Quotes about excellence

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.

— Jesse Owens

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

— Thomas J. Peters

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

— Wilferd A. Peterson

No matter how small and unimportant what we are doing may seem, if we do it well, it may soon become the step that will lead us to better things.

— Channing Pollock

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

— Charles E. Popplestone

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

— Melvin Powers

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

— Pat Riley

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

— James H. Robinson

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

— Anita Roddick

Always strive to excel, but only on weekends.

— Richard Rorty

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.

— Col. Harland Sanders

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

— Bill Sands

All successful employers are stalking men who will do the unusual, men who think, men who attract attention by performing more than is expected of them.

— Charles M. Schwab

The success combination in business is: Do what you do better... and: Do more of what you do...

— David J. Schwartz

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.

— Charles Prestwich Scott

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

— Sir Walter Scott

It is quality rather than quantity that matters.

— Seneca

Then to Silvia let us sing that Silvia is excelling. She excels each mortal thing upon the dull earth dwelling.

— William Shakespeare

When workmen strive to do better than well, they do confound their skill in covetousness.

— William Shakespeare

We must do the best we can with what we have.

— Edward Rowland Sill

True greatness consists in being great in little things.

— Charles Simmons

To be really great in little things, to be truly noble and heroic in the insipid details of everyday life, is a virtue so rare as to be worthy of canonization.

— Harriet Beecher Stowe

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

— Lowell Thomas

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.

— Brian Tracy

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

— Lee Trevino

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.

— Harry S Truman

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

— Source Unknown

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.

— Source Unknown

Let each day be your masterpiece.

— Source Unknown

Every job is a self-portrait of the person who did it. Autograph your work with excellence.

— Source Unknown

The road to excellence is always under construction

— Source Unknown

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.

— A. Lou Vickery

The best is the enemy of the good.

— Voltaire

Winners have the ability to step back from the canvas of their lives like an artist gaining perspective. They make their lives a work of art -- an individual masterpiece.

— Denis Waitley

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

— Denis Waitley

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

— Booker T. Washington

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.

— Thomas J. Watson

If you want to achieve excellence, you can get there today. As of this second, quit doing less-than-excellent work.

— Thomas J. Watson

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

— Oscar Wilde

Surely a man has come to himself only when he has found the best that is in him, and has satisfied his heart with the highest achievement he is fit for.

— Woodrow T. Wilson

I was raised to believe that excellence is the best deterrent to racism and sexism.

— Oprah Winfrey

My philosophy is that not only are you responsible for your life, but doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment.

— Oprah Winfrey

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

— John Wooden

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.

— Virginia Woolf

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

— Steve Young

Doing what is expected is boring. Go beyond mediocre and aim toward excellence!

— Natasha Vanderlinden

Success is like a bewitching woman with no character and known for her infidelity. Anyone paying the right price for it can have in his life. But an excellence is unlike success and to crave for or attain it, the person has to have the right human values and high good character in his life.

— Anuj Somany

Excellence encourages one about life generally; it shows the spiritual wealth of the world.

— George Eliot