Quotes About Excellence

Gandhi said 'One cannot do right in one area of life whilst he is occupied in doing wrong in another; Life is one indivisible whole.' This point of wisdom is profound. A commitment to excellence is not just reserved for a few select areas of your life - it must be reflected in everything you do. Your diet must reflect your commitment to excellence. Your physique must reflect your commitment to excellence. Your personal habits must reflect your commitment to excellence and your thoughts must reflect a commitment to excellence.

Nobody I know is as committed to excellence as Donald Palmisano. He symbolizes everything that is good about our country. If Horatio Alger were alive today, heʼd want to be just like Dr. Palmisano, one of the true Renaissance men Iʼve had the privilege and pleasure of knowing! On Leadership continues in his tradition of excellence.

It's like this, I think: the excellence of a good body doesn't make the soul good, but the other way around: the excellence of a good soul makes the body as good as it can be.

As Aristotle said, 'Excellence is a habit.' I would say furthermore that excellence is made constant through the feeling that comes right after one has completed a work which he himself finds undeniably awe-inspiring. He only wants to relax until he's ready to renew such a feeling all over again because to him, all else has become absolutely trivial.

I wanted to change the rules of engagement, asking for more- from fewer. I was insisting that we had to have only the best people...If you wanted excellence, at a minimum, the ambience had to reflect excellence.

The educational process should not be one of homogenizing. It should be one of encouraging excellence... when we fail to make financial aid depend upon performance, we eliminate the incentive to excellence.

Every activity performed in public can attain an excellence never matched in privacy; for excellence, by definition, the presence of others is always required.

The value of work, and of always learning something new, and what it takes to achieve excellence. I really believe in those things that you have to dedicate yourself and spend time, that excellence is elusive. It's a little maddening, to try to have that level of discipline in your life, and I don't succeed all the time. But I do try.

The achievement of excellence can only occur if the organization promotes a culture of creative dissatisfaction.

Mistakes are a natural part of growing up. They're to be expected and made light of. But children bloom like spring flowers under praise. They want so much to be noticed and appreciated, to excel and have that excellence noticed.

In peace-armies discipline meant the hunt, not of an average but of an absolute; the hundred per cent standard in which the ninety-nine were played down to the level of the weakest man on parade.... The deeper the discipline, the lower was the individual excellence; also the more sure the performance.

Men are in the main alike, but they were made several in order that they might be various. If a low use is to be served, one man will do nearly quite as well as another; if a high one, individual excellence is to be regarded.

Failure is the price of excellence.

Striving for excellence motivates you; striving for perfection is demoralizing.

Dreams can become a reality when we possess a vision that is characterized by the willingness to work hard, a desire for excellence, and a belief in our right and our responsiblity to be equal members of society.

A man's excellence is like that of water; It benefits all things without striving; It takes to the low places shunned by men. Water is akin to Tao. . . . In all the earth nothing weaker than water, Yet in attacking the hard, nothing superior, Nothing so certain in wearing down strength: There is no way to resist it. Note then: The weak conquer the strong, The yielding outlast the aggressors.

Those who turn good organizations into great organizations are motivated by a deep creative urge and an inner compulsion for sheer unadulterated excellence for its own sake.

Excellence isn't a one-week or one-year ideal. It's a constant.

People of excellence will always be brought before people of influence.

I demand excellence from the people I work with.

Has your work become very easy? Do you find you can do it with little effort? Has it ceased to impose any strain or fatigue upon you? Do you no longer feel loss of vitality after a long spell of it? Can you now do it as easy as water rolls off a duck's back? If so, look out! Do some stock-taking. Examine your output.... Work done with little effort is likely to yield little result. Every job can be done excellently or indifferently. Excellence necessitates effort-hard, sustained, concentrated effort.

Excellence is not an art. It is the habit of practice.

Your character is your destiny. Building character is a task for the brave and dedicated. There are no shortcuts when it comes to building character. If you wish to cure minimalism in your own life, to develop a complete commitment to excellence and an absolute rejection of mediocrity, the question you need to start asking yourself is, "What is the most I can do?"

To see victory only when it is within the ken of the common herd is not the acme of excellence.

Find something that you're really interested in doing in your life. Pursue it, set goals, and commit yourself to excellence. Do the best you can.

I will not go so far as to say, with a living poet, that the world knows nothing of its greatest men; but there are forms of greatness, or at least of excellence, which "die and make no sign"; there are martyrs that miss the palm, but not the stake; heroes without the laurel, and conquerors without the triumph.

Perfectionism is not as much the desire for excellence, as it is the fear of failure couched in procrastination .

Aspiration lifts the life; groveling lowers it. When we are striving for excellence in everything we do the entire life grows and expands, but if we allow our standards to drop, there is a natural progression that follows, a tendency for a downward effort in all that we do thereafter.

Education, they [philosophers] felt, is the only answer to the always pressing question, to the political question par excellence, of how to reconcile order which is not oppression with freedom which is not license.

Aim not to win or succeed, but for excellence in the moment.

If it were not somewhat fanciful to suppose that every human excellence is presented, as it were, in one kind of being, we might believe that the whole treasure of morality and order is enshrined in the female character.

I don't think about being male or female, I just behave naturally. I think in terms of excellence in science, not gender.

All of the top achievers I know are life-long learners. Looking for new skills, insights, and ideas. If they're not learning, they're not growing and not moving toward excellence.

The total mental efficiency of a man is the resultant of the working together of all his faculties. He is too complex a being for any one of them to have the casting vote. If any one of them do have the casting vote, it is more likely to be the strength of his desire and passion, the strength of the interest he takes in what is proposed. Concentration, memory, reasoning power, inventiveness, excellence of the senses, all are subsidiary to this.

The same man cannot well be skilled in everything; each has his special excellence.

Don't strive to be perfect. Strive for excellence.

If a team cannot perform with excellence at a moment's notice, they probably will fail in the long run.

Excellence or virtue in a man will be the disposition which renders him a good man and also which will cause him to perform his function well.

I think the challenges for me was to go into the studio with these incredible jazz players and come up to their level of excellence. That's always a challenge.

Subjugating the enemy's army without fighting is the true pinnacle of excellence.

Achieve some perfection [excellence] yourself, so that you may not fall into sorrow by seeing the perfection in others.

The media and their journalists are merely megaphones for stupidity, the verb par excellence.

Merely to have survived is not an index of excellence.

Ultimate excellence lies not in winning every battle, but in defeating the enemy without ever fighting.

The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, which highlights customer satisfaction, workforce empowerment, and increased productivity, has come to symbolize America's commitment to excellence.

Losing a game is heartbreaking. Losing your sense of excellence or worth is a tragedy.

You see, we'll never be able to compete in the 21st century unless we have an education system that doesn't quit on children, an education system that raises standards, an education that makes sure there's excellence in every classroom.

When Americans decry our politicians, we must remember that ultimately, politicians reflect us. When we demand more than mediocrity - and the passing comforts it bestows - we will certainly attain it. One hopes and prays it doesn't take an historic crisis for us to demand and reward excellence in public service.