Relative Performance Quotes

You're never as good as everyone tells you when you win, and you're never as bad as they say when you lose.

For people at the bottom who are really doing badly — those in the bottom 10th or 15th percentile — they think their work falls in the 60th or 55th percentile, so, above average. People at the bottom still think they're outperforming other people.

If you're last in your class at Harvard, it doesn't feel like you're a good student, even though you really are. It's not smart for everyone to want to go to a great school.

Don't be the best in town. Just try to be the best until the best come around.

I measure myself against everybody, not just the shooting guards.

I stand a lot better chance to go further than Elton.

You don’t have to run faster than the bear to get away. You just have to run faster than the guy next to you.

Instead of playing to win, I was playing not to lose. It reminds me of the story I once heard about two friends being chased by a bear, when one turned to the other and said, "I just realized that I don't need to outrun the bear; I only need to outrun you.

I honestly think if I had been a solo artist, it wouldn't have been as bad. Because I was being compared to three other girls, it made people have more of an opinion. If I had been on my own, there would be no one to compare to.

I've always been attracted to cars, and driving is a completely measurable experience: if you qualify last on the grid, you're the slowest, and if you qualify first on the grid, you're the fastest. So no one can say you're slow if you're fast and no one can say you're fast if you're slow.

My liking for a team isn't based on just how good it was, but how good was it in relation to how good it should have been.

As the daughter of two teachers with first-class degrees, I'd always seen myself as a duffer by comparison.

As the joke goes, you don’t have to be faster than the wolf chasing you, just faster than everyone else running away.

Since the well-known victory over the hare by the tortoise, the descendants of the tortoise think themselves miracles of speed.

You're only as good as your dumbest competitor.

Anyone that's your competitor is going to think that they're better.

Human players have their strengths and weaknesses and Watson is the same way. He just has different strengths and weaknesses than most people.

I think when you talk about competing against others, the problem is that you refer to something that's been done already and try to beat it.

In a knockout tournament, it is not really about your own performance - it is about the team.

I've always been baffled by how much we over-rate the statistically insignificant differences that separate competitors at the top end of the distribution.

What happened to me against Prescott didn't make Prescott a better fighter than me.

No matter how poorly you play, there is always someone you can beat. No matter how well you play, there is always someone who can beat you.

The hubris of imagining that one can judge merit, as distinguished from judging behavior and performance, can be seen in attempts of educators to grade students according to how well they used their own ability, rather than how well they performed relative to some fixed standard or to other students.

On a good day everybody can beat everybody.

Rarely have I seen a situation where doing less than the other guy is a good strategy.