Quotes About Excellence

Perfectionism is the counterfeit of excellence. Excellence is Kingdom, while perfectionism is religion. What ever you do, do it with all you might, and as unto the Lord. That is excellence.

In a person's career, well, if you're process-oriented and not totally outcome-oriented, then you're more likely to be success. I often say 'pursue excellence, ignore success.' Success is a by-product of excellence.

Success is about having, excellence is about being. Success is about having money and fame, but excellence is being the best you can be.

Excellence in one area is the beginning of excellence in every area.

Those who attain any excellence, commonly spend life in one pursuit; for excellence is not often gained upon easier terms.

Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives - choice, not chance, determines your destiny.

Striving for perfection is the greatest stopper there is. You'll be afraid you can't achieve it. It's your excuse to yourself for not doing anything. Instead, strive for excellence, doing your best.

Excellence isn’t about working extra hard to do what you’re told. It’s about taking the initiative to do work you decide is worth doing.

All excellence involves discipline and tenacity of purpose.

If you are going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little matters.

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.

Mediocrity is excellence in the eyes of the mediocre.

Your earning ability is largely determined by the perception of excellence, quality, and value that others have of you and what you do. The market only pays excellent rewards for excellent performance. It pays average rewards for average performance, and it pays below average rewards or unemployment for below average performance.

An organization which just perpetuates today's level of vision, excellence, and accomplishment has lost the capacity to adapt.

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

Fame has no necessary conjunction with praise; it may exist without the breath of a word: it is a recognition of excellence which must be felt, but need not be spoken. Even the envious must feel it: feel it, and hate in silence.

I personally, only work with people in my business who show excellence. I have a business, the business of enlightenment.

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

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

When given an opportunity, deliver excellence and never quit.

In a world of disorder and disaster and fraud, sometimes only beauty can be trusted. Only artistic excellence is incorruptible. Pleasure cannot be bargained down. And sometimes the meal is the only currency that is real.

Honor is truly sacred, but holds a lower rank in the scale of moral excellence than virtue. Indeed the former is part of the latter, and consequently has not equal pretensions to support a frame of government productive of human happiness.

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.

Thomas Jefferson once said: 'Of course the people don't want war. But the people can be brought to the bidding of their leader. All you have to do is tell them they're being attacked and denounce the pacifists for somehow a lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.' I think that was Jefferson. Oh wait. That was Hermann Goering. Shoot." [Hosting the Peabody Awards for broadcasting excellence at the New York Waldorf-Astoria, June 6, 2006]

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.

Excellence Matters. Excellent people. Excellent vision. Excellent marketing. Excellent strategies.

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.

Judicial excellence requires an understanding that the law is more than an intellectual game and more than a mental exercise. He or she must recognize that real people with real problems are affected by the decisions rendered by the court. Justice, after all, may be blind, but it should not be deaf.

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

Just keep taking the next step and keep having excellence in the ordinary.

Excellence is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.

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.

The banker, therefore, is not so much primarily a middleman in the commodity "purchasing power" as a producer of this commodity. However, since all reserve funds and savings today usually flow to him, and the total demand for free purchasing power, whether existing or to be created, concentrates on him, he has either replaced private capitalists or become their agent; he has himself become the capitalist par excellence.

I would rather be the author of one original thought than conqueror of a hundred battles. Yet moral excellence is so much superior to intellectual, that I ought to esteem one virtue more valuable than a hundred original thoughts.

The desire of excellence is the necessary attribute of those who excel. We work little for a thing unless we wish for it.

To hate excellence is to hate the gods.

The pursuit of excellence is gratifying and healthy. The pursuit of perfection is frustrating, neurotic, and a terrible waste of time.

Excellence is the name of the game.

Believe passionately in what you do, and never knowingly compromise your standards and values. Act like a true professional, aiming for true excellence, and the money will follow.

Strive for excellence, not perfection.

Average is the enemy of excellence, and average commitment will prevent you from enduring to the end.

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.

Without doubt I praise the wild excellence.

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.

A common danger tends to concord. Communism is the exploitation of the strong by the weak. In Communism, inequality comes from placing mediocrity on a level with excellence.

Excellence resides in quality, not in quantity. The best is always few and rare; much lowers value.