Success is a journey not a destination. The doing is usually more important than the outcome. Not everyone can be Number 1.
-Arthur Ashe

Regardless of how you feel inside, always try to look like a winner. Even if you are behind, a sustained look of control and confidence can give you a mental edge that results in victory.
-Arthur Ashe

What does it take to be a champion? Desire, dedication, determination, concentration and the will to win.
-Patty Berg, [In "The Golfer's Book of Wisdom," ed. by Criswell Freeman, 1995]

Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy.
-Wendell Berry

Competition is what keeps me playing the psychological warfare of matching skill against skill and wit against wit.
-Lou Brock, "Christian Science Monitor", January 20, 1975

Of all human powers operating on the affairs of mankind, none is greater than that of competition.
-Henry Clay, Speech, 1832

So you wish to conquer in the Olympics, my friend? And I too, by the Gods, and fine thing it would be! But first mark the conditions and the consequences, and then set to work. You will have to put yourself under discipline, to eat by rule, to aviod cakes and sweatmeats, to take exercise at the appointed hour whether you like it or no, in cold or heat; to abstain from cold drinks and from wine at your will; in a word, to give yourself over to the trainer as to a physician. Then in the conflict itself you are most likely enough to dislocate your wrist or twist your ankle, to swallow a great deall of dust, or to be severely thrashed, and, after all these things, to be defeated.
-Epictetus

All winning teams are goal-oriented. Teams like these win consistently because everyone connected with them concentrates on specific objectives. They go about their business with blinders on; nothing will distract them from achieving their aims.
-Lou Holtz

...even after you've just won the Super Bowl -- especially after you've just won the Super Bowl -- there's always next year. If "Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing," then "the only thing" is nothing -- emptiness, the nightmare of life without ultimate meaning.
-Tom Landry

Winning is not a sometime thing; it's an all the time thing. You don't win once in a while; you don't do things right once in a while; you do them right all the time. Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.
There is no room for second place. There is only one place in my game, and that's first place…It is and always has been an American zeal to be first in anything we do, and to win, and to win, and to win.
Every time a football player goes to play his trade he's got to play from the ground up-from the soles of his feet right up to his head. Every inch of him has to play. Some guys play with their heads. That's O.K. You've got to be smart to be number one in any business. But more importantly, you've got to play with your heart, with every fiber of your body. If you're lucky enough to find a guy with a lot of head and a lot of heart, he's never going to come off the field second…
It is a reality of life that men are competitive and the most competitive games draw the most competitive men. That's why they are there-to compete. To know the rules and objectives when they get in the game. The object is to win fairly, squarely, by the rules-but to win.
And in truth, I've never known a man worth his salt who in the long run, deep down in his heart, didn't appreciate the grind, the discipline. There is something in good men that really yearns for discipline and the harsh reality of head to head combat.
I don't say these things because I believe in the "brute" nature of man or that men must be brutalized to be combative. I believe in God, and I believe in human decency. But I firmly believe that any man's finest hour, the greatest fulfillment of all that he holds dear, is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle - victorious.
-Vince Lombardi

Winning doesn't satisfy us -- we need to do it again, and again. The taste of success seems merely to whet the appetite for more. When we lose, the compulsion to seek future success is overpowering; the need to get out on the course the following weekend is irresistible. We cannot quit when we are ahead, after we've won, and we certainly cannot quit when we're behind, after we've lost. We are addicted.
-Stuart Walker.