Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.

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.

Anytime you find someone more successful than you are, especially when you’re both engaged in the same business – you know they’re doing something that you aren’t.

The only competition worthy of a wise man is with himself.

Do your work with your whole heart, and you will succeed—there's so little competition.

Every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of any man or order of men.

Winners compare their achievements with their goals, while losers compare their achievements with those of other people.

I’m not in competition with anybody but myself. My goal is to beat my last performance.

You have competition every day because you set such high standards for yourself that you have to go out every day and live up to that.

Every man in the world is better than someone else and not as good someone else.

While the law [of competition] may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it insures the survival of the fittest in every department. We accept and welcome, therefore, as conditions to which we must accommodate ourselves, great inequality of environment, the concentration of business, industrial and commercial, in the hands of a few, and the law of competition between these, as being not only beneficial, but essential for the future progress of the race.

Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.

It cannot be your duty to do anything that is beyond your reach or your strength at the moment. It cannot be your duty to do anything that sacrifices your own integrity or your own spiritual development.

Perfect wisdom has four parts; Wisdom, the principle of doing things right. Justice, the principle of doing things equally in public and private. Fortitude, the principle of not fleeing danger, but meeting it. Temperance, the principle of subduing desires and living moderately.

Rest satisfied with doing well, and leave others to talk of you as they will.

All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows he knows his course is wrong and repairs the evil. The only crime is pride.

If you are ever tempted to look for outside approval, realize that you have compromised your integrity.

When we seek to discover the best in others, we somehow bring out the best in ourselves.

If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.

All limitations are self-imposed.

I’m fascinated with myself and love hearing the sound of my own voice. I’d like to hear what I have to say. A lot of people don’t like being alone because they truly don’t like themselves, but I love me.

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.

The clearest way in the Universe is through a forest wilderness.

I do nothing upon myself, and yet am mine own executioner.

Only when we realize that there is no eternal, unchanging truth or absolute truth can we arouse in ourselves a sense of intellectual responsibility.

If you are ever tempted to look for outside approval, realize that you have compromised your own integrity. If you need a witness, be your own.

Conquer yourself rather than the world.

A friend is as it were a second self.

You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, buy you will never imprison my mind.