Phil Knight Quotes

People reflexively assume that competition is always a good thing, that it always brings out the best in people, but that’s only true of people who can forget the competition.

The city was mired in a historic cold snap. I had it all to myself. Even the Sistine Chapel. Alone under Michelangelo’s ceiling, I was able to wallow in my disbelief. I read in my guidebook that Michelangelo was miserable while painting his masterpiece. His back and neck ached. Paint fell constantly into his hair and eyes. He couldn’t wait to be finished, he told friends. If even Michelangelo didn’t like his work, I thought, what hope is there for the rest of us?

To study the self is to forget the self. Mi casa, su casa. Oneness — in some way, shape, or form, it’s what every person I’ve ever met has been seeking.

You are remembered, he said, prophetically, for the rules you break.

Trade is the path of coexistence, cooperation.

For some, I realize, business is the all-out pursuit of profits, period, full stop, but for us business was no more about making money than being human is about making blood.

I wanted what everyone wants. To be me, full-time.

And those who urge entrepreneurs to never give up? Charlatans. Sometimes you have to give up. Sometimes knowing when to give up, when to try something else, is genius. Giving up doesn’t mean stopping. Don’t ever stop. Luck plays a big role. Yes, I’d like to publicly acknowledge the power of luck. Athletes get lucky, poets get lucky, businesses get lucky. Hard work is critical, a good team is essential, brains and determination are invaluable, but luck may decide the outcome. Some people might not call it luck. They might call it Tao, or Logos, or Jñāna, or Dharma. Or Spirit. Or God.

No brilliant idea was ever born in a conference room,” he assured the Dane. “But a lot of silly ideas have died there,” said Stahr. — F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Last Tycoon

If you get simple beauty and naught else, you get about the best thing God invents.

Like it or not, life is a game. Whoever denies that truth, whoever simply refuses to play,

I’d always suspected, the essence of beauty or truth, or all we ever need to know of either, lay somewhere in that moment when the ball is in midair, when both boxers sense the approach of the bell, when the runners near the finish line and the crowd rises as one. There’s a kind of exuberant clarity in that pulsing half second before winning and losing are decided.

I was a linear thinker, and according to Zen linear thinking is nothing but a delusion, one of the many that keep us unhappy. Reality is nonlinear, Zen says. No future, no past. All is now.

I tell the man Blue Ribbon is sinking like the Titanic, and he responds by begging for a berth in first class.

I don’t know how long after that day I discovered the Aristophanes play, set in the Temple of Nike, in which the warrior gives the king a gift — a pair of new shoes. I don’t know when I figured out that the play was called Knights.