COMPARISON / COMPETITION

Related States & Conditions | Syntonic | Dystonic

Scorn also to depress thy competitor by any dishonest or unworthy method; strive to raise thyself above them by excelling them; so shall thy contest for superiority to be crowned with honor, if not with success.
Khemetic Saying
Temt Tchaas: Egyptian Proverbs , Muata Ashaya Ashby, ed.

When you are content to be simply yourself and don't compare or compete, everybody will respect you.
Laozi
570-490 BCE, Chinese Philosopher, Founder of Daoism

When you see a noble man, try to equal him. When you see an evil man, examine yourself thoroughly.
Kongfuzi
c. 551-c. 479 BCE, Chinese Philosopher, Educator, Political Theorist

There is nothing noble in being superior to some other person. True nobility comes from being superior to your previous self.
Hindu Saying

One may certainly enter into loving rivalry with a disciple of one's guru or with anybody else. That is, we can take everybody who can do something better than we as our ideal and advance. There should be no trace of envy in this … In such rivalry, we should wish in our heart that the person whom we have accepted as our ideal will improve his skill day by day, so that the ideal which we seek to attain will always be rising higher as we progress.
Mahatma Gandhi
1869-1948, Indian Spiritual Leader
Letter to Paraswam Mehrotra, The Essential Writings of Mahatma Gandhi , Raghavan Iyer, ed., 1993

You don't have to blow out the other fellow's light to let your own shine.
Bernard Baruch
1870-1965, American Financier, Statesman, Writer

If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Max Ehrmann
1872-1945, German-American Lawyer, Poet
Desiderata , 1927

As soon as you concern yourself with the "good" and "bad" of your fellows, you create an opening in your heart for maliciousness to enter. Testing, competing with, and criticizing others weaken and defeat you.
Morihei Ueshiba
1883-1969, Japanese Martial Artist, Founder of Aikido
The Art of Peace , John Stevens, tr., 1992

Let us not try to be the best or worst of others, but let us make the effort to be the best of ourselves.
Marcus Garvey
1887-1940, Jamaican Pan-African Leader, Writer

Real learning comes about when the competitive spirit has ceased. The competitive spirit is merely an additive process which is not learning at all. This is true not only of competition with others, but competition with yourself as well.
Krishnamurti
1895-1986, Indian Philosopher, Writer

Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.
William Faulkner
1897-1962, American Writer, Nobel Laureate

You will never leave scars on your own psyche if you achieve success through harmonious cooperation with others. That is something you can't say about fortunes acquired through conflict and unfair competition.
W. Clement Stone
1902-, American Motivational Trainer, Writer
in Samuel A. Cypert, Believe and Achieve: W. Clement Stone's 17 Principles of Success , 1991

There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.
Nelson Mandela
1918-, South African Liberator, President, 1993 Nobel Laureate
Long Walk to Freedom , 1994

The joy of this quest is not in triumph over others, but in the search for the qualities we share with them and for our uniqueness, which raises us above all competition.
Theodore Roszak
1933-, American Scholar

Our business in life is not to get ahead of others, but to get ahead of ourselves – to break our own records, to outstrip our yesterday by our today.
- Stewart B. Johnson

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Wisdom for The Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing, © 2004