I worked very hard. I felt I could play the game. The only thing that could stop me was myself.
You have to be able to center yourself, to let all of your emotions go... Don't ever forget that you play with your soul as well as your body.
It has meant a lot to me to challenge the best players in the world and to beat them. And it means a lot to me to be out here and fighting for the title and, you know, it hurts not to win it.
How can we hope to remain economically competitive in a world in which... 90% of Dutch high-school students take advanced math courses and 100% of teachers in Germany have double majors, while the best we can say about our pocket of excellence is that 75% of [American] students have learned to critique tactfully?
World trade means competition from anywhere; advancing technology encourages cross-industry competition. Consequently, strategic planning must consider who our future competitors will be, not only who is here today.
The Law of Win/Win says, Let's not do it your way or my way; let's do it the best way.
What it comes down to is that anybody can win with the best horse. What makes you good is if you can take the second or third-best horse and win.
Thank God for competition. When our competitors upset our plans or outdo our designs, they open infinite possibilities of our own work to us.
Competitions are for horse, not artist.
I love the winning, I can take the losing, but most of all I Love to play.
To free the mind from the habit of competition, we must see in detail the process by which the mind is ensnared by competition.
Competition is a process or variety of habitual behavior that grows out of a habit of mind.
The game isn't over until it's over.
You must not fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all your tricks of war.
Becoming number one is easier than remaining number one.
Show me a guy who is afraid to look bad, and I'll show you a guy you can beat every time.
Focus on competition has always been a formula for mediocrity.
Somebody will always break your records. It is how you live that counts.
Our life is not really a mutual helpfulness; but rather, it's fair competition cloaked under due laws of war; it's a mutual hostility.
The price which society pays for the law of competition, like the price it pays for cheap comforts and luxuries, is great; but the advantages of this law are also greater still than its cost -- for it is to this law that we owe our wonderful material development, which brings improved conditions in its train. But, whether the law be benign or not, we must say of it: It is here; we cannot evade it; no substitutes for it have been found; and while the law may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it ensures the survival of the fittest in every department.
I don't psyche myself up. I psyche myself down. I think clearer when I'm not psyched up.
Everybody pulls for David, nobody roots for Goliath.
Thou shalt not covet; but tradition approves all forms of competition.
The general fact is that the most effective way of utilizing human energy is through an organized rivalry, which by specialization and social control is, at the same time, organized co-operation.
It's amazing how much of this is mental. Everybody's in good shape. Everybody knows how to ski. Everybody has good equipment. When it really boils down to it, it's who wants it the most, and who's the most confident on his skis.
I believe in rules. Sure I do. If there weren't any rules, how could you break them?
What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight; it's the size of the fight in the dog.
You must sacrifice, train, do everything possible to put yourself in a position to win. But if you consider second or third a failure, I feel sorry for you.
You get out in front -- you stay out in front.
It is better for a woman to compete impersonally in society, as men do, than to compete for dominance in her own home with her husband, compete with her neighbors for empty status, and so smother her son that he cannot compete at all.
There are two kinds of people: Those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group because there is less competition there.
The ability to learn faster than your competitors may be only sustainable competitive advantage.
Hail Caesar, those who are about to die salute you.
No wise combatant underestimates their antagonist.
Surely the best way to meet the enemy is head on in the field and not wait till they plunder our very homes.
Racing is a matter of spirit not strength.
Every time you go out on the ice, there are slight flaws. You can always think of something you should have done better. These are the things you must work on.
Men often compete with one another until the day they die; comradeship consists of rubbing shoulders jocularly with a competitor.
I play [golf] with friends sometimes, but there are never friendly games.
How you respond to the challenge in the second half will determine what you become after the game, whether you are a winner or a loser.
The biggest things are often the easiest to do because there is so little competition.
You find that you have peace of mind and can enjoy yourself, get more sleep, and rest when you know that it was a one hundred percent effort that you gave -- win or lose.
Do your work with your whole heart, and you will succeed -- there's so little competition.
And what is the greatest number? Number one.
The only competition worthy a wise man is with himself.
Running for money doesn't make you run fast. It makes you run first.
Once your physically capable of winning a gold medal, the rest is ninety percent mental.
We want to be first; not first if, not first but; but first!
The medals don't mean anything and the glory doesn't last. It's all about your happiness. The rewards are going to come, but my happiness is just loving the sport and having fun performing.
You have no control over what the other guy does. You only have control over what you do.
Mental toughness is to physical as four is to one.
When the game is over it is really just beginning.
Man is a gaming animal. He must always be trying to get the better in something or other.
When you want to win a game, you have to teach. When you lose a game, you have to learn.
I watch a man shoot pool for an hour. If he misses more than one shot I know I can beat him.
The time your game is most vulnerable is when you're ahead, never let up.
Competition is the spice of sports; but if you make spice the whole meal you'll be sick.
A competitor will find a way to win. Competitors take bad breaks and use them to drive themselves just that much harder. Quitters take bad breaks and use them as reasons to give up. It's all a matter of pride.
He can run but he can't hide.
I consider myself one of a very small handful of drivers in the world that are top drivers. The best one? I don't think anybody can say they're the best one because, from one week to the next, you can be on form or off form a little bit.
When you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.
So long as the system of competition in the production and exchange of the means of life goes on, the degradation of the arts will go on; and if that system is to last for ever, then art is doomed, and will surely die; that is to say, civilization will die.
I don't compete with other discus throwers. I compete with my own history.
Playing safe is only playing.
This is a tough game. There are times when you've got to play hurt, when you've got to block out the pain.
These are the days when it takes all you've got just to keep up with the losers.
A horse never runs so fast as when he has other horses to catch up and outpace.
— Ovid
Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you.
You must play boldly to win.
I don't care how good you play, you can find somebody who can beat you, and I don't care how bad you play, you can find somebody you can beat.
There is nothing noble in being superior to some other person. The true nobility is in being superior to your previous self.
After the game the King and pawn go into the same box.
One cannot play chess if one becomes aware of the pieces as living souls and of the fact that the Whites and the Blacks have more in common with each other than with the players. Suddenly one loses all interest in who will be champion.
For when the One Great Scorer comes to mark against your name, He writes -- not that you won or lost -- but how you played the Game.
I won it, at least five million times. Men who were stronger, bigger and faster than I was could have done it, but they never picked up a pole, and never made the feeble effort to pick their legs off the ground and get over the bar.
You have to defeat a great players aura more than his game.
Win or lose, do it fairly.
My hat's in the ring. The fight is on and I'm stripped to the buff.
In this game, by trying to win; you automatically lose.
The difference of great players is at a certain point in a match they raise their level of play and maintain it. Lesser players play great for a set, but then less.
Every man in the world is better than someone else and not as good someone else.
When you step onto that field, you cannot concede a thing.
The weakness of an enemy forms part of our own strength.
— Saying
Competition is the whetstone of talent.
— Saying
Strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends.
When you fear a foe, fear crushes your strength; and this weakness gives strength to your opponents.
Enjoy the successes that you have, and don't be too hard on yourself when you don't do well. Too many times we beat up on ourselves. Just relax and enjoy it.
When you're riding, only the race in which you're riding is important.
If you make every game a life and death proposition, you're going to have problems. For one thing, you'll be dead a lot.
Most games are lost, not won.
I ski to win. When the day comes that I can't get myself into a fighting mood anymore, I won't be able to win and I'll stop racing.
If football taught me anything about business, it is that you win the game one play at a time.
How can they beat me? I've been struck by lightning, had two back operations, and been divorced twice.
We have a lot of players in their first year. Some of them are also in their last year.
The key to any game is to use your strengths and hide your weaknesses.
When I go our on the ice, I just think about my skating. I forget it is a competition.
The person who figures out how to harness the collective genius of his or her organization is going to blow the competition away.