Quotes About Competition

Don’t look back.  Someone might be gaining on you.

— Leroy (Satchel) Paige

I don’t meet competition.  I crush it.

— Charles Revson

Don’t overlook the importance of worldwide thinking.  A company that keeps its eye on Tom, Dick, and Harry is going to miss Pierre, Hans, and Yoshio.

— Al Ries

Like getting into a bleeding competition with a blood bank.

— Richard Branson, chairman, Virgin Airlines, on competing with British Airways

When two men in business always agree, one of them is unnecessary.

— William Wrigley, Jr.

 “Know thyself” is a good saying, but not in all situations.  In many it is better to say “Know others.”

— Menander

Trust everybody, but cut the cards.

— Finley Peter Dunne

Put your trust in God; but be sure to keep your powder dry.

— Oliver Cromwell

Don’t fight a battle if you don’t gain anything by winning.

— General George S. Patton, Jr.

A verbal agreement isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.

— Louis B. Mayer (attrib.)

Forget your opponents; always play against par.

— Sam Snead

A man surprised is half beaten.

— Thomas Fuller

Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.

— Gore Vidal

As he was valiant, I honor him; but as he was ambitious, I slew him.

— William Shakespeare

All our foes are mortal.

— Paul Valery

The shaft of the arrow had been feathered with one of the eagles’s own plumes.  We often give our enemies the means of our destruction.

— Aesop

There are only two ways of getting on in the world: by one’s own industry, or by the weaknesses of others.

— Jean de La Bruyere

Next to knowing when to seize an opportunity, the most important thing in life is to know when to forego an advantage.

— Benjamin Disraeli

There is hardly anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper.

— John Ruskin

We can’t all be lions in this world.  There must be some lambs, harmless, kindly, gregarious creatures for eating and shearing.

— William Makepeace Thackeray

We must believe in luck.  For how else can we explain the success of those we don’t like?

— Jean Cocteau

While one person hesitates because he feels inferior, the other is busy making mistakes and becoming superior.

— Henry C. Link

The world is divided into people who do things and people who get the credit.  Try, if you can, to belong to the first class.  There’s far less competition.

— Dwight Morrow

Making money resembles chess in [many] ways, not least its cozy relationship with mathematics, still more in its abundance of traps, ploys, gambits, stratagems, variations, even in its recognized offensive and defensive openings.  As in chess, the moneymaker gains more through his opponent’s mistakes than through his own immaculate brilliance, and for every winner, there must be at least one loser.

— Robert Heller