A Quote by Eric Hoffer

When we are in competition with ourselves, and match our todays against our yesterdays, we derive encouragement from past misfortunes and blemishes. Moreover, the competition with ourselves leaves unimpaired our benevolence toward our fellow men.

Eric Hoffer

Quote Topics

Against Benevolence Competition Derive Encouragement Fellow Fellow Men Leaves Match Men Misfortunes Moreover Our Ourselves Past Toward

Quote Author

Eric Hoffer
American - Writer
July 25, 1898 - May 21, 1983

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 yesterdays by our todays; to bear our trials more beautifully than we ever dreamed we could; to give as we never have given; to do our work with more force and a finer finish than ever. This is the true idea: to get ahead of ourselves.

Carl Holmes

The future never takes care of itself; it is taken car of, shaped, molded, and colored by the present. Our todays are what our yesterdays made them; our tomorrows must inevitably be the product of our todays.

Dennis Kimbro

I know this about the American people: We welcome competition. We'll match our ingenuity, our energy, our experience and technology, our spirit and enterprise against anyone.

George H. W. Bush

You just don't make decisions about what you're going to be like when you are old. I know that I am making that decision right now. Every time we perceive ourselves, others, life, the world and God in a certain way, we are deepening the habits that will take over in old age. Every time I act on the insights that I am getting now I am deciding my future and choosing to be a kindly or cynical old man. Our yesterdays lie heavily upon our todays and our todays will lie heavily upon our tomorrows.

John Powell

If we're honest with ourselves, our user experience hadn't kept up with the competition. In the first ten years eBay created the market. Now we're positioning ourselves to innovate off our core platform. This is not a project. We're never done.

John Donahoe

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow citizens.

Adam Smith

To love ourselves is to act respectfully toward ourselves, to enjoy our own company when in solitude, to honor our limits and speak our truths.

Anodea Judith

Sordid selfishness doth contract and narrow our benevolence, and cause us, like serpents, to infold ourselves within ourselves, and to turn out our stings to the entire world besides.

Walter Scott

Let us be Christians toward our fellow-whites, as well as philanthropists toward the blacks our fellow-men. In all things, and toward all, we are enjoined to do as we would be done by.

Herman Melville

Does our ferocity not derive from the fact that our instincts are all too interested in other people? If we attended more to ourselves and became the center, the object of our murderous inclinations, the sum of our intolerances would diminish.

Emile M. Cioran

Comforters for our todays / Guardians of memories / Keeping our youth and yesterdays alive / Comrades with one history.

Adele Faber

What is excellence? It is about going a little beyond what we expect from ourselves. Part of the need for excellence is imposed on us externally by our customers. Our competition keeps us on our toes, especially when it is global in nature.

Azim Premji

All of us are prone to excuse our own mediocre performance. We blame our misfortunes, our disfigurements, our so-called handicaps. Victims of our own rationalization, we say silently to ourselves, 'I'm just too weak,' or 'I'm not cut out for better things.' Others soar beyond our meager accomplishments. Envy and discouragement take their toll. .

Thomas S. Monson

Competing against each other leaves little space for reciprocity and the growth of social capital. Running against another in a race may benefit our speed, but jointly organising the sports day produces cooperation and trust. There are many situations where cooperation and reciprocity are more effective than competition. Civic virtues come from building on what we have in common rather than by using our differences to create in-groups, outgroups and fear driven competition

Eva Cox

But how can we love someone if we don't like him? Easy-we do it to ourselves all the time. We don't always have tender, comfortable feelings about ourselves; sometimes we feel foolish, stupid, asinine, or wicked. But we always love ourselves: we always seek our own good. Indeed, we feel dislike toward ourselves, we berate ourselves, precisely because we love ourselves; because we care about our good, we are impatient with our bad.