Competitive Sports Quotes

• I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.

  Michael Jordan

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

  468 Copy quote

• Competitive sports keep alive in us a spirit and vitality. Sports teach the strong to know when they are weak and the brave to face themselves when they are afraid; to be proud and unbowed in defeat, and yet humble and gentle in victory; to master ourselves before we attempt to master others; to learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep; and to give the predominance of courage over timidity.

  Douglas MacArthur

  Sports, Strong, Humble

  67 Copy quote

• Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.

  Will Rogers

  Inspirational, Funny, Life

  "The Graduation Speech I'd Give, if Anyone Asked" by Karina Bland, www.azcentral.com. June 03, 2015.

  337 Copy quote

  Show source

• The rewards are going to come, but my happiness is just loving the sport and having fun performing.

  Jackie Joyner-Kersee

  Sports, Fun, Athlete

  21 Copy quote

• I don't know anything that builds the will to win better than competitive sports.

  Richard M. Nixon

  Sports, Winning, Will To Win

  9 Copy quote

• Any physical practice can be a competitive sport. What level you can take postures to create the maximum challenge and show your maximum skill, maximum control - it's not a combat game. It's a benefit to you.

  Rajashree Choudhury

  Sports, Practice, Games

  "The U.S. Yoga Federation Founder + President Rajashree Choudhury". Interview with Zoë Kors. Part I, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• When I was in high school I asked myself at one point: "Why do I care if my high school's team wins the football game? I don't know anybody on the team, they have nothing to do with me... why am I here and applaud? It does not make any sense." But the point is, it does make sense: It's a way of building up irrational attitudes of submission to authority and group cohesion behind leadership elements. In fact it's training in irrational jingoism. That's also a feature of competitive sports.

  Noam Chomsky

  Sports, Football, Attitude

  "Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media". Documentary, Biography, War, www.imdb.com. 1992.

  188 Copy quote

  Show source

• Soccer is a great game, and the rich variety of styles and passions that come with being truly global makes the World Cup a nonpareil event in the universe of competitive sport.

  Serge Schmemann

  Soccer, Sports, Passion

  46 Copy quote

• I consider it an actor going to work with other actors. It's not a competitive sport, it's not to outact anybody else, sorta thing, you can be a bad actor but you don't outact anybody, you just bring your character as best as you can.

  Ray Stevenson

  Sports, Character, Actors

  Source: www.ramascreen.com

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The shift from the perception of the child as innocent to the perception of the child as competent has greatly increased the demands on contemporary children for maturity, for participating in competitive sports, for early academic achievement, and for protecting themselves against adults who might do them harm. While children might be able to cope with any one of those demands taken singly, taken together they often exceed children's adaptive capacity.

  David Elkind

  Sports, Children, Taken

  9 Copy quote

• Zen students see themselves as athletes. Their competitive sport is enlightenment; only with enlightenment do we compete.

  Frederick Lenz

  Sports, Athlete, Buddhism

  4 Copy quote

• UFC is not a competitor to the WWE because we are entertainment and UFC is competitive sport. It's very different.

  Stephanie McMahon

  Sports, Ufc, Wwe

  Source: www.businessinsider.com

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• What you want to see [in Formula One] is a highly competitive sport - and the more equal it is the more exciting it is... the more volatile in the sense of results. If you have just one winner continuously it dulls the enthusiasm.

  Martin Sorrell

  Sports, Want, Enthusiasm

  Source: www.formula1.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I stay healthy - I mean, I've got a sports background and an athletic background. I was in competitive sports since the age of five. I was a personal trainer before I was an actor and a personal trainer for the first few years while I was acting and getting my thesis.

  Neil Jackson

  Sports, Mean, Years

  "Sleepy Hollow’s Neil Jackson: Embracing Passion and Health". Interview with Robert Piper, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Tennis is such an individual and competitive sport, but it is great being part of a team and getting to know the girls outside of tennis - even though we are all competing for the same thing!

  Dominika Cibulkova

  Girl, Sports, Team

  "Q&A: Dominika Cibulkova on Xperia Hot Shots". Interview with Ellen J. Horrow, www.usatoday.com. March 20, 2011.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is quite easy to debase the sport, change its values, dilute its ethics and destroy its traditional associations with quietness, relaxation and the opportunity to think. Angling is not a competitive sport. The fisherman'- s only real competition is with his quarry and his only real challenge is the challenge to himself. Nothing can add to this, but the blight of interhuman competition can certainly detract from it.

  Roderick Haig-Brown

  Sports, Real, Opportunity

  12 Copy quote

• I think as a 20-year-old you expect life to always be easy. You get given a good hand and the chance to race in Formula One. You think the driver can make the difference, can make up for everything else within the team. But that is not the case. You are racing in such a competitive sport so that doesn't happen.

  Jenson Button

  Sports, Team, Thinking

  4 Copy quote

• I've always thought that my exposure to competitive sports helped me a great deal in the operating room. It teaches you endurance, and it teaches you how to cope with defeat, and with complications of all sort. I think I'm a well-coordinated person, more than average, and I think that came through my interest in sports, and athletics... Playing basketball you have to make decisions promptly, and that's true in the operating room as well.

  Denton Cooley

  Basketball, Sports, Thinking

  "Presidential Medal of Freedom". Academy of Achievement Interview, www.achievement.org. April 11, 1991.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Slow parents understand that childrearing should not be a cross between a competitive sport and product-development. It is not a project; it's a journey. Slow parenting is about giving kids lots of love and attention with no conditions attached.

  Carl Honore

  Sports, Kids, Parenting

  8 Copy quote

• I have a love-hate relationship with the Grammys because I don't see the music world as a competitive sport.

  James Taylor

  Sports, Hate, World

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Beauty is not the goal of competitive sports, but high-level sports are a prime venue for the expression of human beauty.

  David Foster Wallace

  Sports, Expression, Goal

  David Foster Wallace (2014). “The David Foster Wallace Reader”, Hachette UK

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I perhaps could have been somewhat better. One of the interesting things about playing competitive sports as a child is that you confront your own limitations rather starkly at a certain point.

  David Foster Wallace

  Sports, Children, Interesting

  Source: blankonblank.org

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• You cannot have that attitude of where I am going to tuck my tail between my legs and go home. You have to keep going back for more. That's why cycling is a very competitive sport. You have to have determination and drive to train hard and put forth a good effort.

  Robin Farina

  Sports, Determination, Attitude

  4 Copy quote

• The weird thing about rap is that you don't get compared in the same way that athletes do, even though it's probably the most competitive sport in music. In basketball, they look at a player and say: 'This guy was the best in his prime at this sport.' But in rap it's not until you're dead or retired that people think about it like that.

  Chance the Rapper

  Basketball, Sports, Rap

  121 Copy quote

• We need to look at our nannying, mollycoddled, politically correct culture in my view, which stops kids from going out and playing competitive sport. I also think we need to look at the shear fatness of the regulations which control people who want to help kids play sport.

  Boris Johnson

  Soccer, Sports, Football

  24 Copy quote