Quotes About Competitive Sports

#1. 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

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

Richard M. Nixon

#3. 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

#4. That's what Major League Baseball's steroid scandal was all about, the hidden harm in competitive sports that sends the wrong message to the young.

Suzanne Fields

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

Frederick Lenz

#6. I know how difficult my rookie year in the NFL was and I know how competitive this sport is.

Troy Aikman

#7. 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

#8. I'm a competitive person and I love the challenge of mastering new things.

Sasha Cohen

#9. There's nothing masculine about being competitive. There's nothing masculine about trying to be the best at everything you do, nor is there anything wrong with it. I don't know why a female athlete has to defend her femininity just because she chooses to play sports.

Rebecca Lobo

#10. Wrestling is such a competitive sport worldwide.

Kurt Angle

#11. The sport of competitive memorizing is driven by a kind of arms race where every year somebody comes up with a new way to remember more stuff more quickly, and then the rest of the field has to play catch-up.

Joshua Foer

#12. Professional tennis has become an extremely physical and unbelievably competitive sport. Injuries are the bane of tennis players, and it goes with the territory.

Sania Mirza

#13. Writing is not a competitive sport. Everyone that writes has his or her own voice.

Raymond E. Feist

#14. I won't have any competitive instincts in any sports, other than golf. I can't see being competitive in sports any more.

Michael Jordan

#15. To be successful in anything, a person must always want to be better, not only than your opponent but better than your last performance. Done correctly, being competitive is a wonderful way to always try to be a better person by learning from your mistakes and capitalizing on your successes.

Hale Irwin

#16. Bringing more large sporting events to Africa would help the continent develop sports policies and at the same time optimize its peoples' chances of achieving competitive success.

Richard Attias

#17. First of all, it would be great for world football to have a competitive Chinese team as China traditionally has deep relation to sports in general.

Berti Vogts

#18. I cannot consider fighting in competitive Manly Fun any more than I can consider pitting my running, swimming or climbing body against other bodies. Nothing, then, or now, arouses me or will ever arouse me from a perfect disinterest in ball games.

Hal Porter

#19. It's the nature of the beast, playing sports on the ski team and how competitive all of us are. I want to beat everybody's time.

Ted Ligety

#20. I was told over and over again that I would never be successful, that I was not going to be competitive and the technique was simply not going to work. All I could do was shrug and say "We'll just have to see".

Dick Fosbury

#21. I love tennis! I've always felt like this because it is such a classy sport with a great, competitive flair to it.

Roger Federer

#22. I love the sport and being competitive.

Zara Phillips

#23. In Los Angeles, parenting is a competitive sport. From Beverly Hills baby boutiques to kids' yoga classes, L.A. fuses high style, industrial-strength materialism, and parental outsourcing into our own unique version of child-rearing.

Shawn Amos

#24. Competition is key to developing players. The only practice environment in which you truly develop a player is a competitive arena.

Anson Dorrance

#25. The sport is definitely growing, and has become much more competitive. When I started, you were either a former swimmer or runner who took up triathlons. Now, you have a generation of triathletes coming up that started competing at a young age - these are the people that will change the game.

Timothy O'Donnell

#26. 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

#27. There are two aspects to being competitive; one is to do with sports, and the other is about technical skills. Being able to recollect the moves and apply them when necessary is a critical aspect.

Viswanathan Anand

#28. I've been lucky to ride 10 different horses at the Olympics. I'd like to think that of all of them, Big Ben - who was inducted into the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame - would still be competitive in the contemporary sport.

Ian Millar

#29. I missed being considered an athlete and having that competitive drive, and missed having something to work for every day. I'd taken two and a half years away from the sport and was out of shape. I wanted to get back to where I was in 2008.

Shawn Johnson

#30. Creating deluxe cuisine is like playing a sport. Always competitive. Always challenging. And if you slow down a bit, you can no longer return to the top level.

Joel Robuchon

#31. Fencing is a funny sport. Competitive fencing is not really very applicable to the stage world unless you're fighting with a rapier during the Renaissance, you know?

Kris Holden-Ried

#32. My mom played every sport possible. My dad is 'extremely' competitive. You can't even play Ping-Pong with him.

Kate Upton

#33. There is no sport as competitive as business. It's 24 by 7 by 365 by forever.

Mark Cuban

#34. I'm not a huge soccer fan, but I follow the sport. I played in high school, a little bit in college, played on various club teams most of my life, and all three of my sons are competitive soccer players and far better than I ever was.

Hampton Sides

#35. It's a very competitive thing, pro sports. The hardest thing in pro sports is staying up there.

Joe Gibbs

#36. So I developed very early a massive inferiority complex, and I've told the story often about how that inspired me later in life to get involved in other things, because I couldn't out-do my brothers in sports, and it's a very competitive relationship.

George J. Mitchell

#37. I want to see where I measure up against everyone in the world and everyone who has ever competed in the sport, and there's that innate sense of wanting to challenge myself. I'm competitive in all aspects.

Ashton Eaton

#38. Everybody recognises that giving young people competitive outlet through sport is a very good thing.

Sebastian Coe

#39. One of the reasons I'm an actor is because I was no physical specimen as a child. I wasn't athletic and didn't have any prowess in that regard. Growing up in Kentucky, most little boys were trying to get into sports, and it was very competitive, so that was not to be. But I did want to do something.

Michael Shannon

#40. If you do what you did yesterday you'll be beaten. If you do today what others are doing you'll be competitive. To win you much be doing today what others will be doing tomorrow.

Robert De Castella

#41. 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

#42. Competitive Skaters must be prepared for a lot of work, challenges, self-discipline, and motivation. The desire must be there, but more importantly, your love for the sport.

Oksana Baiul

#43. Only three or four outs directly affect the outcome of any given game ... One of the greatest challenges of pitching is to recognize these critical situations and rise to the occasion with consistency and a competitive spirit.

Tom Seaver

#44. I've been an athlete all my life. I was a competitive figure skater, and then when I realized skating was not an adult sport I took up tennis and played that quite seriously from the time I was about 18.

Condoleezza Rice

#45. 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

#46. But my point is that competitive eating is a real sport, and I considered taking it up. But when I thought about what this would mean sitting around for hours, stuffing my face with unhealthy food I realized it was basically the same thing as journalism.

Dave Barry

#47. The trick with hip-hop-hip-hop is a sport. The only music that's really, really close to a sport. It starts off, "My DJ's better than yours. I can out-rap you, I can out-dance you, my graffiti piece is better than you." It's very competitive.

Ice-T

#48. I do genuinely believe that young people who play sport at a competitive level, sensibly controlled, sensibly organised, that has to be a good thing. It will teach them to win, it will teach them to lose with dignity and magnanimity - all the things you want. It's a pretty good metaphor for life.

Sebastian Coe

#49. It's the quintessential Greek sport: harmonious, competitive, agonizing, nautical, and above all, intelligent. It combines Odysseus's brains and brawn and love of the sea with the tactical precision of the Spartan pikeman.

Barry S. Strauss

#50. I feel like I'm the most competitive driver in the motorhome lot. No matter what it is - whether we're racing, playing another sport or deciding who can run to that sign and back faster - I feel like I'm the most competitive person alive.

Denny Hamlin

#51. Running is perhaps the most fundamental of all sports, and it is economically the least costly to perform. As a consequence, it is the most democratic and most competitive of all sports because individual merit can prevail despite economic equality. It is a sport for everyone, the whole world over.

Bernd Heinrich

#52. In wheelchair sports, people thought athletes with disabilities were courageous and inspirational. They never give them credit for simply being competitive.

Jean Driscoll

#53. The ability to learn faster than your competitors may be only sustainable competitive advantage.

Arie De Geus

#54. Theater is such a collaborative art. Hollywood is a competitive sport.

Rocky Carroll

#55. I like to think about music as a sport. But only in terms of golf, as far as the course being music and me being the golfer. So it's competitive but only with yourself. With the last one doing well, it made it a challenge to feel like I was improving in some way.

Panda Bear

#56. I probably went into sports with a sense of competitiveness and came out of it even more competitive.

Mike Duke

#57. 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

#58. I wouldn't give one iota to make a trip from the cradle to the grave unless I could live in a competitive world.

Adolph Rupp

#59. 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

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

Stephanie McMahon

#61. Dancing was my sport when I was younger. So I chose that over everything. And then, I just had to keep going because it became a competitive thing. But I'm not trying to impress anyone anymore. Dancing is more like my art, now.

Heather Morris

#62. Men's competitive team sports focus on the balance between individual achievement and team achievement with the emphasis on team achievement.

Warren Farrell

#63. I'd just like to be good at sports. I'm extremely competitive with absolutely nothing to back it up.

Kaitlin Olson