- Encouragement isa a necessary part of supervision.
- Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way.
- If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.
- Nothing average ever stood as a monument to progress. When progress is looking for a partner it doesn't turn to those who believe they are only average. It turns instead to those who are forever searching and striving to become the best they possibly can. If we seek the average level we cannot hope to achieve a high level of success. Our only hope is to avoid being a failure.
- Excellence and size are fundamentally incompatible.
- Even to a wicked man a divinity gives wealth, Cyrnus, but to few men comes the gift of excellence.
- Next to excellence is the appreciation of it.
- You must motivate yourself EVERYDAY!
- 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.
- It is hard to be truly excellent, four-square in hand and foot and mind, formed without blemish.
- Each excellent thing, once learned, serves for a measure of all other knowledge.
- But when we get enough people who don't care, and who don't accept personal responsibility for high ethical standards, our organization gets the "M" disease. Mediocrity. Anybody in the place can be a carrier. By the same token, every individual can carry the cure: the ethics of excellence.
- We need timeless principles to steer by in running our organizations and building our personal careers. We need high standards . . . the ethics of excellence.
- Excellence calls for character . . . integrity . . . fairness . . . honesty . . . a determination to do what's right. High ethical standards, across the board.
- Notice that "I" is at the center of the word "ethical." There is no "they." Achieving the ethics of excellence is our individual assignment.
- Excellent firms don't believe in excellence — only in constant improvement and constant change.
- The spirited horse, which will try to win the race of its own accord, will run ever faster if encouraged.
- Am I motivated by what I really want out of life — or am I mass-motivated?
- There is no excellence anywhere without labor. We would think a man foolish indeed who would say, "l am willing that my business should prosper, or that my farm should yield plentifully, but I'll not stir a peg." But he is no more foolish than the man who says, "I am willing that God should bless me abundantly, but I shall not do anything toward that end myself." We must consistently rely upon the help of the Lord, but we will not make any progress or meet with any success unless we put forth an earnest effort.
- Persistence is the twin sister of excellence. One is a matter of quality; the other, a matter of time.
- What ere thou art, act well thy part.
