Primary navigation:

QFINANCE Quick Links
QFINANCE Topics
QFINANCE Reference
Ask the Financial Experts Add the QFINANCE search widget to your website

Home > Financial Quotes > Competition

Financial Quotes

Competition Quotes

  • "Thou shalt not covet, but tradition
    Approves all forms of competition.    "
    Arthur Hugh Clough (1819–1861), British poet
    Source: “The Latest Decalogue” (1862), ll. 19-20
  • "If we had just continued the way we were going, we would end up being nibbled to death."
    Sir David Michels (1946–), British former CEO of Hilton Hotels
    Referring to competition from smaller companies on the Internet.
    Source: Sunday Times (London) (May 2000)
  • "I feel sorry for those who live without competition…fat, dumb, and unhappy in cradle-to-grave security."
    Donald M. Kendall (1921–), US Former CEO of PepsiCo
    Source: Quoted in How to Manage (Ray Wild, 1995)
  • "Competition as most of us have routinely thought of it is dead."
    James F. Moore (1948–), US writer and business consultant
    Source: The Death of Competition (1997)
  • "Without vassal loyalty, or abject vassal fear, the monopolist's sleep can never be secure."
    Joseph Furphy (1843–1912), Australian journalist, novelist, and poet
    Source: Such Is Life (1903)
  • "This is not an age of castles, moats, and armor where people can sustain a competitive advantage for very long."
    Richard D'Aveni (1950–), US strategist
    Source: “The Mavericks,” Fortune (June 1995)
  • "In a garage somewhere, an entrepreneur is forging a bullet with your company's name on it."
    Gary Hamel (1954–), US academic, business writer, and consultant
    Source: Digital Britain (January 2000)
  • "When the competition is moving at 200 miles an hour, every second you're in the pits matters a lot."
    Doug Nelson (1944–), US regional vice president of Altria Group Inc. (formerly Philip Morris)
    Source: “The Mavericks,” Fortune (June 1995)
  • "All business sagacity reduces itself in the last analysis to a judicious use of sabotage."
    Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929), US economist and social scientist
    Source: An Inquiry into the Nature of Peace and the Terms of Its Perpetuation (1917)
  • "The goal of competitors is to prevail, not to preserve competition in the markets."
    George Soros (1930–), US financier, entrepreneur, and philanthropist
    Source: Atlantic Monthly (January 1998)
  • "Microsoft has had clear competitors in the past. It's a good thing we have museums to document that."
    Bill Gates (1955–), US entrepreneur, cofounder and chairman of Microsoft
    Source: Speech at the Computer History Museum (October 2001)
  • "I believe that if you're going to take someone on, you might as well take on the biggest brand in the world."
    Sir Richard Branson (1950–), British entrepreneur, business executive, and founder of the Virgin Group
    Source: “The Mavericks,” Fortune (June 1995)
  • "There is no gap in the market unless you have sharp elbows."
    Andrew Neil (1949–), British publisher and broadcaster
    Source: Sunday Times (London) (September 2000)
  • "Perfect competition is a theoretical concept like the Euclidean line, which has no width and no depth. Just as we've never seen that line there has never been truly free enterprise."
    Milton Friedman (1912–2006), US economist and winner of the 1976 Nobel Prize in Economics
    Source: There's No Such Thing as a Free Lunch (1975), Introduction
  • "Don’t look back, something might be gaining on you."
    Leroy Paige (1906–1982), US baseball player
    Source: Personal saying (1952)
  • "Men often compete with one another until the day they die; comradeship consists of rubbing shoulders jocularly with a competitor."
    Edward Hoagland (1932–), US novelist, essayist, and naturalist
    Source: “Heaven and Nature,” Harper's Magazine (March 1988)
  • "So far as power is concerned, does anyone believe the premiums of insurance companies are all almost uniform by accident?"
    Jimmy Hoffa (1913–1975?), US labor leader
    Source: Interview, Playboy (December 1975)
  • "On the Internet … competitive advantage has shrunk to a few months. If they don’t keep innovating, they'll be overtaken. They have to keep adding digital value, adding services, building their brand."
    William (Walid) Mougayar (1959–), US consultant and management theorist
    Source: Interview, UpsideToday (1998)
  • "Never wrestle with a pig. You get dirty and only the pig enjoys himself."
    Mark McCormack (1930–2003), US entrepreneur, founder and CEO of International Management Group
    Quoting a proverb.
    Source: What You'll Never Learn on the Internet (2000)
  • "You can’t measure the value of being first."
    Chris Moore (1960–), British CEO of Domino's Pizza
    Source: Marketing (June 2000)
  • "Running other companies out of business and gaining market share is what capitalistic competition is all about. Efficiency and lower prices flow from that all-out economic life-and-death struggle."
    Lester Thurow (1938–), US economist, management theorist, and writer
    Source: “Microsoft Case Is about a Good Capitalist Practice: Running Your Competitor out of Business,” www.lthurow.com (November 3, 1999)
  • "What do you do when your competitor's drowning? Get a live hose and stick it in his mouth."
    Ray Kroc (1902–1984), US founder of McDonald's
    Source: Wall Street Journal (October 1997)
  • "Nothing focuses the mind better than the constant sight of a competitor who wants to wipe you off the map."
    Wayne Calloway (1935–1998), US CEO of PepsiCo
    Source: Fortune (March 11, 1991)
  • "We feel the spear of the marketplace in our back."
    Tony O’Reilly (1936–), Irish executive chairman of Independent News & Media and former CEO of Heinz Corporation
    Source: Fortune (April 9, 1990)
  • "Business is becoming more and more akin to intellectual sumo wrestling."
    Sir John Harvey-Jones (1924–2008), British management adviser, author, and chairman of ICI
    Source: All Together Now (1994)
  • "A prosperous competitor is often less dangerous than a desperate one."
    Barry J. Nalebuff (1958–), US author and professor of management
    Source: Co-opetition (cowritten with Adam M. Brandenburger, 1997)
  • "In business, the competition will bite you if you keep running, if you stand still, they will swallow you."
    William S. Knudsen (1879–1948), US industrialist, president of General Motors
    Source: Quoted in The Fords: An American Epic (Peter Collier and David Horowitz, 1987)

Back to top

Share this page

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Bookmark and Share

Related

Most Viewed

Recommended

Latest

 
QFINANCE www.qfinance.com