Quotes About Standards

When government decides to set "standards" for an industry, to whom will it turn for expertise? Brilliant newcomers? No, government doesn't even know who they are. The older, lazier, bigger, arthritic businesses suggest the rules and make sure that their way is the only legal way.

Speaking of photography Baudelaire said: "This industry, by invading the territories of art, has become art's most mortal enemy." And in his own terms of reference Baudelaire was half right; certainly the new medium could not satisfy old standards. The photographer must find new ways to make his meaning clear.

Pick up a fifth-grade math or rhetoric textbook from 1850 and you'll see that the texts were pitched then on what would today be considered college level. The continuing cry for "basic skills" practice is a smoke screen

The idea for which this nation stands will not survive if the highest goal free man can set themselves is an amiable mediocrity. Excellence implies striving for the highest standards in every phase of life.

The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exaulted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy...neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.

It's not vanity to feel you have a right to be beautiful. Women are taught to feel we're not good enough, that we must live up to someone else's standards. But my aim is to cherish myself as I am.

Why must women wake up and paint their faces? Who came up with this idea? What's wrong with washing and moisturizing? So, if you care to wear make-up, go right ahead. No one's stopping you. I only suggest reconsidering. Is it totally necessary?

Men want to feel like they are dating a model or celebrity, so look like one!

treat the men we wanted like the men we didn't want.

A great poet has seldom sung of lawfully wedded happiness, but of free and secret love; and in this respect, too the time is coming when there will no longer be one standard of morality for poetry and another for life. To anyone tender of conscience, the ties formed by a free connection are stronger than the legal ones.

Even though Saudis eventually came to occupy the senior management positions in the company, Aramco remained an oasis of Western culture and business standards within the conservative and traditional kingdom. Nothing, al Saud believed, should get in the way of profit and power.

If enough dishonest merchants water their milk, more and more customers will forget what normal milk tastes like and buy only the cheaper - watered down - variety.

The world had known but one perfect man, and no perfect woman whatever.

No wonder women wore layers of clothing. They had so much beauty to hide.

Ora, uma vez que abrimos a porta para as exceções, é difícil fechá-la.

Respectable people... What bastards!

He earned a national reputation managing large political campaigns, turning them into media-driven extravaganzas with emphasis on sound bites and perception over any kind of substance, and his win rate was astonishingly high. That probably said more for the gullibility of the modern voter than the high standards of the modern candidate.

The betrayal of a belief is not the same thing as ceasing to believe. If this were not so there would be no moral standards in the world at all.

To equal a predecessor, one must have twice they worth.

In order that a woman may be able to keep a cook, may be finely educated, may possess the sentiment of coquetry, may have the right to pass whole hours in her boudoir lying on a sofa, and may live a life of soul, she must have at least six thousand francs a year if she lives in the country, and twenty thousand if she lives at Paris.

Especially not something like abandoning my professional standards, because that would throw the rest of my life out of balance.

Remember, whenever too many people fail a requirement, there's nothing wrong with them, there's something wrong with the requirement.

I think it has to do with quality: How good are the schools we have? Their solution is to spend more money. Mine is to raise standards. Their recourse is to the federal government. Mine is to the local public school board, the private school, the individual citizen—as far away from the federal government as one can possibly go.

We have forgotten that a society progresses only to the extent that it produces leaders that are capable of guiding and inspiring progress. And we cannot develop such leaders unless our standards of education are geared to excellence instead of mediocrity.