Motivational Quotes

Excellence

The ancient Greek definition of happiness was the full use of your powers along lines of excellence.

- John F. Kennedy

Best Quotes about Excellence

We do not do well except when we know where the best is and when we are assured that we have touched it and hold its power within us.

Joubert, Joseph

Just make up your mind at the very outset that your work is going to stand for quality... that you are going to stamp a superior quality upon everything that goes out of your hands, that whatever you do shall bear the hall-mark of excellence.

Marden, Orison Swett

The idea for which this nation stands will not survive if the highest goal free man can set themselves is an amiable mediocrity. Excellence implies striving for the highest standards in every phase of life.

Gardner, John W.

If you'll not settle for anything less than your best, you will be amazed at what you can accomplish in your lives.

Lombardi, Vince

There is a canyon of difference between doing your best to glorify God and doing whatever it takes to glorify yourself. The quest for excellence is a mark of maturity. The quest for power is childish.

Lucado, Max L.

Only a mediocre person is always at his best.

Maugham, W. Somerset

You always have to give 100 percent, because if you don't, someone, someplace, will give 100 percent and will beat you when you meet.

Macauley, Ed

You can start right where you stand and apply the habit of going the extra mile by rendering more service and better service than you are now being paid for.

Hill, Napoleon

The real contest is always between what you've done and what you're capable of doing. You measure yourself against yourself and nobody else.

Gaberino, Geoffrey

10.

You have to create a track record of breaking your own mold, or at least other people's idea of that mold.

Hurt, William

11.

Whatever you do, don't do it halfway.

Beamon, Bob

12.

If we want to make something really superb on this planet, there is nothing whatever that can stop us.

Mead, Shepherd

13.

It takes a long time to bring excellence to maturity.

Publilius Syrus

14.

A racehorse that consistently runs just a second faster than another horse is worth millions of dollars more. Be willing to give that extra effort that separates the winner from the one in second place.

Brown Jr., H. Jackson

15.

Resolve to make each day the very best and don't let anyone get in your way. If they do, step on them.

Benson, Ivan

16.

You can become an even more excellent person by constantly setting higher and higher standards for yourself and then by doing everything possible to live up to those standards.

Tracy, Brian

17.

Whoever I am, or whatever I am doing, some kind of excellence is within my reach.

Gardner, John W.

18.

Superiority -- doing things a little better than anybody else can do them.

Marden, Orison Swett

19.

One of the great undiscovered joys of life comes from doing everything one attempts to the best of one's ability. There is a special sense of satisfaction, a pride in surveying such a work, a work which is rounded, full, exact, complete in its parts, which the superficial person who leaves his or her work in a slovenly, slipshod, half-finished condition, can never know. It is this conscientious completeness which turns any work into art. The smallest task, well done, becomes a miracle of achievement.

Mandino, Og

20.

Excellence is best described as doing the right things right -- selecting the most important things to be done and then accomplishing them 100% correctly.

21.

Do a little bit more than average and from that point on our progress multiplies itself out of all proportion to the effort put in.

Meyer, Paul J.

22.

The kind of people I look for to fill top management spots are the eager beavers, the mavericks. These are the guys who try to do more than they're expected to do -- they always reach.

Iacocca, Lee

23.

People come out to see you perform and you've got to give them the best you have within you. The lives of most men are patchwork quilts. Or at best one matching outfit with a closet and laundry bag full of incongruous accumulations. A lifetime of training for just ten seconds.

Owens, Jesse

24.

It isn't by size that you win or fail -- be the best of whatever you are.

Malloch, Douglas

25.

There never will exist anything permanently noble and excellent in the character which is a stranger to resolute self-denial.

Scott, Sir Walter

26.

When you say you'll meet someone at 11:00 AM, be there at 10:45. When you promise a check on the 30th, send it on the 28th. Whatever you agree to do, do it a bit more. Start with your employees, then extend it to everyone you deal with. News will soon get around that you are a person of your word.

Scott, Charles Prestwich

27.

I made a resolve then that I was going to amount to something if I could. And no hours, nor amount of labor, nor amount of money would deter me from giving the best that there was in me. And I have done that ever since, and I win by it. I know.

Sanders, Col. Harland

28.

Strive for excellence, not perfection.

H. Jackson Brown Jr.

29.

It is only in your mind that you have to excel, at anything or everything. Of course, it would be very nice to excel at most things. Indeed, we recommend that you try and do your best. But realistically, you are entitled to do the bare minimum to get by. All your accomplishments are just a bonus, something to enjoy, not requirements. You don't have to do anything to prove that you are worthy of existing.

Albert Ellis, Michael Abrams, Lidia Dengelegi

30.

Do not look for approval except for the consciousness of doing your best.

Carnegie, Andrew

31.

There is only one thing for us to do, and that is to do our level best right where we are every day of our lives; To use our best judgment, and then to trust the rest to that Power which holds the forces of the universe in his hands.

Marden, Orison Swett

32.

Being forced to work, and forced to do your best, will breed in you temperance and self-control, diligence and strength of will, cheerfulness and content, and a hundred virtues which the idle will never know.

Kingsley, Charles

33.

If you want to achieve excellence, you can get there today. As of this second, quit doing less-than-excellent work.

Watson, Thomas J.

34.

You're probably not a member of a major league baseball team, your errors, unless they are truly spectacular, don't show up in the morning paper.

Goodsell, Jane

35.

The excellency of every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeable evaporate.

Keats, John

36.

The noblest search is the search for excellence.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

37.

Good enough never is.

Field, Debbi

38.

I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.

Wilde, Oscar

39.

We must do the best we can with what we have.

Sill, Edward Rowland

40.

One shining quality lends a luster to another, or hides some glaring defect.

Hazlitt, William

41.

The man who comes up with a means for doing or producing almost anything better, faster or more economically has his future and his fortune at his fingertips.

Getty, J. Paul

42.

Excellence is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.

Gardner, John W.

43.

The secret of joy in work is contained in one word - excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.

Pearl Buck

44.

I am a writer because writing is the thing I do best.

O'Connor, Flannery

45.

From time to time there appear on the face of the earth men of rare and consummate excellence, who dazzle us by their virtue, and whose outstanding qualities shed a stupendous light. Like those extraordinary stars of whose origins we are ignorant, and of whose fate, once they have vanished, we know even less, such men have neither forebears nor descendants: they are the whole of their race.

Bruyere, Jean De La

46.

Badness you can get easily, in quantity; the road is smooth, and it lies close by, But in front of excellence the immortal gods have put sweat, and long and steer is the way to it.

Hesiod

47.

If I play my best, I can win anywhere in the world against anybody.

Floyd, Ray

48.

I have offended God and mankind because my work didn't reach the quality it should have.

Da Vinci, Leonardo

49.

There seems to be one quality of mind which seems to be of special and extreme advantage in leading him to make discoveries. It was the power of never letting exceptions go unnoticed.

Darwin, Francis

50.

To enjoy the things we ought and to hate the things we ought has the greatest bearing on excellence of character.

Aristotle