The phrase arms race, in its original usage, is a competition between two or more parties to have the best armed forces. Each party competes to produce larger numbers of weapons, greater armies, or superior military technology in a technological escalation. Nowadays the term is mostly used to describe any competition where there is no absolute goal, only the relative goal of staying ahead of the other competitors, essentially the goal of proving to be "better".
Read more about Arms Race: Other Uses
Famous quotes containing the words arms and/or race:
“Raphael paints wisdom; Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakespeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The Goddamn human race deserves itself, and as far as I’m concerned it can have it.”
—Elizabeth Janeway (b. 1913)