Takeru Kobayashi Quotes

Whenever comparisons get too crazy I just think about my goals, and what I want from myself. I don't look at any references.

My biggest competition is me.

As I said, the biggest competition is myself and it will always be.

The only one who can beat me is me.

Well, the biggest rival I had in my career was me.

Who has a harder fight than he who is striving to overcome himself.

My biggest competitor? Myself, mentally.

I always feel that I compete with myself.

Make no mistake, I always want to win, but I never fight with an opponent. My fight is within me it is the struggle to be the best I can be at whatever I do.

Fight with yourself when you paint, not with the model. A student is one who struggles with himself for order.

I give myself very good advice, but I very seldom follow it.

Effort is between you and you.

And it was a great experience, you know, to travel the world and compete at a certain level. It teaches you discipline, focus, and certainly keeps you out of trouble.

I want to be judged harshly because that forces me to really sit down and focus.

So I don't really focus too much on that, and I think it's dangerous if your goal in life is to get the other guy, then you're not going to be doing a really quality job yourself.

Everybody doesn't get to do each and every film. I don't compete with others; I compete with myself. I have been an athlete, a sportsperson; so I know how to be competitive in a healthy way.

I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I only try to dance better than myself.

The biggest competition is myself. I am not looking to follow others or pull them down. I'm planning to test my own boundaries.

In football you have an adversary; in cinema that adversary is yourself.

Most of us actually stifle enough good impulses during the course of a day to change the current of our lives.

Well, any time you do anything good, it's man versus himself, right? That's the art, the challenge.

Happiness is dependent on self-discipline. We are the biggest obstacles to our own happiness. It is much easier to do battle with society and with others than to fight our own nature.

Comparison is a disease. I never felt any competition, since I never compared myself to others. I only focus on my work. I never feel pressurised and do films in my style. Also, I'm very active since childhood, and that gives me the edge to always put my best.

The easiest thing in the world is to succeed. You can't help it if you follow the rules and play the game the best way you know how according to yourself, instead of according to the one next to you, or above you, or somewhere away from you.

Although in skating you compete with other people, anyone who achieves a certain level of success is first and foremost competing against themselves. And for me the idea that I could always do better, learn more, learn faster, is something that came from skating. But I carried that with me for the rest of my life.