The healthiest competition occurs when average people win by putting above average effort.

Let us, then, be up and doing, With a heart for any fate; Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labor and to wait.

There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.

We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd rather not.

The tepee is much better to live in: always clean, warm in winter, cool in summer; easy to move…Indians and animals know better how to live than white man; nobody can be in good health if he does not have all the time fresh air, sunshine, and good water.

Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.

To have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part.

Now if I carry out this oath, and break it not, may I gain forever reputation among all men for my life and for my art; but if I transgress it and forswear myself, may the opposite befall me.

Lord save us all from old age and broken health and a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms.

Conscientious objectors to vaccination should stand alone, if need be, against the whole world, in defense of their conviction.

Vaccination is a barbarous practice, and it is one of the most fatal of all the delusions current in our time.

The heights by great men reached and kept Where not attained by sudden flight, But they, while their companions slept, Were toiling upward in the night.

All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness for the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in.

I did not seek greatness. I only sought to fulfill my duties.