“To aim at excellence, our reputation, and friends, and all must be ventured; to aim at the average we run no risk and provide little service.”
“Make it a life-rule to give your best to whatever passes through your hands. Stamp it with your manhood. Let superiority be your trademark...”
“There is an infinite difference between a little wrong and just right, between fairly good and the best, between mediocrity and superiority...”
“You're probably not a member of a major league baseball team, your errors, unless they are truly spectacular, don't show up in the morning paper.”
“No matter how small and unimportant what we are doing may seem, if we do it well, it may soon become the step that will lead us to better things.”
“My philosophy is that not only are you responsible for your life, but doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment.”
“If something is exceptionally well done it has embedded in it's very existence the aim of lifting the common denominator rather than catering to it.”
“All successful employers are stalking men who will do the unusual, men who think, men who attract attention by performing more than is expected of them.”
“Surely a man has come to himself only when he has found the best that is in him, and has satisfied his heart with the highest achievement he is fit for.”
“The best we can do is size up the chances, calculate the risks involved, estimate our ability to deal with them, and then make our plans with confidence.”
“The greatest thing a man can do in this world is to make the most possible out of the stuff that has been given him. This is success, and there is no other.”
“You can start right where you stand and apply the habit of going the extra mile by rendering more service and better service than you are now being paid for.”
“The man who comes up with a means for doing or producing almost anything better, faster or more economically has his future and his fortune at his fingertips.”
“Set exorbitant standards, and give your people hell when they don't live up to them. There is nothing so demoralizing as a boss who tolerates second rate work.”
“To be really great in little things, to be truly noble and heroic in the insipid details of everyday life, is a virtue so rare as to be worthy of canonization.”
“Determine to become one of the best. Sufficient money will almost automatically follow if you get to be one of the ''best'' in your chosen field, whatever it is.”
“Anybody who accepts mediocrity -- in school, on the job, in life -- is a person who compromises, and when the leader compromises, the whole organization compromises.”
“Four short words sum up what has lifted most successful individuals above the crowd: a little bit more. They did all that was expected of them and a little bit more.”
“Winners have the ability to step back from the canvas of their lives like an artist gaining perspective. They make their lives a work of art -- an individual masterpiece.”
“I use nothing but the best ingredients. My cookies are always baked fresh. I price cookies so that you cannot make them at home for any less. And I still give cookies away.”
“We distinguish the excellent man from the common man by saying that the former is the one who makes great demands on himself, and the latter who makes no demands on himself.”
“You can become an even more excellent person by constantly setting higher and higher standards for yourself and then by doing everything possible to live up to those standards.”
“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 steer is the way to it.”
“There seems to be one quality of mind which seems to be of special and extreme advantage in leading him to make discoveries. It was the power of never letting exceptions go unnoticed.”
“The kind of people I look for to fill top management spots are the eager beavers, the mavericks. These are the guys who try to do more than they're expected to do -- they always reach.”
“It has always been my belief that a man should do his best, regardless of how much he receives for his services, or the number of people he may be serving or the class of people served.”
“One of the most essential things you need to do for yourself is to choose a goal that is important to you. Perfection does not exist -- you can always do better and you can always grow.”
“I always remember an epitaph which is in the cemetery at Tombstone, Arizona. It says: ''Here lies Jack Williams. He done his damnedest.'' I think that is the greatest epitaph a man can have.”
“It is those who have this imperative demand for the best in their natures, and who will accept nothing short of it, that holds the banners of progress, that set the standards, the ideals, for others.”
“There is one plain rule of life. Try thyself unweariedly till thou findest the highest thing thou art capable of doing, faculties and outward circumstances being both duly considered, and then do it.”