Motivational Quotes

Excellence

I made a resolve then that I was going to amount to something if I could. And no hours, nor amount of labor, nor amount of money would deter me from giving the best that there was in me. And I have done that ever since, and I win by it. I know.

- Sanders, Col. Harland

Best Quotes about Excellence

When you say you'll meet someone at 11:00 AM, be there at 10:45. When you promise a check on the 30th, send it on the 28th. Whatever you agree to do, do it a bit more. Start with your employees, then extend it to everyone you deal with. News will soon get around that you are a person of your word.

Scott, Charles Prestwich

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

Hill, Napoleon

All you owe the public is a good performance.

Bogart, Humphrey

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

Wilde, Oscar

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

Doing common things uncommonly well.

Marden, Orison Swett

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

Hazlitt, William

People who produce good results feel good about themselves.

Blanchard, Ken

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

10.

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

Marden, Orison Swett

11.

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

12.

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

Young, Steve

13.

There is no top. There are always further heights to reach.

Heifetz, Jascha

14.

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

Popplestone, Charles E.

15.

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

16.

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

Scott, Sir Walter

17.

Only a mediocre person is always at his best.

Maugham, W. Somerset

18.

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

Berry, Wendell

19.

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

20.

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

Peters, Thomas J.

21.

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

Gardner, John W.

22.

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

23.

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

Carnegie, Andrew

24.

The quality of expectations determines the quality of our action.

Godin, Andre

25.

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.

26.

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

Feinstein, Dianne

27.

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.

28.

Sanders, Col. Harland

29.

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

30.

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

31.

Always strive to excel, but only on weekends.

Rorty, Richard

32.

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

Aristotle

33.

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

34.

Good enough never is.

Field, Debbi

35.

Excellence is rarely found, more rarely valued.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

36.

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

Robinson, James H.

37.

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

38.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

39.

You have to create a track record of breaking your own mold, or at least other people's idea of that mold.

Hurt, William

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

43.

Let each day be your masterpiece.

44.

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

Trevino, Lee

45.

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

46.

Let each become all that he was created capable of being.

Carlyle, Thomas

47.

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

Waitley, Denis

48.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

49.

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

Da Vinci, Leonardo

50.

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