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

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

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

Keats, John

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

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

Da Vinci, Leonardo

I start where the last man left off.

Edison, Thomas A.

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.

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

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

Edison, Thomas A.

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

10.

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.

11.

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

Peterson, Wilferd A.

12.

Only a mediocre person is always at his best.

Maugham, W. Somerset

13.

The noblest search is the search for excellence.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

14.

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

Hazlitt, William

15.

I use nothing but the best ingredients. My cookies are always baked fresh. I price cookies so that you cannot make them at home for any less. And I still give cookies away.

Fields, Debbie

16.

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

Mead, Shepherd

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

20.

Excellence is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.

Gardner, John W.

21.

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

22.

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

Washington, Booker T.

23.

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

24.

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

Feinstein, Dianne

25.

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

Newton, Howard W.

26.

You must be resolutely determined that whatever you do shall always be the best of which you are capable.

Popplestone, Charles E.

27.

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

Sands, Bill

28.

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

29.

Doing common things uncommonly well.

Marden, Orison Swett

30.

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

31.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

32.

Always do your best. What you plant now, you will harvest later.

Mandino, Og

33.

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

Scott, Sir Walter

34.

Always strive to excel, but only on weekends.

Rorty, Richard

35.

Become all that you are capable of becoming!

Mckain, Robert J.

36.

Let each day be your masterpiece.

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

Carnegie, Andrew

40.

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

41.

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

Riley, Pat

42.

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.

43.

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

44.

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

Powers, Melvin

45.

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

46.

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.

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

Malloch, Douglas

50.

I can do small things in a great way.

Clarke, James Freeman