I love going one-on-one with someone. That’s what I do. I’ve never lost. It’s a whole different game, just to have them right in front of you and be able to do whatever you want.

In the normal flow of a conversation, our attention is divided. We hear parts of what other people are saying, in order to follow and keep the conversation going. At the same time, we’re planning what we’ll say next, some exciting story of our own.

There are different ways to do innovation. You can plant a lot of seeds, not be committed to any particular one of them, but just see what grows. And this really isn’t how we’ve approached this. We go mission-first, then focus on the pieces we need and go deep on them and be committed to them.

Win as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change.

I won at every level – all the way since I started playing the game of basketball at nine. I’ve won at every level, won championships at every level. And, you know, it won’t be fulfilled until I win at the highest level.

Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.

As long as I am playing competitive football I am happy.

Hip hop has always been braggin‘ and boasting and ‚I’m better at you than this‘ and ‚I’m better at you than that.‘

It kills me to lose. If I’m a troublemaker, and I don’t think that my temper makes me one, then it’s because I can’t stand losing. That’s the way I am about winning, all I ever wanted to do was finish first.

Gulf Lesson One is the value of airpower.

Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best; it removes all that is base. All men are afraid in battle. The coward is the one who lets his fear overcome his sense of duty. Duty is the essence of manhood.

It’s OK for China to invent cancer drugs that cure patients in the United States. We want them to catch up. But as the leader, we want to keep setting a very, very high standard. We don’t want them to catch up because we’re slowing down or, even worse, going into reverse.

It is my responsibility that I must make demonstrative efforts to reach out to every citizen of the country.

That’s what you live for as a sportsman. You have to put up a fight.

As soon as I got out there I felt a strange relationship with the pitcher’s mound. It was as if I’d been born out there. Pitching just felt like the most natural thing in the world. Striking out batters was easy.

I speak to you only as an American who happens to be an American Negro and one who is proud of that heritage. We ask for nothing special. We ask only that we be permitted to compete on an even basis, and if we are not worthy, then the competition shall, per se, eliminate us.

To win is always good for the feeling of the whole team.

If you have 50 different plug types, appliances wouldn’t be available and would be very expensive. But once an electric outlet becomes standardized, many companies can design appliances, and competition ensues, creating variety and better prices for consumers.

The first step on the way to victory is to recognize the enemy.

Whenever you do something, people try to re-do it and do a better version, especially if they’re in another country.

Look at the world. There is no pure competitor to the United States of America.

You might be the funniest guy in the world, but if you don’t have anything to talk about, people are eventually going to gravitate towards the guy that’s actually saying something.

If you are first you are first. If you are second you are nothing.

We know that the nation that goes all-in on innovation today will own the global economy tomorrow. This is an edge America cannot surrender.

There’s been a lot of talk of me being a one-man show but that’s simply not the case. We win games when I score 40 points and we’ve won when I score 10.

Above anything else, I hate to lose.

You do the policy, I’ll do the politics.

Duke is an ugly word in Kentucky. Nothing in the world compares to the joy of beating those hateful swine from Duke.

You will kill 10 of our men, and we will kill 1 of yours, and in the end it will be you who tire of it.

War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can’t smile, grin. If you can’t grin, keep out of the way till you can.

I think right now it’s a battle for the mindshare of developers and for the mindshare of customers, and right now iPhone and Android are winning that battle.

Some people think literature is high culture and that it should only have a small readership. I don’t think so… I have to compete with popular culture, including TV, magazines, movies and video games.

After winning, most teams become individuals; most teams become complacent.

The female loves to play man against man. And if she is in a position to do it, there is not one who will resist.

It obviously bothers people when Real Madrid win. It makes them jealous. There isn’t a level playing field.

It is a neck-and-neck race between Mr. Gray and myself who shall complete our apparatus first. He has the advantage over me in being a practical electrician – but I have reason to believe that I am better acquainted with the phenomena of sound than he is – so that I have an advantage there.

It’s plain hokum. If you can’t convince ‚em, confuse ‚em. It’s an old political trick. But this time it won’t work.

The political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and the means can never be considered in isolation from their purposes.

Everybody is a political person, whether you say something or you are silent. A political attitude is not whether you go to parliament; it’s how you deal with your life, with your surroundings.

When I started Virgin from a basement in west London, there was no great plan or strategy. I didn’t set out to build a business empire… For me, building a business is all about doing something to be proud of, bringing talented people together and creating something that’s going to make a real difference to other people’s lives.

I think that at the start of a game, you’re always playing to win, and then maybe if you’re ahead late in the game, you start playing not to lose. The true competitors, though, are the ones who always play to win.

Marathon running, like golf, is a game for players, not winners. That is why Callaway sells golf clubs and Nike sells running shoes. But running is unique in that the world’s best racers are on the same course, at the same time, as amateurs, who have as much chance of winning as your average weekend warrior would scoring a touchdown in the NFL.

I began playing Monopoly for real when I was 26 years old. Today, my wife and I have approximately 1,400 little green houses – each paying us monthly. You do not have to be a rocket scientist or have a Harvard degree to play Monopoly for real.

It’s rule number one, really – beating your teammate.

The onus is on the managers to send out an attacking formation and to tell their players to be bold.

Building a mission and building a business go hand in hand. The primary thing that excites me is the mission. But we have always had a healthy understanding that we need to do both.

When I see a story, I ask: is this something I’d like to be in? Is this something I’d like to see? And if I’d like to see it, would I like to tell it?

We want to play the AFC Cup every year.

Those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.

Competition is the keen cutting edge of business, always shaving away at costs.

It’s tough to negotiate from a position of weakness.

In the ideal world, if I was perfect, I’d be able to beat every teammate that I have, in every race.

The United States has to move very fast to even stand still.

My readers – and I get 400 emails for a day, my readers normally they say, well, you understand me, and I answer, you do understand me also. We are in the same level.

People just don’t understand how obsessed I am with winning.

People are generally amazed that I would take an interest in any forum that would require me to stop talking for three hours.

If it’s all instruction, you get annoyed with it and bored, and you stop reading. If it’s all entertainment, you read it quite quickly, your heart going pitty-pat, pitty-pat. But when you finish, that’s it. You’re not going to think about it much afterward, apart from the odd nightmare. You’re not going to read that book again.

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.

All of us have been trained by education and environment to seek personal gain and security and to fight for ourselves. Though we cover it over with pleasant phrases, we have been educated for various professions within a system which is based on exploitation and acquisitive fear.

Serious sport is war minus the shooting.

To make America the greatest is my goal, so I beat the Russian and I beat the Pole. And for the U.S.A. won the medal of gold. The Greeks said, ‚You’re better than the Cassius of old.‘