50 Quotes About Dominance for Being at the Top

By Stephanie Kirby

Writer, Entrepreneur and Inspirational quote curator

Published July 5, 2023

If you want to be the best in your field or have control over any situation, these dominance quotes are for you.

According to dictionary.cambridge.org, dominance means “the quality of being more important, strong, or successful than anything else of the same type.”

Dominance occurs in all facets of life, from the genes we inherit from our parents to the animal kingdom, where there is one leader, to the game of sports.

Here are some examples of dominance:

The leader of a wolf pack
The dominant gene that determined your eye color
The business person that produces profits with any company
Tom Brady won seven Super Bowls as a player when the closest player to him in history only had five

Look at these quotes about dominance and see how people feel about dominance.

Top Quotes About Dominance

These quotes show some quick thoughts on the impact of dominating and people’s desire to do so.

1. “You don’t adjust. You just dominate.” — Al Davis

2. “You don’t dominate any sport when you’re over 40.” — Pete Rose

3. “Love does not dominate; it cultivates.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

4. “We’re gonna totally sell out and try to dominate the world.” — Wes Borland

5. “Dominance. Control. These things the unjust seek most of all.” — Robert Fanney

6. “The game plan in every fight is to go out there and dominate.” — Corey Anderson

7. “It is true that the eyes dominate the ears in our time.” — Karlheinz Stockhausen

8. “Every time there’s a competition, I want to be able to dominate it.” — Maya Moore

9. “Politeness is the first thing people lose once they get the power.” — Amit Kalantri

10. “The man who can dominate a London dinner table can dominate the world.” — Oscar Wilde

Quotes About Dominance and Competition

Dominance is a big part of competition in the sports and business world.

11. “It’s OK to be friendly, especially off the court. But on the court, I want to dominate.” — Joel Embiid

12. “I like to dominate 100 percent. I don’t want to just beat you—I want to wear you down.” — Matt Harvey

13. “Black people dominate sports in the United States. 20% of the population and 90% of the final four.” — Chris Rock

14. I have to live up to my expectations—which is to break all the records that I can, dominate by a wide margin.” — Myles Garrett

15. “I’m trying to dominate, and if you dominate, you’re going to be hated because you’re going to talk so much stuff.” — Joel Embiid

16. “I believe that in order for me to consider myself one of the top-ranked lightweights in the world, I have to go out and dominate the fight.” — Eddie Alvarez

17. “In sports, especially skiing, you have to be comfortable with risk. You have to have a relationship with fear, and it can dominate the decision-making process.” — Molly Bloom

18. “My goal is to go out there and dominate. We all know if I’m in a position and I see my opponent hurt by landing good striking, I’m going to try to get him out of there.” — Tyron Woodley

19. “If you could get all the people in the organization rowing in the same direction, you could dominate any industry, in any market, against any competition, at any time.” — Patrick Lencioni

20. “You can dominate a game if you dominate on the line… We’re just going to have to go out there and work hard and blow people off the ball, and let our runners do what they do best.” — Miles Davis

Warning Quotes About Dominance

While there are examples of times it can be good to dominate, like in a sport, it’s not all good, as shown in the quotes below.

21. “Africa suffered under European dominance for centuries.” — Jacob Zuma

22. “The effect of dominance is not always the result of an intention to dominate.” — Deborah Tannen

23. “One of the easiest ways to dominate a man is to demand something he cannot supply.” — Gene Wolfe

24. “Mind does dominate body. We are superior to the house in which we dwell.” — Margaret Elizabeth Sangster

25. “Love, joy, and peace cannot flourish until you have freed yourself from mind dominance.” — Eckhart Tolle

26. “I don’t want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.” — Oscar Wilde

27. “When you dominate other people’s emotions, the time has to come when you will have to pay, and heavily, for that privilege.” — Ethel Waters

28. “John D. Rockefeller wanted to dominate oil, but Microsoft wants it all, you name it: cable, media, banking, car dealerships.” — Ralph Nader

29. “What happens when good people are put into an evil place? Do they triumph, or does the situation dominate their past history and morality?” — Philip Zimbardo

30. “I am very sad for men and women trapped in any relationship where there is cruelty, dominance, inequity. I long for the liberation of all people.” — Jasmine Guy

Quotes About People Wanting to Dominate

These quotes about dominance show people’s drive to dominate in careers and life.

31. “I want to dominate the man’s world.” — Marina Abramovic

32. “Shakespeare reveals human nature brilliantly: he shines a light on our instinctive desire to dominate each other.” — Edward Hall

33. “My father’s generation gave to my generation a land of wealth and purpose and world economic dominance.” — Paul Tsongas

34. “The lies of systemic racism and the race hustlers dominate the ideologies of universities and even churches.” — John MacArthur

35. “I was working as hard as I could to build a business, to try to dominate a business. And I probably irritated a lot of people.” — Michael Ovitz

36. “You will be loved the day when you will be able to show your weakness without the other person using it to assert his strength.” — Cesare Pavese, II

37. “The individual’s desire to dominate his environment is not a desirable trait in a society which every day grows more and more confining.” — Gore Vidal

38. “Cultural dominance of middle-class norms prevail in middle-class schools with a teacher teaching toward those standards and with students striving to maintain those standards.” — James S. Coleman

39. “The caste system may be more highly developed in countries like India or England, but every tier of society in almost every culture tries to dominate a group it perceives as beneath it.” — Marlon Brando

40. “People who feel insecure in social situations never miss a chance to exhibit their dominance over close, submissive friends, whom they put down publicly, in front of everyone—by teasing, for example.” — Friedrich Nietzsche

More Quotes About Dominance

Below are a few more interesting quotes on dominance.

41. “Identify your niche and dominate it.” — Nate Parker

42. “It is the law of nature that woman should be held under the dominance of man.” —Confucius

43. “I’ve never seen a player that can dominate a game the way LeBron James can.” — Scottie Pippen

44. “There is a strange kind of human being in whom there is an eternal struggle between body and soul, animal and god, for dominance.” — Alfred Einstein

45. “The fundamentals, what I want, which is to take the ball, try to play as offensive as possible, and dominate the game through the ball, is the same.” — Pep Guardiola

46. “I think artificial intelligence will likely change the character of warfare, and I believe whoever masters it first will dominate on the battlefield for many, many, many years.” — Mark Esper

47. “Franchises and chains have come to dominate small communities, but those same chains have eliminated a lot of the greasy spoons, places you didn’t want to eat in the first place.” — William Least Heat-Moon

48. “We are the United States of America, which is encouraged by a media that has no desire to tell us the truth about anything, serving their corporate masters who have other plans to dominate us.” — Gore Vidal

49. “It is better for a woman to compete impersonally in society, as men do, than to compete for dominance in her own home with her husband, compete with her neighbors for empty status, and so smother her son that he cannot compete at all.” — Betty Friedan

50. “Unlike all other founders of a religious faith, Christ had no selfishness, no desire of dominance; and His system, unlike all other systems of worship, was bloodless, boundlessly beneficent, and–most marvelous of all–went to break all bonds of body and soul, and to cast down every temporal and every spiritual tyranny.” — Alfred William Howitt