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

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

Garfield, Charles A.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Hazlitt, William

We distinguish the excellent man from the common man by saying that the former is the one who makes great demands on himself, and the latter who makes no demands on himself.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

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

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

Sir Winston Churchill

10.

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

Carnegie, Andrew

11.

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

12.

There is no finish line.

Nike Corporation

13.

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

Keats, John

14.

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

Powers, Melvin

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

Trevino, Lee

19.

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

Wilde, Oscar

20.

I start where the last man left off.

Edison, Thomas A.

21.

Excellence is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.

Gardner, John W.

22.

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

23.

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

Robinson, James H.

24.

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.

25.

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

Roddick, Anita

26.

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.

27.

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

Edison, Thomas A.

28.

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

Young, Steve

29.

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

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

30.

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

31.

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

32.

Let each day be your masterpiece.

33.

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

Berry, Wendell

34.

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.

35.

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

36.

The sad truth is that excellence makes people nervous.

Shana Alexander

37.

Only a mediocre person is always at his best.

Maugham, W. Somerset

38.

People who produce good results feel good about themselves.

Blanchard, Ken

39.

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

John F. Kennedy

40.

To do the right thing, at the right time, in the right way; to do some things better than they were ever done before; to eliminate errors; to know both sides of the question; to be courteous; to be an example; to work for the love of work; to anticipate requirements; to develop resources; to recognize no impediments; to master circumstances; to act from reason rather than rule; to be satisfied with nothing short of perfection.

Marshall Field & Company

41.

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

42.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

43.

The noblest search is the search for excellence.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

44.

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

45.

Doing common things uncommonly well.

Marden, Orison Swett

46.

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

47.

Whatever you do, don't do it halfway.

Beamon, Bob

48.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

49.

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

50.

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

Wooden, John