Quotes About Excellence

The desire of excellence is the necessary attribute of those who excel. We work little for a thing unless we wish for it. But we cannot of ourselves estimate the degree of our success in what we strive for; that task is left to others. With the desire for excellence comes, therefore, the desire for approbation. And this distinguishes intellectual excellence from moral excellence; for the latter has no necessity of human tribunal; it is more inclined to shrink from the public than to invite the public to be its judge.

Going far beyond that call of duty, doing more than others expect, this is what excellence is all about! And it comes from striving, maintaining the highest standards, looking after the smallest detail, and going the extra mile. Excellence means doing your very best. In everything! In every way.

Poetry is an art, and chief of the fine art; the easiest to dabble in, the hardest in which to reach true excellence.

Education, introspection, self-love and excellence are the only ways to overcome the wrath of ignorance

Failure is the price of excellence.

The Greek temple is the creation, par excellence, of mind and spirit in equilibrium.

Excellence is a process, not just an outcome. Sure, we have to hold out for high standards in the products or services we provide. The goods must be more than "good enough." But so must our approach - you know, our methodology, the way we do business and deal with people. How could the ends be considered excellent if we can't be proud of the means?

Excellence of mind itself, rightly conceived, is expertise in beauty; creativity is wise love.

I hope to be remembered as an author who defined and exemplified excellence in crafting the modern love story.

When given an opportunity, deliver excellence and never quit.

Reducing our dependence on foreign energy - that is critically important to America's economic future. Excellence in education - if we're not the best educated, we're not going to be the most powerful for very long.

The only way we can develop muscle is through regular exercise. As soon as we stop stretching and working toward higher ethics, our standards start to sag. The muscle gets soft, and instead of excellence we have to settle for mediocrity. Maybe something even worse.

Real excellence, indeed, is most recognized when most openly looked into.

You cannot learn very much about excellence from studying failure.

My theory of self-made men is, then, simply this; that they are men of work. Whether or not such men have acquired material, moral or intellectual excellence, honest labor faithfully, steadily and persistently pursued, is the best, if not the only, explanation of their success... All human experience proves over and over again, that any success which comes through meanness, trickery, fraud and dishonour, is but emptiness and will only be a torment to its possessor.

Once you decide that mediocrity is unthinkable, your only choices are excellence and quitting.

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

An oyster, that marvel of delicacy, that concentration of sapid excellence, that mouthful bwefore all other mouthfuls, who first had faith to believe it, and courage to execute? The exterior is not persuasive.

Creativity is a distinctive trait of human excellence in all domains of behavior.

Basically, to lead without a title is to derive your power within the organisation not from your position but from your competence, effectiveness, relationships, excellence, innovation and ethics.

Where you see valid achievements or virtue being attacked, it's by someone viewing them as a mirror of their own inadequacy instead of an inspiring beacon for 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.

Even though . . . 9/11 happened because . . . Bush's FBI and CIA did not detect the Al Qaeda conspiracy . . . , Bush not only failed to apologize to the nation or the victims' survivors, he demonstrated his total lack of leadership by refusing to fire or even criticize those in these agencies who, like Bush, let this nation down. As in private life, to stimulate excellence, good performances have to be rewarded and gross negligence and incompetence punished.

The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as poetry.

We are more afraid of excellence than of failure.

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

The future is too soon the past. So make perseverance your excellence and go confidently in the direction of your dreams.

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

I was one of two first cultural exchange artists been allowed to go to the West. I knew it was such a rare opportunity and I had to treasure it by giving my utter most to achieve excellence.

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.

Excellence is the name of the game.

Science is not sacrosanct. The mere fact that it exists, is admired, has results is not sufficient for making it a measure of excellence. Modern science arose from global objections against earlier views and rationalism itself, the idea that there are general rules and standards for conducting our affairs, affairs of knowledge included, arose from global objections to common sense.

There are countless ways of achieving greatness, but any road to achieving one's maximum potential must be built on a bedrock of respect for the individual, a commitment to excellence, and a rejection of mediocrity.

It's really fun to see young kids trying to find excellence in themselves.

True prayer is only another name for the love of God. Its excellence does not consist in the multitude of our words; for our Father knoweth what things we have need of before we ask Him. The true prayer is that of the heart, and the heart prays only for what it desires. To pray, then is to desire -- but to desire what God would have us desire. He who asks what he does not from the bottom of his heart desire, is mistaken in thinking that he prays.

Universities have failed in their function of the pursuit of academic excellence by having dumbed down classes and granting degrees to students who are just barely literate and computationally incompetent.

It is most certainly a good thing that the world knows only the beautiful opus but not its origins, not the conditions of its creation; for if people knew the sources of the artist's inspiration, that knowledge would often confuse them, alarm them, and thereby destroy the effects of excellence. strange hours! strangely enervating labor! bizarrely fertile intercourse of the mind with a body!

We all have a vast number of areas in which we have no talent or skill and little chance of becoming even mediocre. In those areas a knowledge workers should not take on work, jobs and assignments. It takes far more energy to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence.

A Christian should always remember that the value of his good works is not based on their number and excellence, but on the love of God which prompts him to do these things.

Gentlemen, we are going to relentlessly chase perfection, knowing full well we will not catch it, because nothing is perfect. But we are going to relentlessly chase it, because in the process we will catch excellence. I am not remotely interested in just being good.

We clamor for equality chiefly in matters in which we ourselves cannot hope to obtain excellence.

Excellence is the asymptotic state that never quite reaches perfection.

Excellence in health means devoting your life to ending poverty.

Without doubt I praise the wild excellence.

Excellence isn't an act, it's a habit

When all is said and done we simply must make teaching in this country an honorable profession-since it's in the classrooms of America where the battle for excellence, ultimately, will be won or lost.

In a well-written book we are presented with the maturest reflections, or the happiest flights of a mind of uncommon excellence. It is impossible that we can be much accustomed to such companions without attaining some resemblance to them.

We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.