Quotes & Sayings About Performance

Our privileges can be no greater than our obligations. The protection of our rights can endure no longer than the performance of our responsibilities. — John F. Kennedy

Physical attraction was about aesthetics, not sexual performance, not mental stimulation. Without a mental connection, a remarkable sexual performance yielded no lifelong guarantees. It was only lust. And lust was not love. — Eric Jerome Dickey

Climbing does not mean just competition and performance. It has other qualities that are important: going on trips, meeting people, seeing other cultures ... — Wolfgang Gullich

I like the adrenaline of live performance, whatever that is, appearing in front of an audience of any kind, whether it's one or a hundred or a thousand. It gives you a buzz of adrenaline, its exciting. The thing about that is that you want to make those nerves work for you in terms of an energy that's appropriate for the part and the performance, and not to distract the people who are watching so that they become nervous for you. — Jared Harris

I love live performance, but I am excited to try my hand at whatever comes my way. — Michael Stahl-David

Sure, I've done movies in which I was embarrassed by my performance, or might not have cared for a co-star. Then I'd have to tell lies, like, 'Oh, we love each other; everything was perfect!' — Sandra Bullock

Substitution is a true test of strength. The real performance of a player is seen not only during playing time but also and more especially when the player is substituted. — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Inventory discipline across the brands coupled with an outstanding holiday performance at Victoria's Secret led to a 36 percent increase in fourth-quarter earnings per share at Limited Inc.. — Bill Vaughan

To me, 'Educating Rita' is the most perfect performance I could give of a character who was as far away from me as you could possibly get and of all the films I have ever been in, I think it may be the one I am most proud of. — Michael Caine

Our fellow Negro citizens could be summed up in something Tessie said after watching Sidney Poitier's performance in To Sir with Love, which opened a month before the riots. She said, You see, they can speak perfectly normal if they want. — Jeffrey Eugenides

Any excuse for non-performance, no matter how valid, weakens character. — Spencer W. Kimball

Others inspire us, information feeds us, practice improves our performance, but we need quiet time to figure things out, to emerge with new discoveries, to unearth original answers. — Ester Buchholz

To all those who doubt the power of exercise -- and I was one of you -- take it from me: physical fitness has translated into an intellectual fitness I could not have imagined... I've learned that "I don't need to go for a run today" comes out of the same part of my brain as "I don't need to confront my vice president today about the low performance of his department." One suffer-session at a time, I have trained that part of my brain to endure short-term pain in exchange for long-term benefits. — Edward Stevens

From inside the tavern came the sounds of a fiddle being tuned, various plucks and tentative bowings, then a slow and groping attempt at Aura Lee, interrupted every few notes by unplanned squeaks and howls. Nevertheless the beautiful and familiar tune was impervious to poor performance, and Inman thought how painfully young it sounded, as if the pattern of its notes allowed no room to imagine a future clouded and tangled and diminished. — Charles Frazier

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

Whenever it poured like this, Max felt as if time was pausing. It was like a cease-fire during which you could stop whatever you were doing and just stand by a window for hours, watching the performance, an endless curtain of tears falling from heaven. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

She had a fierce pleasure in the idea of telling Margaret unwelcome truths, in the shape of performance of duty. — Elizabeth Gaskell

To the extent that bank panics interfere with normal flows of credit, they may affect the performance of the real economy. — Ben Bernanke

In 2011 India's Test team was crowned as world cricket's leading side for the first time in its history. The foundations for this global domination can be traced to a decade earlier, when a career-defining performance by VVS Laxman helped to turn a whole series on its head as India, in the face of a seemingly unassailable deficit, staged an unbelievable recovery to go on and overpower what many considered to be the finest cricket team ever assembled. — Dave Wilson

We are a global society, and one does not have to be from Germany to give a great performance of Beethoven. — Leonard Slatkin

I'm an idiot for thinking that one performance would change anything.
Maybe I should stop writing songs and start writing fiction. — Elizabeth Eulberg

When I was on the ice, in the lights, with the music and the motion, there was a certain kind of flirtation that gave great energy and expressiveness to my performance. — Peggy Fleming

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 don't speak English, so I'll just have to win the trust and confidence of the fans with my performance on the field. — Masahiro Tanaka

Flesh eating is simply immoral, as it involves the performance of an act which is contrary to moral feeling: By killing, man suppresses in himself, unnecessarily, the highest spiritual capacity, that of sympathy and pity towards living creatures like himself and by violating his own feelings becomes cruel." "As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields. — Leo Tolstoy

Different boards do different things to the sound that's coming through them. An old Neve desk does embellish it in a way that makes it sound sort of bigger or warmer. It doesn't change the performance but it does enhance the way that it sounds. — Dave Grohl

The reason dance has held such an ageless magic for the world is that it has been the symbol of the performance of living. — Martha Graham

I've done a lot of films that are purely live-action roles, and even if I hadn't come across performance capture as a technology, I think I'd always consider myself a sort of mercurial actor. — Andy Serkis

When I watch people like Cate Blanchett act, I don't know what is going on in her life, you just get lost in her performance and that's what I hope to do as well. — Kate Bosworth

Remember your six P's - Perfect Practice Prevents Piss Poor Performance. — Chuck Knox

A hedge fund manager whose clients demand monthly performance reports has different needs than any individual investors with a 20-year time horizon. The needs of that long-term investor differ markedly from someone who is retiring in three years. — Barry Ritholtz

He actually made damnation seem attractive. She had heard of men who rejected gods, who professed not to believe, but here was a believer who refused to grovel, a man who stood up to Shiva, to Buddha, to the gods of his own race, whoever they might be, who stood right up to them and demanded an accounting for a system in which pleasure must be paid for with pain, a system in which the only triumph over suffering was hard-won oblivion, a system that offered its captive audience little choice in matters concerning duration of performance. — Tom Robbins

It is an unquestioned assumption that managers should have and set targets and then create control systems - incentives, performance appraisals, budget reporting and computers to keep track of them all - to ensure the targets are met. In Toyota, these practices simply do not exist. To — John Seddon

Souls were the same. They, too, had useless baggage that impeded their proper performance, these annoying, holier-than-thou bits dangling like an appendix waiting for infection. Faith and hope and love ... prudence, temperance, justice, and fortitude ... all this useless clutter just packed too much damn morality into the heart, getting in the way of the soul's innate desire for malignancy. — J.R. Ward

To go into more specifics regarding actors, whether they're from Korea or the U.S., all actors know if they are loved by the director. When they feel that love from the director, they respond by giving a great performance on camera. Also, everyone on set - the crew, the actors - they were aware of the film's message and its broad theme, so these big issues were never discussed on set. — Kim Jee-woon

Great habits improve performance and brings great success. — Debasish Mridha

The supreme misfortune is when theory outstrips performance — Leonardo Da Vinci

I love storytelling and I love just relating directly to an audience. That's why we do theatre, it's because we love contact with the audience. We love the fact that the audience will change us. The way the audience responds makes us change our performance. — Simon Callow

All I have is my performance, I try to feed in the best of everything that I could possibly do into those 90 minutes and to make a live entertainment show out of it. — George Thorogood

The Tonys are the once-a-year shot for all of these shows and artists who work so diligently every single performance but only for a thousand or so people at a time. This gives them the opportunity to perform to millions of people. — Neil Patrick Harris

Self-control is a big deal in human performance. Getting better depends upon it. You cannot get better if it's not you who has to get better. You are the performer, period. You are the only thing you can control. — Henry Cloud

When we help others to perform at the highest level of their potential, we receive something of value; our character is strengthened. — Ellen J. Barrier

For example, the character of Claire in In Dreams wasn't imagined enough by me. Annette Bening is a great actress, and she gave a great performance, but because I hadn't fully written it essentially the character wasn't finished. — Neil Jordan

People paying attention to vibratory activity, not in reaction to a fixed ideal performance, but each time attentively to how it happens to be this time, not necessarily two times the same. A music that transports the listener to the moment where he is. — John Cage

It was more freeing, mainly because he's so free anyway. He just is in his performance. So to mimic someone doing a free performance, well, that's pretty freeing within itself. — Michael Welch

I am a believer in the adage - performance leads to recognition, recognition leads to respect and respect leads to power. — N. R. Narayana Murthy

Virtuality is different from the spectacle, which still left room for a critical consciousness and demystification. The abstraction of the 'spectacle' was never irrevocable, even for the Situationists. Whereas unconditional realization is irrevocable, since we are no longer either alienated or dispossessed: we are in possession of all the information. We are no longer spectators, but actors in the performance, and actors increasingly integrated into the course of that performance. Whereas we could face up to the unreality of the world as spectacle, we are defenceless before the extreme reality of this world, before this virtual perfection. We are, in fact, beyond all disalienation. This is the new form of terror, by comparison with which the horrors of alienation were very small beer. — Jean Baudrillard

I'm too nervous to eat before I go onstage, and I'll usually eat out after the performance or when I get home at midnight. — Jo Brand

In 1949 there was a new thing called Television, to which my agency and advisers opposed as a performance medium. — Loretta Young

Even noteworthy performance attainments do not necessarily boost perceived self-efficacy — Albert Bandura

A lot of directors want to storyboard you, whereas the best way to get a performance out of an actor is a collaborative process where you listen to the actor's input. — Jacki Weaver

Every superior personality, and every superior performance, has, for the average of mankind, something mysterious. — Georg Simmel

I make 50 cents for showing up ... and the other 50 cents is based on my performance. — Steve Jobs

Comparable specification Windows 10 computers from multiple manufacturers can have very different performance between them. — Steven Magee

The measure of performance of any given agent is the amount of money it accumulates through its actions. — John Henry Holland

Leaders set high standards. Refuse to tolerate mediocrity or poor performance. — Brian Tracy

The bottom line is that your performance is made in the editing room. — Brent Sexton

Writing is a performance art for me. They're very closely aligned, writing and performing. But I'm a writer, not a performer. — Clive James

Talent (a natural way of thinking, feeling, or behaving) x Investment (time spent practicing, developing your skills, and building your knowledge base) = Strength (the ability to consistently provide near-perfect performance) — Tom Rath

We all know business financial performance improves when more women are in senior levels of management and leadership. — Beth Brooke

One of the basics of a good system of innovation is diversity. In some ways, the stronger the culture (national, institutional, generational, or other), the less likely it is to harbor innovative thinking. Common and deep-seated beliefs, widespread norms, and behavior and performance standards are enemies of new ideas. Any society that prides itself on being harmonious and homogeneous is very unlikely to catalyze idiosyncratic thinking. Suppression of innovation need not be overt. It can be simply a matter of peoples walking around in tacit agreement and full comfort with the status quo. — Nicholas Negroponte

I really love watching the 70s live performance TV series "The Midnight Special" and "The Old Grey Whistle Test". Those are the best performances you've ever seen, and they sound incredible. — Feist

October 1976 was the penultimate performance of Bench's Hall of Fame career. All the early success and awards and accolades thrown in his direction had prepared him for this moment - when the Big Red Machine became a dynasty by defending it's World Championship from the season before. — Tucker Elliot

When I go to a show, all I really want is to hear a performance that sounds legitimate, and not just going through the motions. I'm not sure any amount of jumping up and down really persuades me in either direction. — Dan Bejar

Except for a handful, chess players don't have such illusions. The game has a severe analytic quality that makes self-deception difficult. Unlike the undiscovered poet who, despite the harsh criticism of his peers, lives on his fantasies for the day that he will be recognized as the next Dylan Thomas, even a young chess player can usually gauge his talent. When Josh was six, he played several games against a pudgy thirteen-year-old who was the top player on his high school team. He beat Josh every time, but a couple of the games were close, and afterwards the boy seemed gloomy about his performance. He explained that if he didn't make significant improvement during the next year, he would wind up as just another wood-pusher. Despite his celebrity in school, he seemed to know that he didn't have it. While — Fred Waitzkin

It is remarkable that a fist-gnawingly dire England performance still has the power to shock, when in some ways this one had all the exquisite unpredictability of Norman Wisdom approaching a banana skin in the immediate vicinity of a swimming pool...
The England shirt is the precise opposite of a superhero costume, turning men with extraordinary abilities into mild-mannered guys next door. Were Stephen Fry to pull it on, he would struggle to string a sentence together. Were Lucian Freud to slip it over his head he would turn his easel round to reveal a childlike scribble of a cat. — Marina Hyde

What is remarkable in Burke's first performance," wrote his great nineteenth-century biographer John Morley, "is his discernment of the important fact that behind the intellectual disturbances in the sphere of philosophy, and the noisier agitations in the sphere of theology, there silently stalked a force that might shake the whole fabric of civil society itself."4 A caustic and simplistic skepticism of all traditional institutions, supposedly grounded in a scientific rationality that took nothing for granted but in fact willfully ignored the true complexity of social life, seemed to Burke poorly suited for the study of society, and even dangerous when applied to it. Burke would warn of, and contend with, this force for the rest of his life. — Yuval Levin

Mutual fund managers are trapped in this rather deadly vicious circle: the more successful they are, the more money flows into their mutual fund. Then, it is more difficult for them to beat the market averages or even to match their own past performance. — Ron Chernow

Religious extremists want to show us that the only possibility is for us to kill each other, so September 11 is not only heinous murder, it is also global performance. It is also putting an idea into the world, an idea of destruction. — Eboo Patel

In the theater you rehearse in order to do the performance. And in the movies the rehearsal and the performance are kind of the same thing. You're figuring it out and hopefully the camera is pointed at you when you're doing it. — Christopher Walken

Words when spoken out loud for the sake of performance are music. They have rhythm and pitch and timbre and volume. These are the properties of music and music has the ability to find us and move us and lift us up in ways that literal meaning can't. — Josiah Bartlett

It is hard to watch myself. I'm hypercritical, and it's difficult to watch a performance when I may end up being at odds with it - wishing I'd done something differently or that they had edited it a certain way. — Jack Falahee

No, we've been performing our old songs a little differently each performance. — Fred Schneider

If you're putting that energy into performance," he said, "you're also getting it back out again, right? You're giving so you can receive." He spread his arms wide. "If you were writing songs with it, you'd be holed up in your room in the middle of the night, scribbling them in a notebook and feeling self-important. You'd think you were getting it out, but really you'd be keeping it inside and quiet. You'd take what upset you and turn it into art, and now it would fester, because you think other people ought to share your outrage at what happened to you. — Jennifer Echols

Ninety per cent of how you learn is watching great people. When you are surrounded by good actors it lifts your performance. — Natalie Portman

God is more concerned about your heart than your performance. If your heart is right, your performance will eventually catch up. — Joyce Meyer

The comments you'll get from a filmmaker about your performance are going to be very different. My writing workshop is about mixing it up, cross-pollinating, not only in genres but in occupations. — Sandra Cisneros

The overall organizational health needs to be measured via employee engagement, culture readiness, business agility, and customer-centricity, etc. — Pearl Zhu

Law Number XV: The last 10 percent of performance generates one-third of the cost and two-thirds of the problems. — Norman Ralph Augustine

Saturday mornings in spring should always start with a jolt of dance by Paul Taylor performed by Taylor 2. The touring ensemble, an adjunct of the Paul Taylor Dance Company, offered a rare New York performance ... It was an impressive event, presented by a group of highly individualistic dancers. — Jennifer Dunning

I know, for me, you know, my generation - I never would have known anything about Robert Preston's performance in 'The Music Man' if there hadn't been a film where he played the part. I just heard how great he was on Broadway way before my time. — John Lloyd Young

Funding for faith-based charities should] be judged based on performance and results - not religion. Now, if our sin is that our religion can produce the results, then we plead guilty. — Eugene Rivers

The Complete Idiots Guide to Eating Raw is ideal for anyone looking to seamlessly adopt eating habits that will benefit overall health and boost athletic performance. — Brendan Brazier

Little Boy's performance is authentic, natural, moving & inspiring. — Eva Longoria

Evaluate every performance on: stage presence, concentration, delivery, material and lessons learned. — Franklyn Ajaye

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

As a business, the funeral industry has developed by selling a certain type of "dignity." Dignity is having a well-orchestrated final moment for the family, complete with a well-orchestrated corpse. Funeral directors become like directors for the stage, curating the evening's performance. The corpse is the star of the show and pains are taken to make sure the fourth wall is never broken, that the corpse does not interact with the audience and spoil the illusion. — Caitlin Doughty

An overall picture of how a developing country with considerable amount of natural resources may get in trouble can be described by discussing the lack of absorption capacity where overspending on domestically produced goods leads to increased price level.Further, an inefficient choice of public policy cause poor economic performance through the mismanagement of budget expenditure. In this case governments undertake projects not to achieve social optimality rather to increase their fame. Hence "easy money" may easily lead to increased corrupt activities in contracting projects thereby affecting negatively the transparency level and the competitiveness of market economy — Anonymous

I got into film acting because I wanted to be James Dean. We lost him at a very young age - he was only 24 - but I'm in my fifthies, so there's only so many times you can act like James Dean. I had to find new ways of expressing myself that kept me fascinated with film performance. — Nicolas Cage

When we get the final hardware, the performance is just going to skyrocket. — J Allard

My strong point, if I have a strong point, is performance. I always do more than I say. I always produce more than I promise. — Richard M. Nixon

If you can raise the level of effort and performance in those around you, you are officially a leader. — Urban Meyer

Until we have a better relationship between private performance and the public truth, as was demonstrated with Watergate, we as the public are absolutely right to remain suspicious, contemptuous even, of the secrecy and the misinformation which is the digest of our news. — John Le Carre

If you are convinced that you are not capable of doing something, you can only do it badly. — Eraldo Banovac

It took a lot of guts to change it and say 'I don't like the life that I'm living and I don't like the swimmer I am', so let's change it completely and say 'Look, I've got to learn to love myself'. And that's been a really hard thing to do because when you've done a performance that you're not proud of and the public and the media have criticized you ... people are really quick to make judgements so it was tough to say 'Well I don't care what you have to say. I'm going to do this for myself and if you don't like me after this, well then, it's too bad'. — Leisel Jones

When we deal in generalities, we shall never succeed. When we deal in specifics, we shall rarely have a failure. When performance is measured, performance improves. When performance is measured and reported, the rate of performance accelerates. — Thomas S. Monson

It is necessary that we should all have a little of the will to die, because otherwise we would find the performance of our biological duty of death too difficult. — Rebecca West

It's all performing; that's what we do in life. We talk, we look, and we hear, and we listen. Your life is a performance. — Seymour Cassel

It helps so much being on location. It's like the difference between performing for the rectangle of the camera versus a world being created and then the camera finds things within that. There's a huge difference in that, because what it takes away is performance. You don't feel like performing. You're just kind of doing it. You're existing. — Christian Bale

I am certainly suffering from a modicum of performance anxiety. — George Murray