When a man can do better than everyone else in the same walk, he does not make any very painful exertions to outdo himself. The progress of improvement ceases nearly at the point where competition ends.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Personal growth is not a matter of learning new information but of unlearning old limits.

Never seem more learned than the people you are with. Wear your learning like a pocket watch and keep it hidden. Do not pull it out to count the hours, but give the time when you are asked.

Liberty without Learning is always in peril and Learning without Liberty is always in vain.

Learning is the only thing the mind never exhausts, never fears, and never regrets.

The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual; and, exhibited in the lives of many, it continues the true source of national vigor and strength. Help from without is often enfeebling in its effects, but help from within invariably invigorates.

Re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body.

The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think.

Forgive but do not forget, or you will be hurt again. Forgiving changes the perspectives, forgetting loses the lesson.