Motivational Quotes

Excellence

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

- Marden, Orison Swett

Best Quotes about 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

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.

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

Aristotle

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

Riley, Pat

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

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

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

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

Newton, Howard W.

Our goal, simply stated, is to be the best.

Robinson, James H.

10.

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

11.

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

Malloch, Douglas

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Gardner, John W.

16.

Don't waste your time striving for perfection, instead, strive for excellence -- doing your best.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

17.

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

18.

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

Washington, Booker T.

19.

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

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.

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

22.

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

Hill, Napoleon

23.

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

24.

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

Floyd, Ray

25.

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

26.

It is just the little difference between the good and the best that makes the difference between the artist and the artisan. It is just the little touches after the average man would quit that makes the master's fame.

Marden, Orison Swett

27.

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

28.

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

Watson, Thomas J.

29.

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

30.

Make it a life-rule to give your best to whatever passes through your hands. Stamp it with your manhood. Let superiority be your trademark...

Marden, Orison Swett

31.

Let each day be your masterpiece.

32.

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.

33.

If something is exceptionally well done it has embedded in it's very existence the aim of lifting the common denominator rather than catering to it.

Fischer, Edward

34.

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.

35.

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

Sill, Edward Rowland

36.

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

O'Connor, Flannery

37.

Do your work; not just your work and no more, but a little more for the lavishing's sake -- that little more which is worth all the rest.

Briggs, Dean

38.

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

Scott, Sir Walter

39.

Doing common things uncommonly well.

Marden, Orison Swett

40.

There is an infinite difference between a little wrong and just right, between fairly good and the best, between mediocrity and superiority...

Marden, Orison Swett

41.

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

42.

The best we can do is size up the chances, calculate the risks involved, estimate our ability to deal with them, and then make our plans with confidence.

Ford, Henry

43.

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

Wilde, Oscar

44.

Excellence is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.

Gardner, John W.

45.

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

46.

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

Powers, Melvin

47.

Only a mediocre person is always at his best.

Maugham, W. Somerset

48.

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

49.

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

Carnegie, Andrew

50.

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