Selected excellence quotes

1. The good and the bad mix themselves so thoroughly in our thoughts, even in our aspirations, that we must look for excellence rather in overcoming evil than in freeing ourselves from its influence.

2. For just as for a flute-player, a sculptor, or an artist, and, in general, for all things that have a function or activity, the good and the well is thought to reside in the function, so would it seem to be for man, if he has a function.

3. No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.

4. If I give you a good wine, you will see how it tastes and after you ask where it comes from.

5. Goodness does not consist in greatness, but greatness in goodness.

6. If you want to do your duty properly, you should do just a little more than that.

7. Simplicity is the key to brilliance.

8. It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.

9. Why not be a top-notcher? A top-notcher is simply an individual who works for the institution of which he is a part, not against it.

10. Great art is the contempt of a great man for small art.

11. Respect the masterpiece. It is true reverence to man. There is no quality so great, none so much needed now.

12. It is infinitely better to have a few good men than many indifferent ones.

13. For I think it is the case with genius that it is not when quiescent so very much above mediocrity as the difference between the two might lead us to think, but that it has the power and privilege of rising from that level to a height utterly far from mediocrity: in other words that its greatness is that it can be so great.

14. I wanted to change the rules of engagement, asking for more- from fewer. I was insisting that we had to have only the best people...If you wanted excellence, at a minimum, the ambience had to reflect excellence.

15. If you don't try to win you might as well hold the Olympics in somebody's back yard. The thrill of competing carries with it the thrill of a gold medal. One wants to win to prove himself the best.

16. Don't be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.

17. Love what you do. Get good at it. Competence is a rare commodity in this day and age. And let the chips fall where they may.

18. There is always some frivolity in excellent minds; they have wings to rise, but also stray.

19. We do not do well except when we know where the best is and when we are assured that we have touched it and hold its power within us.

20. A good drama critic is one who perceives what is happening in the theatre of his time. A great drama critic also perceives what is not happening.

21. I don't want to make money, I just want to be wonderful.

22. What actions are the most excellent? Those, certainly, which most powerfully appeal to the great primary human affections: to those elementary feelings which subsist permanently in the race, and which are independent of time. These feelings are permanent and the same; that which interests them is permanent and the same also.

23. I was raised to believe that excellence is the best deterrent to racism or sexism. And that's how I operate my life.

24. Make the workmanship surpass the materials.

25. Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.

26. I don't believe in perfection. I don't think there is such a thing. But the energy of wanting things to be great is a perfectionist energy.

27. Certain things in Mozart will and can never be excelled.

28. Outdid the meat, outdid the frolic wine.

29. There is only one way to defeat the enemy, and that is to write as well as one can. The best argument is an undeniably good book.

30. In every one of us there are two ruling and directing principles, whose guidance we follow wherever they may lead; the one being an innate desire of pleasure; the other, an acquired judgment which aspires after excellence.

31. What I want is to be number one.

32. No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men.

33. Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.

34. Whenever I go on a ride, I'm always thinking of what's wrong with the thing and how it can be improved.

35. The qualities of a second-rate writer can easily be defined, but a first-rate writer can only be experienced. It is just the thing in him which escapes analysis that makes him first-rate.

36. If ... we state the function of man to be a certain kind of life, and this to be an activity or actions of the soul implying a rational principle, and the function of a good man to be the good and noble performance of these, and if any action is well performed when it is performed in accordance with the appropriate excellence ... human good turns out to be activity of the soul in accordance with virtue, and if there are more than one virtue, in accordance with the best and most complete.

37. I am the best player in the world and I am here to prove it.

38. 'If you are going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little matters. Excellence is not an exception, it is a prevailing attitude.'

39. 'The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying.'

40. The jabroni beating, pie eating, trail blazing, eye brow raising, the best in the present, future and past, and if ya'll don't like me you can kiss the people's ass!

41. Instead of wishing to see more doctors made by women joining what there are, I wish to see as few doctors, either male or female, as possible. For, mark you, the women have made no improvement - they have only tried to be men and they have only succeeded in being third-rate men.

42. The Greeks put us to shame not only by their simplicity, which is foreign to our age; they are at the same time our rivals, nay, frequently our models, in those very points of superiority from which we seek comfort when regretting the unnatural character of our manners. We see that remarkable people uniting at once fullness of form and fullness of substance, both philosophising and creating, both tender and energetic, uniting a youthful fancy to the virility of reason in a glorious humanity.

43. He who has done his best for his own time has lived for all times.

44. Before one blames, one should always find out whether one cannot excuse. To discover little faults has been always the particularity of such brains that are a little or not at all above the average. The superior ones keep quiet or say something against the whole and the great minds transform without blaming.

45. Everybody keeps calling for Excellence - excellence not just in schooling, throughout society. But as soon as somebody or something stands out as Excellent, the other shout goes up: 'Elitism!' And whatever produced that thing, whoever praises that result, is promptly put down. 'Standing out' is undemocratic.

46. The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he's always doing both.

47. Unless you think you can do better than Tolstoy, we don't need you.

48. The road to the Olympics, leads to no city, no country. It goes far beyond New York or Moscow, ancient Greece or Nazi Germany. The road to the Olympics leads - in the end - to the best within us.

49. You are not very good if you are not better than your best friends imagine you to be.

50. I started out very quiet and I beat Mr. Turgenev. Then I trained hard and I beat Mr. de Maupassant. I've fought two draws with Mr. Stendhal, and I think I had an edge in the last one. But nobody's going to get me in any ring with Mr. Tolstoy unless I'm crazy or I keep getting better.

51. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is a habit.

52. A well-written Life is almost as rare as a well-spent one.

53. If you love the good thing vitally, enough to give up for it all that one must give up, then you must hate the cheap thing just as hard. I tell you, there is such a thing as creative hate! A contempt that drives you through fire, makes you risk everything and lose everything, makes you a long sight better than you ever knew you could be.

54. The difference between the first- and second-best things in art absolutely seems to escape verbal definition - it is a matter of a hair, a shade, an inward quiver of some kind - yet what miles away in the point of preciousness!

55. The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry.

56. One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary person.

57. We clamor for equality chiefly in matters in which we ourselves cannot hope to attain excellence. To discover what a man truly craves but knows he cannot have we must find the field in which he advocates absolute equality. By this test Communists are frustrated Capitalists.

58. You see, lots of the real people can't do it at all: they're such fools that they think style comes by nature to people in their position; and so they never learn. There's always something professional about doing a thing superlatively well.

59. Badness you can get easily, in quantity: the road is smooth, and it lies close by. But in front of excellence the immortal gods have put sweat, and long and steep is the way to it, and rough at first. But when you come to the top, then it is easy, even though it is hard.

60. 'As far as carrying the torch for the years to come, I don't know. I just want to be the best basketball player I can be.' - Kobe Bryant[3]

61. I'm not interested in money. I just want to be wonderful.

62. Culture is then properly described not as having its origin in curiosity, but as having its origin in the love of perfection; it is a study of perfection.

63. Professional standards, the standards of ambition and selfishness, are always sliding downward toward expense, ostentation, and mediocrity. They tend always to narrow the ground of judgment. But amateur standards, the standards of love, are always straining upward toward the humble and the best. They enlarge the ground of judgment. The context of love is the world.

64. We must make demands of reason and create a life worthy of ourselves and of the goals we only dimly perceive.

65. If you are going to do something, do it well. And leave something witchy.

66. Efficiency of a practically flawless kind may be reached naturally in the struggle for bread. But there is something beyond - a higher point, a subtle and unmistakable touch of love and pride beyond mere skill; almost an inspiration which gives to all work that finish which is almost art - which is art.

67. 'The guy said NBA players are one in a million, ... I said, 'Man, look, I'm going to be that one in a million.' - Kobe Bryant[7]

68. Next to excellence, comes the appreciation of it.

69. 'What I'm doing right now, I'm chasing perfection.' - Kobe Bryant[1]

70. Be the best at whatever you do.

71. With regard to excellence, it is not enough to know, but we must try to have and use it.

72. He was the best driver who ever lived.

73. Ayrton was the best friend I ever had in F1, closer to me than anybody else in the business. During my three years driving with him at McLaren, I came to realize that he was the best, one level higher than the rest of us.

74. I decided to pick out the greatest hitter to watch and study, and Jackson was good enough for me.

75. I have met all the most gifted people in our generation and you're the best.

76. His chess technique is nearly a miracle. In their youth, only a few players could handle the endgame so precisely. Only two such players are known to me, Smyslov and Capablanca.

77. If Bruce Lee wasn't the greatest martial artist of all time, then certainly he is the number one candidate.

78. In addition he was that best of all things, Hellenic - mankind has no quality more precious: everything beyond that belongs to the gods.

79. He set standards of excellence that remain unsurpassed.

80. He is the most interesting, the most inventive, the most elegant dancer of our times... you see a little bit of Astaire in everybody's dancing--a pause here, a move there. It was all Astaire originally.

81. I can watch Astaire anytime. I don't think he ever made a wrong move. He was a perfectionist. He would work on a few bars for hours until it was just the way he wanted it. Gene was the same way. They both wanted perfection, even though they were completely different personalities.

82. Mr Dyson is absolutely unusual in his ability and accomplishments. I can say without reservation that he is the best I have ever had or observed.

83. He was a verray, parfit gentil knyght.

84. I just always wanted to do the very best I could.

85. The best among you are those who are best to their wives.

86. Require rising standards of adequacy.

87. Be number 1 or 2 in your business or get out.

88. Don't do what they ask you. Do what they ask you plus other insight.

89. 'He's an unbelievable player. He's God's gift, something that's going to flash before our eyes and I don't think it's every going to happen again. The only person I can think about he's catching up with is Michael Jordan.' - w:Rashard Lewis[10]

90. 'I think Kobe Bryant should be at the top of the (MVP) list. His game is unstoppable.' - w:Amare Stoudemire[12]

91. 'To me he is the best player in the world right now. That guy doesn't know fear at all. He doesn't care. He would have won it for the Americans single-handedly.' - w:Dirk Nowitzki[14]

92. Better to err with Pope, than shine with Pye.

93. Ever since I was a little boy, I would study composition. And it was Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky that influenced me the most. If you take an album like Nutcracker Suite, every song is killer, every one. So I said to myself, 'Why can't there be a pop album where every...' - People used to do an album where you'd get one good song, and the rest were like B-sides, they'd call them 'album songs' - and i'd say to myself 'Why can't every one be like a hit song? Why can't every song be so great that people would want to buy it if you could release it as a single?. So I always tried to strive for that. That was the purpose for the next album. ~Michael Jackson on influences, Ebony Magazine December 2007.

94. There were many, too, who hated him. Hated him for being young, for being excellent, for having made their victories look paltry and weak.

95. Every really able man, in whatever direction he work, - a man of large affairs, an inventor, a statesman, an orator, a poet, a painter,-if you talk sincerely with him, considers his work, however much admired, as far short of what it should be.

96. Try to enhance morality among this nation. It is by morality that you can preserve your independence and attain to stages of excellence.

97. And yet I think that the Full House model does teach us to treasure variety for its own sake-for tough reasons of evolutionary theory and nature's ontology, and not from a lamentable failure of thought that accepts all beliefs on the absurd rationale that disagreement must imply disrespect. Excellence is a range of differences, not a spot. Each location on the range can be occupied by an excellent or an inadequate representative-and we must struggle for excellence at each of these varied locations. In a society driven, often unconsciously, to impose a uniform mediocrity upon a former richness of excellence-where McDonald's drives out the local diner, and the mega-Stop & Shop eliminates the corner Mom and Pop-an understanding and defense of full ranges as natural reality might help to stem the tide and preserve the rich raw material of any evolving system: variation itself.

98. 'Steve captures perfectly what you want your quarterback to be.'

99. 'I believed that he was the greatest man I was ever likely to meet, and I believe that all the more firmly today'

100. Endeavor to do well with everything you undertake.