Contest Quotes

Ultimately a hero is a man who would argue with the gods, and so awakens devils to contest his vision. The more a man can achieve, the more he may be certain that the devil will inhabit a part of his creation. (Norman Mailer)
A bumper of good liquor will end a contest quicker than justice, judge, or vicar. View quote
Richard Brinsley Sheridan
The struggle is always worthwhile, if the end be worthwhile and the means honorable; foreknowledge of defeat is not sufficient reason to withdraw from the contest. View quote
Steven Brust
Courage, then, my countrymen, our contest is not only whether we ourselves shall be free, but whether there shall be left to mankind an asylum on earth for civil and religious liberty. View quote
Samuel Adams
Great contest follows, and much learned dust Involves the combatants each claiming truth, And truth disclaiming both. View quote
William Cowper
Take our politicians they're a bunch of yo-yos. The presidency is now a cross between a popularity contest and a high school debate, with an encyclopedia of cliches the first prize. View quote
Saul Bellow
Charlie Chaplin and I would have a friendly contest: Who could do the feature film with the least subtitles? View quote
Buster Keaton
The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power. View quote
Daniel Webster
When an opinion has taken root in a democracy and established itself in the minds of the majority, it afterward persists by itself, needing no effort to maintain it since no one attacks it. "Those who at first rejected it as false come in the end to adopt it as accepted, and even those who still at the bottom of their hearts oppose it keep their views to themselves, taking great care to avoid a dangerous and futile contest. View quote
Alexis de Tocqueville
It looks to me to be narrow and pedantic to apply the ordinary ideas of criminal justice to this great public contest. I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people. View quote
Edmund Burke
Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage. (Ambrose Bierce)
POLITICS, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
I've chosen not to challenge the rule of law, because in our system there really is no intermediate step between a Supreme Court decision and violent revolution. When the Supreme Court makes a decision, no matter how strongly one disagrees with it, one faces a choice –are we, in John Adams' phrase, a nation of laws, or is it a contest made on raw power? View quote
Al Gore
The presidency is more than a popularity contest. View quote
Al Gore
This is not a contest between persons. The humblest citizen in all the land, when clad in the armor of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the hosts of error. I come to you in defense of a cause as holy as the cause of liberty - the cause of humanity. View quote
William Jennings Bryan
The difficulty that contestation must be done in the name of an authority is resolved this: I contest in the name of contestation what experience itself is. View quote
Georges Bataille
Despite the amount of suffering, pain, misery, sorrow and travail which can exist in life, the reason for existence is the same reason as one has to play a game - interest, contest, activity and possession. The truth of this assertion is established by an observation of the elements of games and then applying these elements to life itself. View quote
L. Ron Hubbard
The funny thing was, you see, that Mike Fink didn't think of himself as a murderer. He thought of life as a contest, and dying was what happened to those who came out second best, but it wasn't the same as murder, it was a fair fight. View quote
Orson Scott Card
For John Howard to get to any high moral ground he would have to first climb out of the volcanic hole he's dug for himself over the last decade. You know, it's like one of those deep diamond mined holes in South Africa, you know, they're about a mile underground. He'd have to come a mile up to get to even equilibrium, let alone have any contest in morality with Kevin Rudd. View quote
Paul Keating
That is my problem with life, I just rush through it, like I'm being chased. Even things whose whole point is slowness, like drinking relaxing tea. When I drink relaxing tea I suck it down like I'm in a contest for who can drink relaxing tea the quickest. View quote
Miranda July
I know that when a supersexy older girl with hips and breasts and nice hair wants to take off your glasses and to paint you a smoky eye she's merely trying to enroll you in a beauty contest she's already won. It's a kind of slummy, condescending gesture, like when rich people ask poor people where they summer. To me, this smacks of a blatant, insensitive "let them eat cake" type of chauvinism. (Chuck Palahniuk)
Yes I have used them, but no, they didn't make me what I am. Anabolic steroids were helpful to me in maintaining muscle size while on a strict diet in preparation for a contest. View quote
Arnold Schwarzenegger
You will find that the truth is often unpopular and the contest between agreeable fancy and disagreeable fact is unequal. For, in the vernacular, we Americans are suckers for good news. View quote
Adlai Stevenson II
There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free-if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending-if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained-we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of hosts is all that is left us! View quote
Patrick Henry
It is one thing being able to contest an election and to give the people hope that I can be the next prime minister. It is a totally different situation where the people of Pakistan are told that the results are already taken and the leader of your choice is banned. View quote
Benazir Bhutto