Motivational Quotes

Excellence

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

Best Quotes about Excellence

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

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.

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

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

Mead, Shepherd

Good enough never is.

Field, Debbi

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.

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

Peterson, Wilferd A.

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

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

Sands, Bill

10.

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

Wilde, Oscar

11.

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

12.

You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.

Feinstein, Dianne

13.

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.

14.

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

Marden, Orison Swett

15.

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

16.

There's a way to do better... find it.

Edison, Thomas A.

17.

Excellence is rarely found, more rarely valued.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

18.

Put the uncommon effort into the common task... make it large by doing it in a great way.

Marden, Orison Swett

19.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

20.

There is no finish line.

Nike Corporation

21.

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

22.

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

23.

The most splendid achievement of all is the constant striving to surpass yourself and to be worthy of your own approval.

Waitley, Denis

24.

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

25.

Do a little more each day than you think you possibly can.

Thomas, Lowell

26.

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

Trevino, Lee

27.

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

28.

Determine to become one of the best. Sufficient money will almost automatically follow if you get to be one of the best in your chosen field, whatever it is.

Mitchell, Don G.

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

Garfield, Charles A.

32.

If you aren't playing well, the game isn't as much fun. When that happens I tell myself just to go out and play as I did when I was a kid.

Watson, Thomas J.

33.

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

34.

True greatness consists in being great in little things.

Simmons, Charles

35.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

36.

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

37.

I can do small things in a great way.

Clarke, James Freeman

38.

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

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

39.

Always strive to excel, but only on weekends.

Rorty, Richard

40.

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

Young, Steve

41.

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.

42.

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

Powers, Melvin

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

47.

Become all that you are capable of becoming!

Mckain, Robert J.

48.

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

49.

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

Da Vinci, Leonardo

50.

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