Quotes about excellence

The sad truth is that excellence makes people nervous.

— Shana Alexander

Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.

— Aristotle

Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.

— Aristotle

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

Whatever you do, don't do it halfway.

— Bob Beamon

Resolve to make each day the very best and don't let anyone get in your way. If they do, step on them.

— Ivan Benson

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

— Wendell Berry

People who produce good results feel good about themselves.

— Ken Blanchard

All you owe the public is a good performance.

— Humphrey Bogart

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.

— Dean Briggs

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.

— H. Jackson Brown Jr.

Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss it you will land among the stars.

— Les Brown

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.

— Les Brown

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.

— Jean De La Bruyere

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

— Thomas Carlyle

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

— Andrew Carnegie

I can do small things in a great way.

— James Freeman Clarke

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

— Leonardo Da Vinci

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.

— Francis Darwin

It is a wretched taste to be gratified with mediocrity when the excellent lies before us.

— Isaac Disraeli

I start where the last man left off.

— Thomas A. Edison

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

— Thomas A. Edison

There is always a best way of doing everything.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

He who has put a good finish to his undertaking is said to have placed a golden crown to the whole.

— Eustachius

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

— Dianne Feinstein

Good enough never is.

— Debbi Field

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.

— Debbie Fields

You get the best out of others when you get the best out of yourself.

— Harvey S. Firestone

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.

— Edward Fischer

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

— Ray Floyd

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.

— Henry Ford

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.

— Geoffrey Gaberino

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.

— Jerry Garcia

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

— John W. Gardner

Excellence is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.

— John W. Gardner

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.

— John W. Gardner

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

— Charles A. Garfield

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

— Jose Ortega Y Gasset

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.

— Jose Ortega Y Gasset

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.

— J. Paul Getty

The quality of expectations determines the quality of our action.

— Andre Godin

Excellence is rarely found, more rarely valued.

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

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.

— Oliver Goldsmith

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.

— Jane Goodsell

There is none who cannot teach somebody something, and there is none so excellent but he is excelled.

— Baltasar Gracian

Much good work is lost for the lack of a little more.

— Edward H. Harriman

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

— William Hazlitt

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

— Jascha Heifetz

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.

— Ernest Hemingway

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

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.

— Napoleon Hill

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

— Napoleon Hill

It has always been my belief that a man should do his best, regardless of how much he receives for his services, or the number of people he may be serving or the class of people served.

— Napoleon Hill

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

— William Hurt

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.

— Lee Iacocca

The noblest search is the search for excellence.

— Lyndon B. Johnson

We do not do well except when we know where the best is and when we are assured that we have touched it and hold its power within us.

— Joseph Joubert

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

— John Keats

If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well.

— King Jr. Martin Luther

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.

— Charles Kingsley

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.

— Charles Knight

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

— Abraham Lincoln

If you'll not settle for anything less than your best, you will be amazed at what you can accomplish in your lives.

— Vince Lombardi

When we have done our best, we should wait the result in peace.

— Sir John Lubbock

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.

— Max L. Lucado

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.

— Ed Macauley

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

— Douglas Malloch

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

— Og Mandino

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.

— Og Mandino

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.

— Og Mandino

Today, and every day, 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. Exercise your privilege to go the extra mile, and enjoy all the rewards you receive. You deserve them!

— Og Mandino

The person who knows one thing and does it better than anyone else, even if it only be the art of raising lentils, receives the crown he merits. If he raises all his energy to that end, he is a benefactor of mankind and its rewarded as such.

— Og Mandino

I want to be all that I am capable of becoming.

— Katherine Mansfield

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.

— Orison Swett Marden

Doing common things uncommonly well.

— Orison Swett Marden

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.

— Orison Swett Marden

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.

— Orison Swett Marden

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

— Orison Swett Marden

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

— Orison Swett Marden

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.

— Orison Swett Marden

The greatest thing a man can do in this world is to make the most possible out of the stuff that has been given him. This is success, and there is no other.

— Orison Swett Marden

Superiority -- doing things a little better than anybody else can do them.

— Orison Swett Marden

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

— Orison Swett Marden

People who have accomplished work worthwhile have had a very high sense of the way to do things. They have not been content with mediocrity. They have not confined themselves to the beaten tracks; they have never been satisfied to do things just as others so them, but always a little better. They always pushed things that came to their hands a little higher up, this little farther on, that counts in the quality of life's work. It is constant effort to be first-class in everything one attempts that conquers the heights of excellence.

— Orison Swett Marden

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...

— Orison Swett Marden

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

Only a mediocre person is always at his best.

— W. Somerset Maugham

To enjoy enduring success we should travel a little in advance of the world.

— John Mcdonald

Become all that you are capable of becoming!

— Robert J. Mckain

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

— Shepherd Mead

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.

— Paul J. Meyer

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.

— James A. Michener

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.

— John Stuart Mill

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.

— Don G. Mitchell

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

— Howard W. Newton

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

— Friedrich Nietzsche

There is no finish line.

— Nike Corporation

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

— Flannery O'Connor

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.

— David Ogilvy

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

— Sir Lawrence Olivier