Quotes on Excellence
Until you make peace with who you are, you’ll never be content with what you have.
- Doris Mortman
There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do.
- Freya Stark
If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Bethoven composed music, or Shakespere wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great sweeper who did his job well.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
The world stands aside to let anyone pass who knows where he is going.
- David Starr Jordan
The tragedy of life doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach.
- Benjamin Mays
There is one quality that one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose – the knowledge of what one wants and a burning desire to possess it.
- Nepolean Hill
There is no passion to be found in playing small – in settling for a life that is less than what you are capable of living.
- Nelson Mandela
The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor.
- Vince Lombardi
If you want to be successful, know what you are doing, love what you are doing and believe in what you are doing.
- Will Rogers
The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.
- Richard Bach
Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.
- George Carlin
Face reality as it is…not as you wish it to be.
- Jack Welch
There is nothing so powerful as truth – and often nothing so strange.
- Daniel Webster
Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.
- Andre Gide
When nobody around you seems to measure up, it’s time to check your yardstick.
- Bill Lemley
You will become like the five people you associate with the most. This can be either a blessing or a curse.
- Billy Cox
It is surprising how much you can accomplish if you don’t care who gets the credit.
- Abraham Lincoln
One of the secrets of a long and fruitful life is to forgive everybody everything every night before going to bed.
- Bernard Baruch
You see things; and say, “Why?”
But I dream things that never were; and I say, “Why not?”
- George Bernard Shaw
Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.
- Japanese Proverb
Only he who can see the invisible can do the impossible.
- Frank Gaines
Things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (on focus)
I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.
- Bill Cosby
Don’t dwell on what went wrong. Instead, focus on what to do next. Spend your energies on moving forward toward finding the answer.
- Denis Waitney
Aim at heaven and you get earth thrown in; aim at earth and you get neither.
- C.S. Lewis
Don’t wait. The time will never be just right. Start where you stand and work with whatever tools you may have at your command and better tools will be found as you go along.
- Napoleon Hill
One of the marks of successful people is that they are action-oriented. One of the marks of average people is that they are talk-oriented.
- Brian Tracy
Everyone who has taken a shower has an idea. It’s the person who gets out of the shower, dries off and does something about it who makes a difference.
- Nolan Bushnell
Blessed are those who can laugh at themselves, for they shall never cease to be amused.
- Anonymous
Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.
- William Faulkner
Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.
- Confucius
In teaching others, we teach ourselves.
- Proverb
We are continuously faced with great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insolvable problems.
- Lee Iacocca
If you never change your mind, why have one?
- Edward De Bono
We cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are.
- Max PePree
The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn…and change.
- Carl Rogers
You can chase a butterfly all over the field and never catch it. But if you sit quietly in the grass, it will come and sit on your shoulder.
- Anonymous
Patience is also a form of action.
- Auguste Rodin
There are no traffic jams along the extra mile.
- Roger Staubach
Excellence is the result of caring more than others think is wise, risking more than others think is safe, dreaming more than others think is practical, and expecting more than others think is possible.
- Anonymous
Excellence is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.
- John W. Gardner
People forget how fast you did a job, but they remember how well you did it.
- Howard W. Newton
