Quotes About Excellence

In any democracy, there is always a tug-of-war between policies to achieve equality and policies to promote excellence. I am certain that Canada can achieve both equality and excellence.

Nothing motivates like success. While academics, consultants and gurus are preoccupied with coming up with great insights and seminal ideas, usually they don't realize that making things happen, achieving operational excellence, moving the organization from uncertainty to clarity, from red ink to black, is what really creates hope for a better future. Therefore, great leadership always involves great ideas and real actions that reinforce a strong belief in the excellence of the decision makers and in the viability of the organization itself.

It is never easy to demand the most from ourselves, from our lives, from our work. To encourage excellence is to go beyond the encouraged mediocrity of our society is to encourage excellence. But giving in to the fear of feeling and working to capacity is a luxury only the unintentional can afford, and the unintentional are those who do not wish to guide their own destinies.

Wealth does not bring excellence, but that wealth comes from excellence.

The secret of living a life of excellence is merely a matter of thinking thoughts of excellence. Really, it's a matter of programming our minds with the kind of information that will set us free.

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.

Wealth does not bring about excellence (aka areté), but excellence (aka areté) brings about wealth and all other public and private blessings for men.

Excellence in any department can be attained only by the labor of a lifetime; it is not to be purchased at a lesser price.

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

If you truly expect to realize your dreams, abandon the need for blanket approval. If conforming to everyone's expectations is the number one goal, you have sacrificed your uniqueness, and therefore your excellence.

All excellence involves discipline and tenacity of purpose.

There is no surer mark of the absence of the highest moral and intellectual qualities than a cold reception of excellence.

Conscience, the sense of right, the power of perceiving moral distinctions, the power of discerning between justice and injustice, excellence and baseness, is the highest faculty given us by God, the whole foundation of our responsibility, and our sole capacity for religion. ...God, in giving us conscience, has implanted a principle within us which forbids us to prostrate ourselves before mere power, or to offer praise where we do not discover worth.

We must always meet our obligation to those who fall behind without our assistance. But let's remember, without a race there can be no champion, no records broken, no excellence - in education or any other walk of life.

The power of excellence is overwhelming. It is always in demand, and nobody cares about its color.

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?

The excellence of the Church does not consist in multitude but in purity.

Making a judgment, taking a stand and then acting against an injustice or acting to support excellence is the stuff of the everyman hero. If you are an aspiring artist and you wish to avoid “judgments,” you'll find that you have nothing to say.

A woman who places a high priority on performance and excellence is seen as imperial. A man is seen as demanding and tough.

It takes more energy to maintain mediocrity than it takes to pursue excellence.

To suppose universal laws of nature capable of being apprehended by the mind and yet having no reason for their special forms, but standing inexplicable and irrational, is hardly a justifiable position. Uniformities are precisely the sort of facts that need to be accounted for. Law is par excellence the thing that wants a reason. Now the only possible way of accounting for the laws of nature, and for uniformity in general, is to suppose them results of evolution.

The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying.

Herein indeed consists the excellence of the English government, that all parts of it form a mutual check upon each other.

Dostoevsky believed that the gods of rationalism and materialist utilitarianism had joined in conspiracy against all other ethical systems. ... The accumulation of capital, or the acquisition of money, are endeavors par excellence which establish a quantifiable goal: hence they are directly amenable to maximization formulae.

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

I didn't have friends. No one talked to me. I used to go to the Wyndcroft School (nationally recognized for academic excellence) in Pottstown, and when I moved to Wyomissing, I didn't know anybody.

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.

How sad that we often diminish our best gifts by struggling valiantly to develop in someone else's area of ability. It is better to focus on your uniqueness and do that with excellence than to end up with mediocrity in several areas.

You cannot learn very much about excellence from studying failure.

The piano is the social instrument par excellence... drawing-room furniture, a sign of bourgeois prosperity, the most massive of the devices by which the young are tortured in the name of education and the grown-up in the name of entertainment.

I want to explore and do things with excellence. I want to write songs that resonate with me and will resonate with a live audience. I'm exploring fresh sounds.

If America wants to make "made in America" a symbol of excellence and worth. They have to make everything of high quality, otherwise the best.

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.

The standard is the standard and whomever walks in the door at the time I need a person in that position who can do that job with excellence and who understands my vision, if they can fulfill it, they got the job whether they're young, old, black, white, male or female.

The kind of commitment I find among the best performers across virtually every field is a single-minded passion for what they do, an unwavering desire for excellence in the way they think and the way they work. Genuine confidence is what launches you out of bed in the morning, and through your day with a spring in your step.

You don't have to be really good anymore to get good results. What's happening with Chess is that it's gradually losing its place as the par excellence of intellectual activity. Smart people in search of a challenging board game might try a game called Go.

Excellence does not begin in Washington.

We are seeing some challenges and some changes in American business, American enterprise, but the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award is a reminder of things that must never change: the passion for excellence, the drive to innovate, the hard work that goes with any successful enterprise.

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

We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill.

To be well skilled in the mystery of Christian contentment is the duty, glory and excellence of a Christian.

My philosophy all my life has been the pursuit of excellence.

Chastity is the lily of virtues, and makes men almost equal to Angels. Everything is beautiful in accordance with its purity. Now the purity of man is chastity, which is called honesty, and the observance of it, honor and also integrity; and its contrary is called corruption; in short, it has this peculiar excellence above the other virtues, that it preserves both soul and body fair and unspotted.

I think that we already have a really good system in town, but I have a vision that it could be even better. My vision is that academic excellence is the area that we should pursue more, coupled with fiscal discipline.

I imagine a school system that recognizes learning is natural, that a love of learning is normal, and that real learning is passionate learning. A school curriculum that values questions above answers...creativity above fact regurgitation...individuality above conformity.. and excellence above standardized performance..... And we must reject all notions of 'reform' that serve up more of the same: more testing, more 'standards', more uniformity, more conformity, more bureaucracy.

When u have this spirit of excellence, u do the right thing always :even if no one is watching you.

I'm speaking of the pursuit of excellence in all things. All things! Presence of mind and devotion to craft. A great artist has these. A great chef. A great master of tea. There's powerful kung fu in a well-built house or an eloquent letter, but the limit of your imagination is bones breaking and bullets flying.