First place is the top rank or winning position in a contest, list, or race. It also appears in the phrase 'in the first place,' meaning to begin with or as the original reason. It implies priority and the highest standing.
If the laws could speak for themselves, they would complain of the lawyers in the first place. George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax
Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it. Brian Kernighan
Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place. Frédéric Bastiat
If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. Eric Schmidt
When you feel like giving up, remember why you held on for so long in the first place. Jared Leto
From the first place of liquid darkness, within the second place of air and light, I set down the following record with its mixture of fact and truths and memories of truths and its direction always toward the Third Place, where the starting point is myth. Janet Frame