result that the economy, which is groaning under the weight of these excessive burdens, is no longer buoyant enough to create a growing number of jobs. And the conclusion will be reached that, 'To end unemployment, we have to work more.'

pp. 69-70 https://books.google.com/books?id=WbpvDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA69
Critique of Economic Reason, 1988

Benjamin Creme photo
Benjamin Creme photo
Benjamin Creme photo
Benjamin Creme photo
Marianne Williamson photo
Benjamin Creme photo

“I don't like playing politics, I don't like having bosses and being told what to do, I don't like competition, I have no desire to manage other people, so I've instinctively avoided or quickly left any places that were even remotely maze-like.”

Wei Dai Cryptocurrency pioneer and computer scientist

In a discussion thread https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/a8wjKNSGCPSzdWMMa/how-to-escape-from-immoral-mazes#tggw3zpPyuGgrAttt on LessWrong, January 2020

Benjamin Creme photo
Jacques Delors photo

“What is perceived as a cost by some will turn out to be the competitive advantage of Europe by helping maintain a well-trained, secure workforce, open to change.”

Jacques Delors (1925) French economist and politician

Speech to a Trades Union Congress conference in London (31 August 1994), quoted in The Times (1 September 1994), p. 25
President of the European Commission

Florence Nightingale photo

“I agree as to the doubtful value of competitive examination. The qualities which you really want, viz., self-control, self-reliance, habits of accurate thought, integrity and what you generally call trustworthiness, are not decided by competitive examination, which test little else than the memory.”

Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing

Source: Letter to Lord Stanley (May 17, 1857), published in Florence Nightingale on Wars and the War Office: Collected Works of Florence Nightingale. Vol. 15 (2011), edited by Lynn McDonald, p. 265. ( online on google books https://books.google.at/books?id=NvJ0CwAAQBAJ&pg=PA265)

Rand Paul photo
Milton Friedman photo
Milton Friedman photo
Warren Farrell photo

“Sensitivity to the death and suffering of boys and men is in competition with our survival instinct.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: The Boy Crisis (2018), pp. 36

Dorothy Thompson photo
John F. Kennedy photo
Benjamin Creme photo
Benjamin Disraeli photo
Umair Ahmad photo

“Competition reduces people's creativity. And the trend of copying is increasing. Ungratefulness comes from comparison, and comparison comes from competition.”

Umair Ahmad (1997) Businessman

Speaking to journalist Iftikhar Ahmad (December 2017) as quoted in Media Imperialism in India and Pakistan (2019) by Farooq Sulehria, p. 59