As the book clearly shows, New York is as much of a rat race for its rodents, as it is for human residents.

ECONOMIST: Rats

You've got to do it because football is a rat race.

BBC: Football's free transfer rat race

Like a rat-race commuter, you can get dressed, have breakfast, say goodbye to the goldfish, then march out the door ready to conquer the world.

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Similarly, Bruno was a successful businessman in Germany before he got fed up with the rat race, and moved to Belize to live in a tent.

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But the dot-com rat race is becoming a circus.

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"There's a desire to step out of the rat race, and in America, that goes very deep in the national psyche, " says Nick Rosen, author of "Off the Grid: Inside the Movement for More Space, Less Government, and True Independence in Modern America" and editor of www.off-grid.net.

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While Mullen sympathises with those players who face an uncertain future, the beautiful game has, according to the League One boss, become an unsentimental rat race, with clubs scurrying around to cobble together a promotion-winning squad.

BBC: Football's free transfer rat race

They also aspire to a higher place in society's pecking order, but in so doing force others in the rat race to run faster to keep up.

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When he tested the powder on mice they no longer ran up a steep incline to get a reward, nor tumbled down it in a stupor, but ran around, happy and alert, at the bottom, as if the rat-race did not exist.

ECONOMIST: Leo Sternbach