Quotes & Sayings About Excellence

We are in an international marketplace for talent, and American colleges and universities need to be able to attract students and faculty from around the world if we want to sustain our excellence. — Drew Gilpin Faust

No man, however enslaved to his appetites, or hurried by his passions, can, while he preserves his intellects unimpaired, please himself with promoting the corruption of others. He whose merit has enlarged his influence would surely wish to exert it for the benefit of mankind. Yet such will be the effect of his reputation, while he suffers himself to indulge in any favourite fault, that they who have no hope to reach his excellence will catch at his failings, and his virtues will be cited to justify the copiers of his vices. — Samuel Johnson

God has destined you to soar. You have victory, freedom and excellence on the inside. — Joel Osteen

The qualities that make for excellence in children's literature can be summed up in a single word: imagination. And imagination as it relates to the child is, to my mind, synonymous with fantasy. Contrary to most of the propaganda in books for the young, childhood is only partly a time of innocence. It is, in my opinion, a time of seriousness, bewilderment, and a good deal of suffering. It's also possibly the best of all times. Imagination for the child is the miraculous, freewheeling device he uses to course his way through the problems of every day ... It's through fantasy that children achieve catharsis. — Maurice Sendak

The will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to reach your full potential ... these are the keys that will unlock the door to personal excellence. — Confucius

Personally, I always felt times aren't so excellent as are performances. — Bill Rodgers

I believe excellence is being able to perform at a high level over and over. — Jay-Z

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

We shouldn't be fearful of failure because is not a monster as we think it is. It's just a training ground for those who are really striving for excellence in life. — Euginia Herlihy

The closer you get to excellence in your life, the more friends you'll lose. People love you when you are average, because it makes them comfortable. But when you pursue greatness, it makes people uncomfortable. Be prepared to lose some people on your journey. — Tony Gaskins Jr.

Excellence is the unlimited ability to improve the quality of what you have to offer. — Rick Pitino

The Highest Reward for men and women 's devotion and dedication to excellence is not what one gets from it but what one he or she becomes through it. — Bill Britt

People can easily forget how fast you did your work, but can hardly forget how well you did it. — Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

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

Set excellent performance as your standard and strive to achieve it each day — Brian Tracy

The supreme excellence is not to win a hundred victories in a hundred battles. The supreme excellence is to subdue the armies of your enemies without having to fight them. — Sun Tzu

There will always be some who see excellence and envy it instead of striving to emulate it. — Jo Walton

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. — Dan Miller

Imitation both unconscious and conscious is par excellence the educational method of the family. It is plain that a considerable part of the adaptation of living beings to their environment, i.e., of beings that are born plastic, is passed on from generation to generation through imitation. Were this not so, much if not all of the road traversed by one generation would have to be travelled by the next generation from the very beginning and without short-cuts. Consequently there would be little chance for the novel adaptation, the propitious individual variation, that constitutes progress. — Elsie Clews Parsons

The noblest search is the search for excellence — Lyndon B. Johnson

Excellence is never an accident; it's the result of intention, effort, intelligence, execution & seeing obstacles as opportunities — D.M. Pratt

Your unwillingness to change to my view point is purely on the justifiable basis that you have your own strongly held beliefs about important life issues. — Archibald Marwizi

We need people who push boundaries rather than retreat inside them. — Tim Fargo

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. — John Adams

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. — Peter F. Drucker

I would not say that Harvard possesses any sort of absolute dominance. And I personally do not take the rankings of schools all that seriously. However, I think that Harvard's global visibility increased significantly in the 1930s and 1940s and that the new commitment to excellence at Harvard spread to other institutions. — Henry Rosovsky

I wished that my job was baking muffins in a muffin shop, where all I'd have to do was crack eggs and measure flour and make change, and nobody could abuse me, and where they'd even expect me to be fat. Every flab roll and cellulite crinkle would serve as testimony to the excellence of my baked goods — Jennifer Weiner

He wrote extensively on how schools should be made more attractive to boys and girls and thus more productive. His own co-educational school at Santiniketan had many progressive features. The emphasis here was on self-motivation rather than on discipline, and on fostering intellectual curiosity rather than competitive excellence. — Amartya Sen

You pursue excellence when you care about something other than your own excellence. — Michael S. Horton

Excellent things are rare. — Plato

The empirical fact is that self-actualizing people, our best experiencers, are also our most compassionate, our great improvers and reformers of society, our most effective fighters against injustice, inequality, slavery, cruelty, exploitation (and also are best fighters for excellence, effectiveness, competence). And it also becomes clearer and clearer that our best 'helpers' are the most fully human persons. What I may call the bodhisattvic path is an integration of self-improvement and social zeal, i.e., the best way to become a better 'helper' is to become a better person. But one necessary aspect of becoming a better person is via helping other people. So one must and can do both simultaneously. — Abraham H. Maslow

It is said that it takes 10,000 hours to develop mastery and excellence. How many hours have you clocked today on your passion? — John Assaraf

He lived in terror of, well, becoming ordinary. — H.W. Brands

The true democrat wishes to share the great works of culture with all who are able to appreciate them; the egalitarian, recognizing that genuine excellence is rare, declares greatness a fraud and sets about obliterating distinctions. — Roger Kimball

Just like watering the field will cause both the desired seed and the undesirable weed to germinate, the opportunities for your mission in life will be equally presented with real-life threats. — Archibald Marwizi

Choices and decisions must be supported by your passion, resolve and a productive work ethic. If these meet opportunity - your success has finally come! — Archibald Marwizi

Excellence is the result of loving more than others think is necessary, dreaming more than others think is practical, risking more than others think is safe, and doing more than others think is possible. Every day is a golden opportunity to learn, practice gratitude, and positively impact the world around you. Do not ask for instant fulfillment in your life, but for patience to accept your current frustrations. Do not ask for perfection in all you do, but for the wisdom to make better choices. Do not ask for more before saying, "THANK YOU" for everything you have already received. — John Geiger

Let America first praise mediocrity even, in her children, before she praises ... the best excellence in the children of any other land. — Herman Melville

In an era of human history in which we prize comfort above nearly every other virtue, we have overlooked an important truth: comfort never leads to excellence. — Jeff Goins

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

Excellence is a shortcut to genius. — Matshona Dhliwayo

None but a people advanced to a high state of moral and intellectual excellence are capable in a civilized condition of forming and maintaining free governments, and among those who are so far advanced, very few indeed have had the good fortune to form constitutions capable of endurance. — John C. Calhoun

Strive for excellence in your calling, but as a subsidiary to this: Do not fail to enrich your whole capital as man. To be a giant, and not a dwarf in your profession, you must always be growing. The man that has ceased to go up intellectually has begun to go down. — William Matthews

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. — Steven Pressfield

Creativity is a distinctive trait of human excellence in all domains of behavior. — Ellis Paul Torrance

Doing work points the way to new and better work to be done. — Julia Cameron

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. — Wilhelm Von Humboldt

For all fragrances I create, I ask each of my suppliers to deliver and provide the best raw materials. It is my personal quest for excellence and quality to create luxury perfumes ... — Francis Kurkdjian

I no more thought of style or literary excellence than the mother who rushes into the street and cries for help to save her children from a burning house, thinks of the teachings of the rhetorician or the elocutionist. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

I was brought up on choirs and brass bands. They formed the music of my childhood. When I heard the Treorchy Male Choir at the Royal Variety Performance it brought back such happy memories. You have your own eminent place in the history of British music. You stand for excellence in a great tradition and your work for charity is both an example and an inspiration. — Michael Parkinson

Jobs had not tempered his way of dealing with employees. "He applied charm or public humiliation in a way that in most cases proved to be pretty effective," Tribble recalled. But sometimes it wasn't. One engineer, David Paulsen, put in ninety-hour weeks for the first ten months at NeXT. He quit when "Steve walked in one Friday afternoon and told us how unimpressed he was with what we were doing." When Business Week asked him why he treated employees so harshly, Jobs said it made the company better. "Part of my responsibility is to be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected." But he still had his spirit and charisma. There were plenty of field trips, visits by akido masters, and off-site retreats. — Walter Isaacson

'Dance to the Music' was just Sly Stone being his natural crazy self right from the beginning. The man was an original and his first AM hit was nothing if it wasn't the example per excellence of the Sly Stone music machine. — Jon Landau

Excellence is inconveniently difficult. — William H Gass

The Civil Service is a vital economic asset to the UK - firstly, in the way it creates a framework for excellence in service delivery and secondly, in how it helps organise the best way to deliver modern public services on which both businesses and individuals depend. — John Hutton

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

Strictly excel in what is excellence with grace — GZA

Throughout my career, as both a physician and a scientist, I have drawn inspiration from Merck's unwavering commitment to scientific excellence. Over time, this commitment has brought forth an unparalleled number of breakthrough medicines and vaccines that improve the lives of patients around the world. — Roger M. Perlmutter

We must establish all over the country schools of our own to train our own children to become scientists, to become mathematicians. We must realize the need for adult education and for job retraining programs that will emphasize a changing society in which automation plays the key role. We intend to use the tools of education to help raise our people to an unprecedented level of excellence and self respect through their own efforts. — Malcolm X

There is no safety in hiding. Like my brothers before me, I pick up a fallen standard. Sustained by the memory of our priceless years together, I shall try to carry forward that special commitment to justice, excellence and courage that distinguished their lives. — Edward Kennedy

All who have achieved excellence in art possess one thing in common; that is, a mind to be one with nature, throughout the seasons. — Matsuo Basho

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. — Elizabeth Gilbert

If you strive for excellence, success will follow — Shreya Ghoshal

I have a 41-year track record of investing excellence ... what do you have? — Bill Gross

Excellence is a way of life. — Bohdi Sanders

Your leadership principles give that unique character to your leadership brand. When all your responses, decisions, choices and leadership practices are filtered through your well defined principles, you have automatically connected yourself to making the success of your leadership excellence brand more deliberate. — Archibald Marwizi

A true believer may worship Jehovah, Allah, or Brahma, the supernatural beings who allegedly created all life; a true believer may slavishly adhere to a dogma designed theoretically to improve life; yet for life itself - its pleasures, wonders, and delights - he or she holds minimal regard. Music, chess, wine, card games, attractive clothing, dancing, meditation, kites, perfume, marijuana, flirting, soccer, cheeseburgers, any expression of beauty, and any recognition of genius or individual excellence: each of those things has been severely condemned and even outlawed by one cadre of true believers or another in modern times. — Tom Robbins

A combination of the qualities of the scholar, the master cook, the painter, the gastronomer, the sportsman and the pantologist, assisted by the skill of the bookmaker and etcher, will be required to compose the cookbook par excellence. — George Ellwanger

You make the plans - otherwise you will die thinking it is not possible to plan to have time for work, for exercise, for sleep, for relaxation, for recreation, for eating, for entertainment, for love, for family, for spirituality, for friends, for personal reflection, for personal development, for business, for charity all in one life! — Archibald Marwizi

It must start by knowing Time = Life. Spending your life on impulse will lead to a broke life, just like impulse buying leads to an empty wallet! How much value you place on your time reflects in the activities that consume your time. — Archibald Marwizi

If your church continues in this liberty of conscience, making no scruple to take away what she pleases, soon the Scripture will fail you, and you will have to be satisfied with the Institutes of Calvin, which must indeed have I know not what excellence, since they censure the Scriptures themselves! — Francis De Sales

It is up to the leader to create a healthy environment where people are not afraid to fail. Mistakes should be seen as an integral part of the organizational process. They are a normal part of striving for excellence. — Andrew Harvey

he had always felt that the best units were those that had traditions of excellence that every member could aspire to. Few were those who both saw the birth of those traditions and who realized just what it was they were seeing. Something told him, deep inside, that he was now among those few. — Evan Currie

Some people are known, they have the platform and presence, but still remain irrelevant. They know you and what you do, but they don't need you or your offering. I see too many people with a platform but without substance, again this is not sustainable. Lack of substance can only relegate your talent or skill towards the league of the mediocre, if at all you become much by superficial branding then you will become the best of the worst. You don't have what it takes but you depend on your ability to sell substandard offerings to the market. It will not last for long, but quickly become irrelevant. — Archibald Marwizi

I just couldn't make the grade as a hack-that, like everything else, requires a certain practiced excellence. — F Scott Fitzgerald

You need to change the questions you ask yourself and of your situations, in order to change the trajectory of your life. These are questions that will help you define and refine your purpose. — Archibald Marwizi

It will take faith, to know success can still be attained regardless of unfairness or disadvantages availed by any system you operate within. — Archibald Marwizi

Success is not something to wait for, it is something to work for. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Perfection is not attainable," he used to say, quoting Vince Lombardi. "But if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence. — Kathryn Perez

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. — Oliver Goldsmith

Humility is understanding gratefulness oppose to self-praise & accepting envy as the answer to your actions of excellence. — Ace Antonio Hall

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. — Plato

Excellence does not come easy for quickly- An Excellent education does not, a successful mission does not, a strong, loving marriage does not, rewarding personal relationships do not. It is simply a truism that nothing very valuable can come without significant sacrifice, effort, and patience on our part. — Jeffery R. Holland

I really believe that the single hardest thing in business is building a company that does repeatable innovation ... and just has this ongoing culture of excellence as it grows. — Sam Altman

It seems then that it is not the excellence of any two things (or more) in themselves, but those two things as viewed by the light of each other, that makes beauty. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

Teach them the quiet words of kindness, to live beyond themselves. Urge them toward excellence, drive them toward gentleness, pull them deep into yourself, pull them upward toward manhood, but softly like an angel arranging clouds. Let your spirit move through them softly. — Pat Conroy

The challenge therefore, as you strive for success, is to make it a habit to live your life on purpose. You must learn to make deliberate plans and then practice the art and science of doing things on purpose. — Archibald Marwizi

Author and screenwriter Neil Gaiman, in a 2012 commencement address at the University of the Arts, said that excellence in business can be boiled down to three simple things: 1. Be Efficient: Turn in work on time. 2. Be Effective: Do great work. 3. Be Congenial: Be a pleasure to work with.1 Gaiman added that even mastering two of the three will take you far. If you do great work and are a pleasure to work with, most people will forgive you for missing a deadline. If you're always on time and a pleasure to work with, most people put up with less than perfect work. If you turn in great work on time, most people will put up with you being unpleasant. — Brad Lomenick

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

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. — Rita Coolidge

Do ordinary things extraordinarily well. — Gregg Harris

Entrepreneur, you're either raising the bar of excellence or your exhaling at the bar which is expensive. — Onyi Anyado

Excellence requires us to prepare in advance. — Jeff Henderson

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

Nothing is so precious to a woman's heart as the glory and excellence of him she loves — Mary Shelley

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. — Josh Waitzkin

Who are you? Where are you coming from? What are your strengths and ambitions? What makes you happy and fulfilled? What are your inherent gifts and talents? Clearly define yourself. — Archibald Marwizi

I think everyone is their harshest critic, but I strive for excellence as much as I can because I think it shows. — Zachary Levi

Don't waste time. Avoid the company of wasteful people who lack the desire to achieve. Become assertive and action-oriented. — Archibald Marwizi

If performance of duty is part of excellence, then it should give satisfaction and happiness. — Anuj Bajaj

Those who distinguish themselves in what they do and become disinct always score distinction. Don't follow the crowd. Distinguish yourself with a special commitment and you will excel. — Israelmore Ayivor