Excellence Quotes - Page 20

• Excellence isn't about meeting the spec, it's about setting the spec.

  Seth Godin

  Specs, Meetings, Settings

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• I never considered Miles Davis a perfectionist; I always considered him as an excellence-ist, where deviation is actually kind of cool.

  Charlie Trotter

  Kind, Perfectionist, Deviation

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• A woman who places a high priority on performance and excellence is seen as imperial. A man is seen as demanding and tough.

  Faye Wattleton

  Men, Priorities, Tough

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• I know most of the black players who preceded and followed me at Duke. They all contribute to our tradition of excellence on the court.

  Grant Hill

  Player, Black, Dukes

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• Perfection. Excellence. What a passionate lover. But once having tasted the lips of excellence, once having given oneself to its perfection, how dreary and burdensome and filled with anomie are the remainder of one's waking hours trapped in the shackled lock-step of the merely ordinary, the barely acceptable, the just okay and not a stroke better.

  Harlan Ellison

  Perfection, Waking, Lips

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• How sad that we often diminish our best gifts by struggling valiantly to develop in someone else's area of ability. It is better to focus on your uniqueness and do that with excellence than to end up with mediocrity in several areas.

  Dan Miller

  Struggle, Focus, Mediocrity

  Dan Miller (2007). “48 Days to the Work You Love”, p.77, B&H Publishing Group

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• Average is the enemy of excellence, and average commitment will prevent you from enduring to the end.

  Kevin W. Pearson

  Commitment, Enduring To The End, Average

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• That we understand something perfectly, that we accomplish something better than anyone else around us, that is what matters.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  What Matters, Accomplish, Something Better

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• The higher its type, the more rarely a thing succeeds.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Success, Succeed, Type

  Friedrich Nietzsche (1977). “The Portable Nietzsche”, p.246, Penguin

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• A wise man ought always to follow the paths beaten by great men, and to imitate those who have been supreme, so that if his ability does not equal theirs, at least it will savor of it. Let him act like the clever archers who, designing to hit the mark which yet appears too far distant, and knowing the limits to which the strength of their bow attains, take aim much higher than the mark, not to reach by their strength or arrow to so great a height, but to be able with the aid of so high an aim to hit the mark they wish to reach.

  Niccolo Machiavelli

  Strength, Wise, Hope

  Niccolo Machiavelli (2017). “The Prince”, p.38, BookRix

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• Consider the problem from the point of view of evil, evil being almost always pleasure's true and major charm; considered thus, the crime must appear greater when perpetrated upon a being of your identical sort than when inflicted upon one which is not, and this once established, the delight automatically doubles.

  Marquis de Sade

  Truth, Honesty, Light

  Marquis de Sade (2013). “120 Days of Sodom”, p.245, Simon and Schuster

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• The most radical division that it is possible to make of humanity is that which splits it into two classes of creatures: Those who make great demands on themselves, piling up difficulties and duties; and those who demand nothing special of themselves, but for whom to live is to be every moment what they already are, without imposing on themselves any effort towards perfection, mere buoys that float on the waves.

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Adversity, Men, Class

  "The Revolt of the Masses". Book by José Ortega y Gasset, p. 15, 1929.

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• Sun and moon and day and night and man and beast
  each with a splendor
  which man in all his vileness cannot
  set aside; each with an excellence!

  Marianne Moore

  Moon, Night, Men

  Marianne Moore (1994). “Complete Poems”, p.118, Penguin

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• Such, Echecrates, was the end of our comrade, who was, we may fairly say, of all those whom we knew in our time, the bravest and also the wisest and most upright man.

  Plato

  Death, Men, Upright Man

  Phaedo 118a

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• Excellence isn't a one-week or one-year ideal. It's a constant.

  Michael Jordan

  Years, Week, Constant

  Michael Jordan (2012). “Driven from Within”, p.55, Simon and Schuster

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• The great roe is a mythological beast with the head of a lion and the body of a lion, though not the same lion.

  Woody Allen

  Body, Lions, Beast

  Woody Allen (2007). “The Insanity Defense: The Complete Prose”, Random House Incorporated

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• Cowardice, as distinguished from panic, is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend the functioning of the imagination. Learning to suspend your imagination and live completely in the very second of the present with no before and no after is the greatest gift a soldier can acquire.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Life, Death, Military

  Men at War introduction (1942)

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• On a good day, I view the job [of president] as directing an orchestra. On the dark days, it is more like that of a clutch -- engaging the engine to effect forward motion, while taking greater friction.

  A. Bartlett Giamatti

  Time, Jobs, Military

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• It is easy to forget that the most important aspect of comedy, after all, its great saving grace, is its ambiguity. You can simultaneously laugh at a situation, and take it seriously.

  Stephen Fry

  Funny, Laughter, Humor

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• When a man appreciates only eating and sleeping, what excellence has he over the reptiles?

  Saadi

  Sleep, Men, Appreciate

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• Almost never does a single company have excellence in a multiplicity of disciplines.

  Leroy Hood

  Discipline, Doe, Company

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• Excellence means representing the reputation of Christ well. It means doing all things as best as you can...

  Stephen Kendrick

  Mean, Reputation, Christ

  "Interview With ‘Courageous’ Producer Stephen Kendrick". Interview with Cheryl Wicker, sonomachristianhome.com. January 31, 2012.

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• Football isn't who we are, it doesn't necessarily define us. It's part of our life and it always will be, but football won't define us. Excellence does.

  Eric Dickerson

  Football, Doe, Who We Are

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• I don't think about being male or female, I just behave naturally. I think in terms of excellence in science, not gender.

  May-Britt Moser

  Thinking, Males, Female

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• Useful manual labour, intelligently performed, is the means par excellence for developing the intellect.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Mean, Intellect, Manuals

  Mahatma Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1986). “The Moral and Political Writings of Mahatma Gandhi: Non-Violent Resistance and Social Transformation”, Clarendon Press

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