Motivational Quotes

Excellence

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

Best Quotes about Excellence

One of the most essential things you need to do for yourself is to choose a goal that is important to you. Perfection does not exist -- you can always do better and you can always grow.

Brown, Les

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.

Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can reach. Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries and predecessors; try to be better than yourself.

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

If you do things well, do them better. Be daring, be first, be different, be just.

Roddick, Anita

Deliver more than you are getting paid to do. The victory of success will be half won when you learn the secret of putting out more than is expected in all that you do. Make yourself so valuable in your work that eventually you will become indispensable.

Mandino, Og

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

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

Sill, Edward Rowland

You do not merely want to be considered just the best of the best. You want to be considered the only ones who do what you do.

Garcia, Jerry

10.

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

John F. Kennedy

11.

Do more than you're supposed to do and you can have or be or do anything you want.

Sands, Bill

12.

It is not from ourselves that we learn to be better than we are.

Berry, Wendell

13.

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

14.

It is those who have this imperative demand for the best in their natures, and who will accept nothing short of it, that holds the banners of progress, that set the standards, the ideals, for others.

Marden, Orison Swett

15.

If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.

Hill, Napoleon

16.

The road to excellence is always under construction

17.

With regard to excellence, it is not enough to know, but we must try to have and use it.

Aristotle

18.

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

19.

The sad truth is that excellence makes people nervous.

Shana Alexander

20.

The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he's always doing both.

Michener, James A.

21.

Only a mediocre person is always at his best.

Maugham, W. Somerset

22.

There is no such thing as natural touch. Touch is something you create by hitting millions of golf balls.

Trevino, Lee

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

Carnegie, Andrew

26.

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

27.

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

28.

A masterpiece is something said once and for all, stated, finished, so that it's there complete in the mind, if only at the back.

Woolf, Virginia

29.

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.

30.

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

31.

The principle is competing against yourself. It's about self improvement, about being better than you were the day before.

Young, Steve

32.

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

Aristotle

33.

The uncommon man is merely the common man thinking and dreaming of success in larger terms and in more fruitful areas.

Powers, Melvin

34.

Excellent firms don't believe in excellence -- only in constant improvement and constant change.

Peters, Thomas J.

35.

I can do small things in a great way.

Clarke, James Freeman

36.

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

37.

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

38.

I always remember an epitaph which is in the cemetery at Tombstone, Arizona. It says: Here lies Jack Williams. He done his damnedest. I think that is the greatest epitaph a man can have.

Truman, Harry S

39.

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

40.

Great men are little men expanded; great lives are ordinary lives intensified.

Peterson, Wilferd A.

41.

It has always been my belief that a man should do his best, regardless of how much he receives for his services, or the number of people he may be serving or the class of people served.

Hill, Napoleon

42.

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

Keats, John

43.

Excellence means when a man or woman asks of himself more than others do.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

44.

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

Wilde, Oscar

45.

Set exorbitant standards, and give your people hell when they don't live up to them. There is nothing so demoralizing as a boss who tolerates second rate work.

Ogilvy, David

46.

Great men are but common men more fully developed and ripened.

Marden, Orison Swett

47.

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

Hurt, William

48.

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

49.

People who produce good results feel good about themselves.