Top 30 Zero-Sum Quotes

It is time that scientists and other public intellectuals observed that the contest between faith and reason is zero-sum.

International politics is no longer a zero-sum game but a multi-dimensional arena where cooperation and competition often occur simultaneously. Gone is the age of blood feuds. World leaders are expected to lead in turning threats into opportunities.

Family policy is not a zero-sum game: any gain for dads need not come at the expense of mums.

The president can’t succeed without Congress, and Congress can’t succeed without the president. The image of one depends on the image of another. It is not a zero-sum game.

Global education is not a zero-sum game. The rise of universities in Asia will be a benefit to the entire world.

For Mr. Putin, vacillation invites aggression. His world is a brutish, cynical place, where power is worshiped, weakness is despised, and all rivalries are zero-sum.

The more important argument against grade curves is that they create an atmosphere that’s toxic by pitting students against one another. At best, it creates a hypercompetitive culture, and at worst, it sends students the message that the world is a zero-sum game: Your success means my failure.

People with advantages don’t tend to want to give them up. If you see it as a zero-sum game, then it will never change. If only the people who are disadvantaged speak out, then it’s not enough. I don’t want to overshadow their voices, but I want to support.

The funny thing about advertising is that it’s not a zero-sum game… Historically, in the digital ad world, pie has gotten larger and it’s possible for everyone to win, and it’s perfectly possible that will continue to be true for quite some time.

In a world where global politics is no longer a zero-sum game, it is – or should be – counterintuitive to pursue one’s interests without considering the interests of others.

When you look at how technology companies are funded, it’s not a zero-sum game. It could be 20 investors in one company, and everybody has to work together for the benefit of that company.

Trump sees the world in terms of a zero-sum game. In reality, globalisation, if well managed, is a positive-sum force: America gains if its friends and allies – whether Australia, the E.U., or Mexico – are stronger. But Trump’s approach threatens to turn it into a negative-sum game: America will lose, too.

It’s true that Americans are less than thrilled with President Obama and congressional Democrats. Their approval ratings are nothing to celebrate. But electoral politics is a zero-sum game. If one side loses, then the other side wins. Success depends on being just slightly less odious than your opponent.

We don’t believe trade deals are zero-sum games.

I don’t see the arts as competitive at all. It was a better angel of my nature. Sports is zero-sum: winner, loser, demonstrable.

Active investment is a zero-sum game. Passive managers don’t play the game. They buy something resembling the market as a whole, or some segment of the market, and they don’t respond to the actions of active managers.

True partisans draft legislation that gives themselves everything and their enemies nothing. They love bills that repulse and even disgust the other side. Today‘s politics have become an all-or-nothing, black-or-white, zero-sum game – it’s not a contact sport but a blood sport.

Most financiers, corporate lawyers, lobbyists, and management consultants are competing with other financiers, lawyers, lobbyists, and management consultants in zero-sum games that take money out of one set of pockets and put it into another.

The employers who do best are employers who reject these false choices. It’s not a zero-sum world where you either take care of your workers or you take care of your shareholders. You can do good and do well, too.

Zero-sum thinking is an obsession of mine, but mostly in economics.

We believe that economics does not necessarily have to be a zero-sum game; it can be a win-win proposition for everyone involved so long as they have the tools in which to succeed.

Elections are zero-sum games. That means that there’s always one winner and a lot of losers. If you just get one more vote than the other person, you win that election.

There are two ways to think about the one percent – the Bernie Sanders way, where we’re all competing for a zero-sum pie where it’s just a question of negotiations. The second way, which is the one I put forward, is no, it’s really innovation in a knowledge-based economy.

Takers believe in a zero-sum world, and they end up creating one where bosses, colleagues and clients don’t trust them. Givers build deeper and broader relationships – people are rooting for them instead of gunning for them.

This is not a zero-sum game. We know that if we provide access and education, particularly where there are gaps in the market, we will create more jobs, we will create more growth, and we will create more activity in the U.S. market, which will be good for our economy.

Much of our national debate proceeds as if China and America were locked in a zero-sum game in which one’s loss is precisely the other’s gain.

I know that instructional time is a zero-sum game, but if we want kids to do well academically, it’s hard to imagine that happening if they don’t have some control over their attention.

The conflict between religion and science is inherent and (very nearly) zero-sum. The success of science often comes at the expense of religious dogma; the maintenance of religious dogma always comes at the expense of science.

For the several thousands of years before they became firefighters and physicians, women were sirens, enchantresses, snares. At times it seems as if female powerlessness is male self-preservation in disguise. And for millennia, this has made for a zero-sum game: A woman‘s intelligence was a man’s deception.

It doesn’t matter to me who’s the most powerful or profitable country in the world. All countries want to be prosperous. What’s happening is a zero-sum game between China and the U.S., where their gain is our loss.