Alfie Kohn Quotes
Strip away all the assumptions about what competition is supposed to do, all the claims in its behalf that we accept and repeat reflexively. What you have left is the essence of the concept: mutually exclusive goal attainment (MEGA). One person succeeds only if another does not. From this uncluttered perspective, it seems clear right away that something is drastically wrong with such an arrangement. How can we do our best when we are spending our energies trying to make others lose--and fearing that they will make us lose?
Quotes to Explore
-
It was never the goal to be a solo performer. It was just something that made the most sense at the time.
-
The idea of 'advice,' in terms of telling people advice or asking people for advice, has become not comprehensible to me, to a certain degree, due to feeling, like, for something to be accurately defined as 'good' or 'bad,' I would want to know the context, goal, perspective for it.
-
We can't afford to go lose two, three in a row. We've got to keep climbing and getting wins.
-
My own personal goal is I just hope to still write songs and kind of let that sustain me as a job. If I could never have a 9-to-5 job, and making a living doing this, it'd just be incredible.
-
You need to feel that the game is important to you. Lose that feeling and you lose your edge. There's no faking that kind of emotion. You can't invent the feeling. It's got to be natural, real.
-
We may never be strong enough to be entirely nonviolent in thought, word and deed. But we must keep nonviolence as our goal and make strong progress towards it.
-
Being a gentleman is a worthy goal.
-
I feel I have to protect myself against things. So I'm pretty careful to lose most of them.
-
It is natural for us, as human beings, to look forward. Our eyes naturally look ahead. In this sense, we are made for moving toward a goal.
-
The championship always goes to the team that wins the most rounds and is the most prepared. I think everybody on our team works hard towards keeping that goal. Time will tell if we're prepared or not.
-
I can have three touchdowns and 200 yards, but if we lose the game, what's it all for?
-
I want my opponents to look at me across the net and just not want to play me because I look so fit and amazing and strong. So that's always my goal.
-
We can set it as a goal that taxes on labor would be even lower in Hungary... that we will have the cheapest energy in Europe, and that all those who want to work would have a job.
-
When I initially started acting, all I wanted to do was to be in one movie. That's it. That was my goal.
-
It's stupid to say that there's any comfort to be had in 'knowing your place,' but there is a sense of reassuring escapism to something like 'Downton Abbey.' There's a perceived romance and elegance that is wonderful to lose yourself in.
-
His was a great sin who first invented consciousness. Let us lose it for a few hours.
-
The worker of the world has nothing to lose, but their chains, workers of the world unite.
-
My goal is to simplify complexity. I just want to build stuff that really simplifies our base human interaction.
-
Goal scoring is a recurring theme. If you aren't scoring then you aren't going to win games. That's obvious.
-
At Patagonia, making a profit is not the goal because the Zen master would say profits happen 'when you do everything else right'.
-
Let's let people live their lives and do it the way they want to do it.
-
When Chipotle asked me to take part in the Cultivating Thought program both as an author and an essay contest judge, I was excited by the idea of sharing my story through this unique channel and helping young, inspiring writers do the same.
-
Strip away all the assumptions about what competition is supposed to do, all the claims in its behalf that we accept and repeat reflexively. What you have left is the essence of the concept: mutually exclusive goal attainment (MEGA). One person succeeds only if another does not. From this uncluttered perspective, it seems clear right away that something is drastically wrong with such an arrangement. How can we do our best when we are spending our energies trying to make others lose--and fearing that they will make us lose?
