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.

I often say 'pursue excellence, ignore success.' Success is a by-product of excellence.

I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence I can reach for; perfection is God's business.

Excellence is the eternal quest. We achieve it by living up to our highest intellectual standards and our finest moral intuitions. In seeking excellence, take life seriously-but never yourself!

Perfection. Excellence. What a passionate lover. But once having tasted the lips of excellence, once having given oneself to its perfection, how dreary and burdensome and filled with anomie are the remainder of one's waking hours trapped in the shackled lock-step of the merely ordinary, the barely acceptable, the just okay and not a stroke better.

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.

Great teachers and schools expect and nurture quality work and quality performance. Great teachers inspire and demand quality, ever urging their students to higher levels of excellence. They shun mere conformity and expect their students to think and perform to their ever-increasing potential.

The Dark Side of the Moon has flash - the true flash that comes from the excellence of a superb performance.

When you hold out for high standards, people are impressed-but they don't always like you for it. Not everybody will be on your side in your struggle to do what's right and ethical. In fact, sometimes even you won't be on your side. You'll wrestle with inner conflict, torn between what you should do and what you want to do. You'll also aggravate other people. Seems when you walk the straight and narrow you always step on someone's toes. Don't count on the ethics of excellence to make you popular.

A while back, I came across a line attributed to IBM founder Thomas Watson. If you want to achieve excellence, he said, you can get there today. As of this second, quit doing less-than-excellent work.

The noblest search is the search for excellence.

The test of the artist does not lie in the will with which he goes to work, but in the excellence of the work he produces.

In every power, of which taste is the foundation, excellence is pretty fairly divided between the sexes.

I like cinematic art that doesn't have to include violence as the main meat of emotion. Now, excellence in cinema is based on murder, guns. Tarantino bores me. Even though he is very appealing and very facile about putting elements of pop culture into his work. But it kinds of dates it, right?

Failure is the price of excellence.

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

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 is my presence. Never tense, never hesitant.

The happy life is thought to be one of excellence; now an excellent life requires exertion, and does not consist in amusement.

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

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

When given an opportunity, deliver excellence and never quit.

The Grammys are supposed to be awards for artistic excellence… Iggy Azalea’s not excellent.

Excellence is the best deterrent to racism or sexism.

Physical Fitness is the basis for all other forms of excellence.

Beautiful forms and compositions are not made by chance, nor can they ever, in any material, be made at small expense. A composition for cheapness and not excellence of workmanship is the most frequent and certain cause of the rapid decay and entire destruction of arts and manufacturers.

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.

When one of a culture's guiding credos is that "all men are created equal," any person who, say, becomes an expert on, say, nuclear weapons or, say, ecology, i.e., anyone who distinguishes himself through mental excellence, is a nuisance.

Norwich is a fine city. None finer. If there is another city in the United Kingdom with a school of painters named after it, a matchless modern art gallery, a university with a reputation for literary excellence which can boast Booker Prize-winning alumni, one of the grandest Romanesque cathedrals in the world, and an extraordinary new state-of-the-art library then I have yet to hear of it.

Mediocre men work at their best; men seeking excellence strive to do better.

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.

Aspire greatly; anything less than a commitment to excellence becomes an acceptance of mediocrity.

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.

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.

Purists behave as if there was a vintage year when language achieved a measure of excellence which we should all strive to maintain. In fact, there was never such a year. The language of Chaucer's or Shakespeare's time was no better and no worse than that of our own - just different.

Professional accountability is a good thing. Without it, excellence is merely a pipe dream and even average performance isn't a realistic expectation.

The key to pursuing excellence is to embrace an organic, long-term learning process, and not to live in a shell of static, safe mediocrity. Usually, growth comes at the expense of previous comfort or safety.

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.

There's no grand excellence to it. In my experience it was just almost the gulaggy boringness of it that'll kill you. You're just in this murk. And you're with other humans, but you lose all your human skills and it's just like you're in this plastic bag and you can't quite connect with people. You lose your ability to transmit electricity or something, and to receive it.

Excellence is a choice, and you must make that choice over and over again until "doing your best" is all you know.

Wisdom is not finally tested in schools, Wisdom cannot be pass'd from one having it to another not having it, Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof, Applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is content, Is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and the excellence of things; Something there is in the float of the sight of things that provokes it out of the soul.

My new favorite word is 'awkward.'...Th e reason we need to be in search of awkward is that awkward is the barrier between us and excellence, between where we are and the remarkable. If it were easy, everyone would have done it already, and it wouldn't be worth the effort.

Since the birth of our nation, the steady performance of the Marine Corps in fighting America's battles has made it the very symbol of military excellence. The Corps has come to be recognized worldwide as an elite force of fighting men, renowned for their physical endurance, for their high level of obedience, and for the fierce pride they take, as individuals, in the capacity for self discipline.

You have to be uncompromised in your level of commitment to whatever you are doing, or it can disappear as fast as it appeared... Excellence isn't a one-week or one-year ideal. It's a constant. There will be days when you don't feel on top of your game, or meetings in which you aren't at your best, but your commitment remains constant. No compromises.

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.

Merely to have survived is not an index of excellence.

To encourage excellence is to go beyond the encouraged mediocrity of our society