Standards Set Quotes & Sayings

It's a lot harder to get someone OUT of your life than it is to let them IN, so please ... be selective. — Mandy Hale

The truth is, new furniture or a better house will never really satisfy - they will just set new, higher standards for what is acceptable to us for our comfort and contentment. When you take care of what you have and find joy right where you are, you set the right tone and expectations for contentment in all circumstances moving forward. Whether things get better or worse, our standard will be to love what we have and be grateful for it (even when we might not like it). — Melissa Michaels

Now is the time to set your life's goals. Now is the time to set your standards firmly and then hold to them throughout your life. — Spencer W. Kimball

I feel that, you know, the enormous luck I've had in being able to make a living, and to never have had to have written one word that I didn't want to write, to be able to have satisfied
that dictum I set for myself, which was not to work for pay, but to be paid for my work - just to be able to satisfy those standards that I set for myself has been an enormous privilege. — Leonard Cohen

Do not do what you cannot continue to deliver.
For, remember, the world wants to see a continuity of delivery of
set standards ... ! — Sujit Lalwani

Standards of education are not set by government, but by God, the Bible, the home and the school. — Stockwell Day

Set a high standard on how you treat women. Whether they appreciate it or not, don't lower your own standards of behavior. — Steve Maraboli

When my head is in the typewriter the last thing on my mind is some imaginary reader. I don't have an audience; I have a set of standards. But when I think of my work out in the world, written and published, I like to imagine it's being read by some stranger somewhere who doesn't have anyone around him to talk to about books and writing - maybe a would-be writer, maybe a little lonely, who depends on a certain kind of writing to make him feel more comfortable in the world. — Don DeLillo

Have faith that you are a daughter of Heavenly Father who loves you.

Determine which of your divine gifts will allow you to be a champion for Christ.

Realize that you have been sent to Earth with a divine mission that is yours to achieve.

Let your knowledge come from the good parts of life that surround you.

Choose to set high standards and defend them.

Become a great woman by doing good. Always be on the Lord's errand.

Leave your mark. Be true in every situation--even when no one is watching.

Let your strength come from having high moral standards.

Look to Him.
Stand as His witness.
Become a keeper of what matters most. — Emily Belle Freeman

It is those who have the distinction of privilege who set the standards of disgust with failure. — Andy Hargreaves

So are we acting like the children of a set apart Creator, or are we acting as though we are the children of a father who left his teenagers home while he went away on a long journey, doing as we see fit in the full eyes of the world who are watching to see if we really are set-apart, or just all talk. They want to see if we hold ourselves to God's standards of what is and is not set apart, clean and unclean, good and bad. They want to see if we are really the Children of the Most High. — Tyler Dawn Rosenquist

Have you set high standards in the past that make it clear what level of performance you demand? — Tom Peters

To those who feel that their values are THE values, the less controlled systems necessarily present a spectacle of "chaos," simply because such systems respond to a diversity of values. The more successfully such systems respond to diversity, the more "chaos" there will be, by definition, according to the standards of ANY specific set of values- other than diversity or freedom as values. Looked at another way, the more self-righteous observers there are, the more chaos (and "waste") will be seen. — Thomas Sowell

Set higher standards for your own performance than anyone else around you, and your only competition will be with yourself — Rick Pitino

Camp taste turns its back on the good-bad axis of ordinary aesthetic judgment. Camp doesn't reverse things. It doesn't argue that the good is bad, or the bad is good. What it does is to offer for art, and life, a different - a supplementary - set of standards. — Susan Sontag

Shorn of unattractive language about "robots" who will be producing taxes and not burglarizing homes, the general idea that schools in ghettoized communities must settle for a different set of goals than schools that serve the children of the middle class and upper middle class has been accepted widely. And much of the rhetoric of "rigor" and "high standards" that we hear so frequently, no matter how egalitarian in spirit it may sound to some, is fatally belied by practices that vulgarize the intellects of children and take from their education far too many of the opportunities for cultural and critical reflectiveness without which citizens become receptacles for other people's ideologies and ways of looking at the world but lack the independent spirits to create their own. — Jonathan Kozol

It frequently happens that an element of the standard of living which set out with being primarily wasteful, ends with becoming, in the apprehension of the consumer, a necessary of life. — Thorstein Veblen

Be aware that how you feel has a direct impact on your thinking process. When we set standards for ourselves they seem objective, but standards and goal-setting are totally subjective and personal. From The Biology of Success. — Robert Arnot

The government has a responsibility to protect society, to help maintain society. That's why we have laws ... The rule of law creates a set of standards for our behavior. — Vint Cerf

Crafty politician that he is, Obama was smart enough to set low enough standards for his administration to claim 'victory' by the summer of 2011 or so. — Thomas P.M. Barnett

You've got to quit lowering your standards. Set your requirements up front so when a guy hooks you, he has to know this is business. — Steve Harvey

An aggressive building performance standard for all new buildings, and a set of performance requirements to be met by all buildings before they can be sold (when upgrades can be included in the new mortgage). These should encompass heating and cooling, lighting, and plug loads. Coupled with new efficiency standards for appliances, lights, and furnaces, this should reduce the energy consumption of new buildings by 50 percent, more or less immediately, and go on from there. — Denis Hayes

Advance our standards, set upon our foes;
Our ancient word of courage, fair Saint George,
Inspire us with the spleen of fiery dragons! — William Shakespeare

The first two concepts - morality and immorality - are well understood in America: codes and boundaries of behavior are set by principles, doctrines, dictate, or convention. It's the third one - amorality - that is largely misunderstood but crucial to identify and comprehend. Amorality is a state of affairs where there are no moral principles or rules to follow or betray. None. Even though a culture may have rules regarding physical behavior, if there are no moral standards regarding truth, for example, then one cannot be right or wrong in such a societal vacuum because there is nothing to be right or wrong about. Therefore, even if lip service to the virtue of truth telling exists on one level or another, lying is firmly established in many cultures as an amoral practice. — Alexandra York

Where are we as a modern civilization if our educational institutions conspire to train only a fraction of our capacities? and if this is all they can really do, then why not acknowledge that fact openly and give legitimacy to the other alternative forms of education that do cultivate those neglected dimensions of personality, instead of pretending that anything lying outside the standards set by the Wester analytic tradition is either inferior, anti-intellectual, or diabolic? (p. 293-294) — Eugene Taylor

Mother set impossibly high standards for us, creating tremendous pressures and undermining our ability to accomplish whatever modest aims we may have set for ourselves. — Katharine Graham

One way to cope with the provocations of novel art is to rest firm and maintain solid standards ... set by the critic's long-practiced taste and by his conviction that only those innovations will be significant which promote the established direction of advanced art. — Leo Steinberg

Jesus gave us a model for the work of the church at the Last Supper. While his disciples kept proposing more organization - Hey, let's elect officers, establish hierarchy, set standards of professionalism - Jesus quietly picked up a towel and basin of water and began to wash their feet. — Philip Yancey

One has to set high standards ... I can never be happy with mediocre performance. — Patrice Motsepe

I sort of set myself really high standards which is good and bad. If I know that I've done all I can to prepare, that's when I race the best and in '09 I was going through a lot of emotional ups and downs and I was never as fit as I would have liked to have been. So I never felt comfortable. — Stephanie Rice

You have competition every day because you set such high standards for yourself that you have to go out every day and live up to that. — Michael Jordan

A moral society will not set standards for becoming a parent, but it will establish irreducible minimums for maintaining that sacred status. — Andrew Vachss

A little of this caviar finds its way to the fish restaurants around Istanbul's Taksim Square, but the bulk is sent on to the United Arab Emirates to be enjoyed by wealthy Westerners and Arabs in the preposterous hotels that have set new standards in unnecessary opulence. — Misha Glenny

The kingdom of God must be a continuing revolution against the norms of the society that fall below the standards that are set for us in the gospel of Jesus Christ. In the field of public life, it must be a continuing revolution against proposals that contradict the fundamental principles as laid down in the Constitution of the United States, which was written by men whom God raised up for this very purpose. If we remember that, we will be in the forefront of every battle against the things that are tearing down our society. — Harold B. Lee

Retiring for good wasn't difficult. I knew at the time it was right. I was no longer capable of achieving the standards I'd set myself and there was no light at the end of the tunnel. — Ian Botham

If you don't set a baseline standard for what you'll accept in life, you'll find it's easy to slip into behaviours and attitudes or a quality of life that's far below what you deserve. — Anthony Robbins

If we cannot find a way to interpret the utterances and other behaviour of a creature as revealing a set of beliefs largely consistent and true by our own standards, we have no reason to count that creature as rational, as having beliefs, or as saying anything. — Donald Davidson

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

Young girls are obsessed with having a thigh gap. I blame the impossible body standards set by Spongebob. — Stephen Colbert

Today the Secretary of State said that of the 247 candidates, so far 115 of them have been certified. How embarrassing is that? Imagine if you were turned down because you didn't meet the high standards set by Larry Flynt and Gallagher. — Jay Leno

With Shakespeare and poetry, a new world was born. New dreams, new desires, a self consciousness was born. I desired to know to know myself in terms of the new standards set by these books. — Peter Abrahams

We must set an example now and move environmentalism from being the philosophy of a passionate minority ... to a way of life that automatically integrates ecology into governmental policy and normal living standards. — Leonardo DiCaprio

Berners-Lee started the World Wide Web as a set of protocols for transferring, linking and addressing documents to send over the Net. Without the global reach and open technical standards of the Internet, the Web could never have proliferated as it did. — Katie Hafner

You've got to set high standards for yourself. — Marcus Giles

Standards should not be forced down from above but rather set by the production workers themselves. — Taiichi Ohno

For more than four hundred years we nurtured the belief (should that, perhaps, be faith?) that evidence-based investigation meeting scientific standards of rigor would reveal the true mechanism of nature. and yet when the mechanisms of nature were revealed to be quantum mechanisms, the worlds of science and philosophy were set on a collision course. instead of truth and comprehension, we got deeply unsettling questions about what we can ever hope to know about the world. — Jim Baggott

Do not take anything to heart when people measure your art. Art has no boundaries, no limitations, no form, no standards and there is no right or wrong way to manifest the language of your soul. Those who set limits and standards are not true artists and have no business being a voice in the art world. Form is burden. Form is confined art. Eliminate the form and release the burden. THAT is true art. — Suzy Kassem

Set your standards high; namely, do the absolute best of which you are capable. Focus on running the race rather than winning it. Do those things necessary to bring forth your personal best and don't lose sleep worrying about the competition. Let the competition lose sleep worrying about you. Teach your organization to do the same. — John Wooden

Ladies, set your standards high. Never lower them.. The day you do, you will get less then what you deserve.
Every woman, deserves to be treated like a queen with respect. It's better to be single and fabulous on your own then to be in a relationship that isn't what you always dreamed of. — Erica Maples And Stefany Terherst

The results of your life reflect the standards you've set. — Robin Sharma

I've got a reason for running. I talk about a larger goal, which is to call upon the best of America. It's part of the renewal. It's reform and renewal. Part of the renewal is a set of high standards and to remind people that the greatness of America really does depend on neighbors helping neighbors and children finding mentors. I worry. I'm very worried about, you know, the kid who just wonders whether America is meant for him. I really worry about that. — George W. Bush

That is the way things are weighed and disagreements settled - when standards are established. Philosophy aims to test and set such standards. And the wise man is advised to make use of their findings right way. — Epictetus

Since you are "in the market," you need to set standards of what you are seeking in a partner and in a relationship. Dating is not simply a prelude to a committed relationship or marriage. Dating is an opportunity to evaluate whether the person you are dating is a good candidate for you. You need to pay attention to your partner's positive and negative characteristics. Ask yourself whether you could live with this person for the rest of your life. — David Price

Are you afraid that you're hurting your national auto industry? - Environmental protection isn't a burden. It's innovation. Protecting a backward industry is no way to promote innovation. The government's role is to set standards and then ensure fair competition in the market. You win the market through fair competition. — Chai Jing

If basketball was going to enable Bradley to make friends, to prove that a banker's son is as good as the next fellow, to prove that he could do without being the greatest-end-ever at Missouri, to prove that he was not chicken, and to live up to his mother's championship standards, and if he was going to have some moments left over to savor his delight in the game, he obviously needed considerable practice, so he borrowed keys to the gym and set a schedule for himself that he adhereded to for four full years - in the school year, three and a half hours every day after school, nine to five on Saturday, one-thirty to five on Sunday, and, in the summer, about three hours a day. — John McPhee

The unwillingness of most leaders to set standards, to administer feedback when standards are not met, to praise clearly when standards are met, stands in the way of the development of excellence. The leader who makes no demands of his disciples cannot really lead them at all. The sense of new excitement and new challenge generated by the gospel will be blunted by leaders who shield followers from the full demands of fellowship. — Neal A. Maxwell

Wal-Mart provides a chilling example of the damage that low-wage, nonunion corporations can wreak, and their business model is going to set the standards for our children unless we do something now. Wal-Mart is the sewer pipe through which good jobs are being flushed. — Andy Stern

Don't settle for anybody just to have someone. Set your standards. What kind of love do you want to attract? List the qualities you really want in the relationship. Develop those qualities in yourself and you will attract a person who has them. — Louise Hay

He has learned something about passion, about focus, about clearing a space in his life and doing what he does purely because he loves and believes in it. He has honed a set of abilities too. Developed standards of his own measure and sees to it that he meets them. He knows, then, the satisfactions of seeing with purpose, conceiving ideas, dedicating himself to them, and producing good work. In choosing and doing for himself, he earns his confidence and self-worth. Very good things, these, and, I hope, lifelong. — Anonymous

Even without comparing ourselves to the world's greatest, we set such high standards for ourselves that neither we nor anyone else could ever meet them-and nothing is more destructive to creativity than this. We fail to realize that mastery is not about perfection. It's about a process, a journey. The master is the one who stays on the path day after day, year after year. The master is the one who is willing to try, and fail, and try again, for as long as he or she lives. — George Leonard

What a joy it is to read a book that shocks one into remembering just how high one's literary standards should be. ... a tour de force by one of England's best novelists ... . Atonement is a spectacular book; as good a novel - and more satisfying ... - than anything McEwan has written ... .sublimely written narrative ... . The Dunkirk passage is a stupendous piece of writing, a set piece that could easily stand on its own. ... — Noah Richler

I believe that the government that governs best is a government that governs least, and by these standards we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq. — Stephen Colbert

One of the greatest challenges for all of us is to learn how to live in the world without participating in all that it offers. Worldly standards will always be in a state of flux. The only true and unchanging standards are those set by the Savior and His teachings of the restored gospel. — Donald L. Staheli

I don't want Washington - let me be perfectly clear - I do not want Washington involved in local education decisions any more than I want them involved in common core. You know, common core was a state-created and state-implemented voluntary set of standards in Math and English that are comparable across state lines. — Jan Brewer

Set high standards and few limitations for yourself. — Anthony J. D'Angelo

It is a bad thing for a nation to raise and to admire a false standard of success; and there can be no falser standard than that set by the deification of material well-being in and for itself. — Theodore Roosevelt

Don't let anyone set restrictions on your life ... You chart the course of your own future, not anyone else. Don't let people have such a power over you. Because if you're always racing against their standards, then what's the point of reaching a useless finish line? — Kale Lawrence

Football helmets were first designed to protect against skull fractures, but users get more than skull fractures. We need to take a look at this to see if there is any way to improve safety. We need to set some standards, because the ones now are not protecting players to the highest level. — G. K. Butterfield

What is truth? Pilate was not alone in dismissing this question as unanswerable and irrelevant for his purposes. Today too, in political argument and in discussion of the foundations of law, it is generally experienced as disturbing. Yet if man lives without truth, life passes him by; ultimately he surrenders the field to whoever is the stronger. "Redemption" in the fullest sense can only consist in the truth becoming recognizable. And it becomes recognizable when God becomes recognizable. He becomes recognizable in Jesus Christ. In Christ, God entered the world and set up the criterion of truth in the midst of history. Truth is outwardly powerless in the world, just as Christ is powerless by the world's standards: he has no legions; he is crucified. Yet in his very powerlessness, he is powerful: only thus, again and again, does truth become power. — Pope Benedict XVI

You set the standard for how people will treat and regard you, by how you treat and regard yourself. — Bryant McGill

I distrust the slightest hint of a standard for political rectitude, knowing that it will open the way for persons in authority to set arbitrary standards of human behavior. — E.B. White

I set very high standards for myself and worked every game with the same energy and enthusiasm as if it were the seventh game of a World Series. — Jim Evans

God set His standards this high so that we won't make the mistake of aiming low. He made them unreachable so that we would never have the excuse to stop growing. — Alex Harris

And, I think: I am but one more drop in the great sea of matter, defined, with the ability to realize my existence. Of the millions, I, too, was potentially everything at birth. I, too, was stunted, narrowed, warped, by my environment, my outcroppings of heredity. I, too, will find a set of beliefs, of standards to live by, yet the very satisfaction of finding them will be marred by the fact that I have reached the ultimate in shallow, two-dimensional living - a set of values. — Sylvia Plath

Set higher standards for you own performance than anyone around you, and it won't matter whether you have a tough boss or an easy one. It won't matter whether the competition is pushing you hard, because you'll be competing with yourself. — Rick Pitino

Some people set the bar so low you can trip over it. — Frank Sonnenberg

I've tried many torturous techniques to make my outsides fit the ridiculous standards society has set but it never ends well because my body lives in reality and it's a reality that has too much cheese in it. — Jenny Lawson

I think you set up certain standards. I've always kind of believed in the Neil Pert way of making records where I'm trying to step it up every time I do something. You're trying to better yourself. You're also trying to make your audience or your listeners more interested. So, if you can up it, I think that's important. — Charlie Benante

Ethics or simple honesty is the building blocks upon which our whole society is based, and business is a part of our society, and it's integral to the practice of being able to conduct business, that you have a set of honest standards. — Kerry Stokes

The rest of the journey passed uneventfully, if you consider it uneventful to ride fifteen miles on horseback through rough country at night, frequently without benefit of roads, in company with kilted men armed to the teeth, and sharing a horse with a wounded man. At least we were not set upon by highwaymen, we encountered no wild beasts, and it didn't rain. By the standards I was becoming used to, it was quite dull. — Diana Gabaldon

Bureaucracies public and private appear
for whatever historical reasons
to be organized in such a way as to guarantee that a significant proportion of actors will not be able to perform their tasks as expected. It's in this sense that I've said one can fairly say that bureaucracies are utopian forms of organization. After all, is this not what we always say of utopians: that they have a naive faith in the perfectibility of human nature and refuse to deal with humans as they actually are? Which is, are we not also told, what leads them to set impossible standards and then blame the individuals for not living up to them? — David Graeber

God has set up a high standard of righteousness. He has made plain a distinction between human and divine wisdom. All who work on Christ's side must work to save, not to destroy. — Ellen G. White

The end goal of all of this striving is to live joyfully, and that there are often more direct ways of achieving this than conforming to rigid standards set by social custom. — Martha Beck

The pilot is still the pilot, whether he is at a remote console or on the flight deck. With the potential for thousands of these unmanned aircraft in use years from now, the standards for pilot training need to be set high to ensure that those on the ground and other users of the airspace are not put in jeopardy. — Mark Rosenker

Jowell fell back on the same justification for funding the arts that the first chairman of the Arts Council, John Maynard Keynes, had deployed in 1945. Art was something produced by people with special skills, who set their own standards of excellence; they needed to be supported to do this, and the audience needed to be encouraged to appreciate this excellence, by being given subsidised access to it. And for all of Jowell's attempts to transcend instrumentalism, the purpose of culture continued to be to help the government 'to transform our society into a place of justice, talent and ambition where individuals can fulfil their true potential'.22 — Robert Hewison

Enjoy life, study hard, play hard, be kind to other people, set high standards, and don't be afraid to say "No." — Nia Long

As Governor of Texas, I have set high standards for our public schools, and I have met those standards. — George W. Bush

People are very inclined to set moral standards for others. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

No, cool is fine," he said. "Yes, it's a cool place. It was much cooler seven years ago, and it was actually cool ten years ago, before I even got to the city. You see, what those kids over there" - he pointed at the empty booth - "don't realize is that cool is always past tense. The people who lived it, who set the standards they emulate, there was no cool for them. There was just the present tense: there were bills, friendships, messy fucking, fucking boredom, a million trite decisions on how to pass the time. Self-awareness destroys it. You call something cool and you brand it. Then - poof - it's gone. It's just nostalgia. — Stephanie Danler

One key quality of all global achievers is that, they keep improving day after day. They set standards that they keep surpassing year after year. — Israelmore Ayivor

It is those who have this imperative demand for the best in their natures, and who will accept nothing short of it, that holds the banners of progress, that set the standards, the ideals, for others. — Orison Swett Marden

I'm afraid that this is me getting on my high horse now but we have yob television, yob newspapers, and funny enough whereas it was my mum and dad, school, police, church who used to set the standards, now it's tabloids and yob television who set the standards by which people live. — Gordon Strachan

Letting your customers set your standards is a dangerous game, because the race to the bottom is pretty easy to win. Setting your own standards
and living up to them
is a better way to profit. Not to mention a better way to make your day worth all the effort you put into it. - — Seth Godin

You are designed for success. Life's tough, but you are greater than its challenges. No matter what you have been through, you're still here. You have a history of victory.

So ignore the haters, the doubters, and free yourself from the emotional saboteurs. Don't ever forget that you are beautiful, you are capable, you are worthy... you are enough.

Set healthy standards and stick to them. Don't settle. Set healthy goals and follow them. Let your behavior speak the love and passion in your heart. Live life to the fullest... make each day worth remembering... Dream BIG & dare to go for it... Be unapologetically you! — Steve Maraboli

Growing up means learning what life is. When you're little, you have a set of ideals, standards, criteria, plans, outlooks, and you think that you have to sit around and wait for them to happen to you and then life will work. But life isn't like that, for anybody; you can't fall in love with a standard, you have to fall in love with a person. You can't live in a criteria, you have to live your life. You can't wait for your plans to materialize, because they may never materialize the way you think they will. You can't wait to watch your ideals and standards walk up to you, because you can't know what's yours until you have it. I always say, always take the first chance in case you never get a second one, but growing up takes that even one step further, growing up means that you have to hold on to what you have, when you have it, because what you have- that's yours- and all the ideals and criteria you have set in your head, those aren't yours, because those haven't happened to you. — C. JoyBell C.

We can't have two standards, one set for the dedicated young men who want to do something ambitious and one set for those who don't. — Bear Bryant

Having the experience of senior guys around you just makes things easier as they all contribute ideas and set the standards for the group. — George Bailey

Becoming more flexible, open-minded, having a capacity to deal with change is a good thing. But it is far from the whole story. Grandparents, in the absence of the social institutions that once demanded civilized behavior, have their work cut out for them. Our grandchildren are hungry for our love and approval, but also for standards being set. — Eda LeShan

[F]or any group determined to maintain a set of communal standards some mechanism of enforcement must exist. — Clay Shirky

If one would discern the centers of dominance in any society, one need only look to its definitions of "virtue" and "vice" or "legal" and "criminal," for, in the strength to set standards, resides the strength to maintain control. — Freda Adler