Quotes About Excellence

Let's face it: if you and I have the same capabilities, the same energy, the same staff, if the only thing that's different between you and me is the products we can get, and I can get a better product than you, I'm going to be a better chef.

Records are the only thing that remain of an athlete, the only thing that people will remember. If I want to ensure that people don't forget me, I can only stop once I've set the bar as high as possible for anyone coming after me.

The only thing Google has failed to do, so far, is fail.

I'm just following my own art, and I just think that the only thing I can do to be a great artist is do the best job I can in whatever movie I do.

The only thing that seemed to me I could do in such a way that no one else could was acting. I thought, I can be a doctor, but there's going to be someone else who is just as good or better. I can be a lawyer, which I still sometimes think I would love to be, but I think there's someone who can do it just as good or better.

The thing I believe is we are good if our peers think we're great. But we are great if the real world thinks we're good. And there's a huge difference.

There's a price to pay for greatness. The price to pay is doing the right thing.

I feel I can channelise my aggression to the right thing and be a good bowler, a world class bowler.

Oh, the secret of a great club is all in the detail. When I walk into one of my bars, I have to have all my napkins a certain way and all the pourers in the bottles facing a certain way. It drives some people crazy, but I figure if I notice something's off, then other people will notice it, too.

Not to toot our own horn, but when 'The Sopranos' was on, it was as good as any movie that was coming out in the theater. I think that goes for a lot of shows today.

In mainland China, there are many good theaters - sometimes better than Hong Kong.

A theatre receives recognition through its initiative, which is indispensable for first-rate performances.

Trying to be the best at anything carries its own special risks, in or out of the Twilight Zone.

For Socrates, the goal of all human beings was arete.

Usually translated as 'goodness' or 'virtue'

Management wizard Jim Collins, best-selling author of Good to Great and Built to Last, argues that what must glaringly separate great companies from mediocre ones is the latter's tendency "to explain away the brutal facts rather than to confront the brutal facts head-on.

Fear keeps people from the risk associated with doing their best.

When you do something best in life, you don't really want to give that up - and for me it's tennis.

The true democrat wishes to share the great works of culture with all who are able to appreciate them; the egalitarian, recognizing that genuine excellence is rare, declares greatness a fraud and sets about obliterating distinctions.

Competing in sports has taught me that if I'm not willing to give 120 percent, somebody else will.

Aristotle once said, "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act,

How wonderful it would be to hear these words from Christ: "Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much" (Matthew 25:21).

I'd rather do a really good small part than a really bad big part.

SOCRATES: I appreciate that, Agathon, and of course I have prepared well for our dialogue. These discussions are my main way of becoming the best Socrates I can be. But if I just wanted to speak my own thoughts out loud, I could talk to a mirror, without the bother of leaving my house. I've come here because I'll only be sure I've done my best thinking, when I hear others, and submit to the exhilarating discipline of the dialogue. All of us are smarter than any of us.