Motivational Quotes

Excellence

Anybody who accepts mediocrity -- in school, on the job, in life -- is a person who compromises, and when the leader compromises, the whole organization compromises.

- Knight, Charles

Best Quotes about Excellence

Excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better.

Riley, Pat

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

Berry, Wendell

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

Aristotle

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

Keats, John

Doing common things uncommonly well.

Marden, Orison Swett

The sad truth is that excellence makes people nervous.

Shana Alexander

There is one plain rule of life. Try thyself unweariedly till thou findest the highest thing thou art capable of doing, faculties and outward circumstances being both duly considered, and then do it.

Mill, John Stuart

Excellence is rarely found, more rarely valued.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

The renown which riches or beauty confer is fleeting and frail; mental excellence is a splendid and lasting possession.

Sallust

10.

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

11.

To do great things is difficult, but to command great things is more difficult.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

12.

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

Peters, Thomas J.

13.

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

Mead, Shepherd

14.

Good enough never is.

Field, Debbi

15.

It's not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what's required.

Sir Winston Churchill

16.

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

17.

I never had a policy; I have just tried to do my very best each and every day.

Lincoln, Abraham

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

Sands, Bill

21.

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

Hill, Napoleon

22.

Anybody who accepts mediocrity -- in school, on the job, in life -- is a person who compromises, and when the leader compromises, the whole organization compromises.

Knight, Charles

23.

It is the mark of an instructed mind to rest satisfied with the degree of precision which the nature of the subject admits and not to seek exactness when only an approximation of the truth is possible.

Aristotle

24.

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

Peterson, Wilferd A.

25.

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

Wilde, Oscar

26.

It's enough for you to do it once for a few men to remember you. But if you do it year after year, then many people remember you and they tell it to their children, and their children and grandchildren remember and, if it concerns books, they can read them. And if it's good enough, it will last as long as there are human beings.

Hemingway, Ernest

27.

Four short words sum up what has lifted most successful individuals above the crowd: a little bit more. They did all that was expected of them and a little bit more.

Vickery, A. Lou

28.

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

Trevino, Lee

29.

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

30.

Strive for excellence, not perfection.

H. Jackson Brown Jr.

31.

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

John F. Kennedy

32.

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

Hazlitt, William

33.

People forget how fast you did a job, but they remember how well you did it.

Newton, Howard W.

34.

People who produce good results feel good about themselves.

Blanchard, Ken

35.

Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way.

Washington, Booker T.

36.

Whatever you do, don't do it halfway.

Beamon, Bob

37.

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

Malloch, Douglas

38.

Excellence is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.

Gardner, John W.

39.

It takes a long time to bring excellence to maturity.

Publilius Syrus

40.

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

41.

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.

42.

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

43.

To aim at excellence, our reputation, and friends, and all must be ventured; to aim at the average we run no risk and provide little service.

Goldsmith, Oliver

44.

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

45.

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

46.

It isn't what you do, but how you do it.

Wooden, John

47.

The fact is, the difference between peak performers and everybody else are much smaller than everybody else thinks.

Garfield, Charles A.

48.

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.

49.

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

50.

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

O'Connor, Flannery