Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find it.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Service which is rendered without joy helps neither the servant nor the served.

Profit in business comes from repeat customers, customers that boast about your project or service, and that bring friends with them.

The golden rule for every business man is this: ‘Put yourself in your customer’s place.’

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.

The opinion of 10,000 men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject.

The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall.

They [the Americans] have all a lively faith in the perfectibility of man, they judge that the diffusion of knowledge must necessarily be advantageous, and the consequences of ignorance fatal; they all consider society as a body in a state of improvement, humanity as a changing scene, in which nothing is, or ought to be, permanent; and they admit that what appears to them today to be good, may be superseded by something better tomorrow.

It is always advisable to perceive clearly our ignorance.

When you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you do not know a thing. To allow that you do not know it—this is knowledge.

I keep six honest serving men (they taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who.