57 Excellence Quotes For Inspiration

Striving for excellence is a pursuit that has inspired countless individuals across various walks of life. Whether it’s in our personal endeavors, professional careers, or creative passions, the drive to achieve and maintain the highest standards resonates deeply with many of us. To fuel this ambition, we’ve curated a collection of the top 57 excellence quotes designed to motivate and inspire you on your journey. These words of wisdom from thinkers, leaders, and visionaries serve as powerful reminders that excellence is not just a destination, but a continuous journey of self-improvement and perseverance. Dive into these insightful quotes and let them spark the inspiration you need to reach new heights.

1. “My meaning simply is, that whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do well; that whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself to completely; that in great aims and in small, I have always been thoroughly in earnest.” - Charles Dickens

2. “If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michaelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.” - Martin Luther King Jr.

3. “Mediocrity will never do. You are capable of something better.” - Gordon B. Hinckley

4. “Its hard to be a diamond in a rhinestone world.” - Dolly Parton

5. “Do your best, and be a little better than you are.” - Gordon B. Hinckley

6. “I have been to lots of partiesand acted perfectly disgracefulbut I never actually collapsedoh Lana Turner we love you get up” - Frank O'Hara

7. “Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way.” - Booker T. Washington

8. “Anything worth doing, is worth doing right.” - Hunter S. Thompson

9. “We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.” - Henry Ward Beecher

10. “To hate excellence is to hate the gods.” - Mary Renault

11. “If you don't have time to do it right, when will you have the time to do it over?” - John Wooden

12. “Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien. (The perfect is the enemy of the good.)” - Voltaire

13. “Some people insist that 'mediocre' is better than 'best.' They delight in clipping wings because they themselves can't fly. They despise brains because they have none.” - Robert A. Heinlein

14. “If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way” - Martin Luther King Jr.

15. “Excellence is the result of caring more than others think is wise, risking more than others think is safe, dreaming more than others think is practical, and expecting more than others think is possible.” - Ronnie Oldham

16. “People of excellence go the extra mile to do what's right.” - Joel Osteen

17. “Human tragedies:We all want to be extraordinaryand we all just want to fit in.Unfortunately, extraordinary people rarely fit in.” - Sebastyne Young

18. “Good human work honors God's work. Good work uses no thing without respect, both for what it is in itself and for its origin. It uses neither tool nor material that it does not respect and that it does not love. It honors nature as a great mystery and power, as an indispensable teacher, and as the inescapable judge of all work of human hands. It does not dissociate life and work, or pleasure and work, or love and work, or usefulness and beauty. To work without pleasure or affection, to make a product that is not both useful and beautiful, is to dishonor God, nature, the thing that is made, and whomever it is made for. This is blasphemy: to make shoddy work of the work of God. But such blasphemy is not possible when the entire Creation is understood as holy and when the works of God are understood as embodying and thus revealing His spirit. (pg. 312, Christianity and the Survival of Creation)” - Wendell Berry

19. “Do ordinary things extraordinarily well.” - Gregg Harris

20. “I am a man of simple tastes easily satisfied with the best” - Winston S. Churchill

21. “I hope you will simply do what you can do in the best way you know. If you do so, you will witness miracles come to pass.” - Gordon B. Hinckley

22. “People simply feel better about themselves when they’re good at something.” - Stephen R. Covey

23. “But such occasions of excellence became less and less frequent. As her technique became sounder, [her] sincerity became less necessary.” - Thornton Wilder

24. “To have a man whose name is on the label showing such interest, commitment, and determination for the best is a wonderful thing. This is someone who will throw money at quality, who believes in being the best. Never knock it. Would you prefer to have a bean counter in corporate headquarters, someone who never comes near the brewery, making decisions solely on the basis of the bottom line and profit margins?” - Charles Bamforth

25. “There has always been an elegance to the application of excellence.” - Richard Diaz

26. “Focus on making yourself better, not on thinking that you are better.” - Bohdi Sanders

27. “We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life.” - Steve Jobs

28. “I don't settle in any other area of my life when it comes to excellence, so why should I lower my standards when it comes to boys?” - Adriana Trigiani

29. “You've baked a really lovely cake, but then you've used dog shit for frosting.” - Steve Jobs

30. “To stay vigorous, a company needs to provide a stimulating and challenging environment for all these types: the dreamer, the entrepreneur, the professional manager, and the leader. If it doesn't, it risks becoming yet another mediocre corporation.” - Howard Schultz

31. “Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence” - Vince Lombardi

32. “To be acceptable is for one to ignore his weakness while knowing his strength, to cover the scar even though it's always there, however, to be impossible is for one to see his weakness as, not an adversary, but the cherry on top of his strength, to rearrange the scar so that it compliments his features.” - Criss Jami

33. “The rewrites are a struggle right now. Sometimes I wish writing a book could just be easy for me at last. But when I think about it practically, I am glad it's a struggle. I am (as usual) attempting to write a book that's too hard for me. I'm telling a story I'm not smart enough to tell. The risk of failure is huge. But I prefer it this way. I'm forced to learn, forced to smarten myself up, forced to wrestle. And if it works, then I'll have written something that is better than I am.” - Shannon Hale

34. “There were profound reasons for his attachment to the sea: he loved it because as a hardworking artist he needed rest, needed to escape from the demanding complexity of phenomena and lie hidden on the bosom of the simple and tremendous; because of a forbidden longing deep within him that ran quite contrary to his life's task and was for that very reason seductive, a longing for the unarticulated and immeasurable, for eternity, for nothingness. To rest in the arms of perfection is the desire of any man intent upon creating excellence; and is not nothingness a form of perfection?” - Thomas Mann

35. “To seek greatness is the only righteous vengeance.” - Criss Jami

36. “Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” - Will Durant

37. “As Aristotle said, 'Excellence is a habit.' I would say furthermore that excellence is made constant through the feeling that comes right after one has completed a work which he himself finds undeniably awe-inspiring. He only wants to relax until he's ready to renew such a feeling all over again because to him, all else has become absolutely trivial.” - Criss Jami

38. “Excellence must be achieved through the eyes of those who judge us; once achieved it can only be maintained with constant innovation.” - Tom Collins

39. “Just make up your mind at the very outset that your work is going to stand for quality... that you are going to stamp a superior quality upon everything that goes out of your hands, that whatever you do shall bear the hallmark of excellence.” - Orison Swett Marden

40. “What is good is difficult, and what is difficult is rare.” - Robert Farrar Capon

41. “We must cooperate to turn this country around; otherwise there will be no more future to speak of for our children.” - Rex Resurreccion

42. “The excellent person manages himself. He will not allow the environment to manage him.” - Rex Resurreccion

43. “Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected.” - Steve Jobs

44. “when i run i run fastwhen i read time whirls pastwhatever you do todaydo it in the best possible way” - Cassondra

45. “Persistence is the twin sister of excellence. One is a matter of quality; the other, a matter of time.” - Habeeb Akande

46. “Never allow your desires to lead you away from God; allow nothing else to control you other than God and His Word. No matter what you see or pass through, don’t allow them to define you.” - Agu, Jaachynma N.E.

47. “Wealth does not bring about excellence, but excellence makes wealth and everything else good for men, both individually and collectively.” - Socrates

48. “Leaders are readers, disciples want to be taught and everyone has gifts within that need to be coached to excellence.” - Wayde Goodall

49. “Be driven with purpose. Be relentless in your alignment with excellence. Pay no mind to the disimpassioned impotent haters.” - Steve Maraboli

50. “Happiness, Success, Excellence: They are not something you get for knowing the path; they are something you experience by walking it.” - Steve Maraboli

51. “After the woman left, Gran, staring out back at the Zebra Forest, said to me, 'I'm a liar, I'll admit. But I pride myself on being a really good liar. That's part of my educational philosophy, too, Annie B. Mark that down. Lesson one: If you're going to do something, make sure to do it with excellence.” - Adina Rishe Gewirtz

52. “You unlock the door to greater levels of excellence and success when you accept who you are. It is from the point of acceptance that we can create a masterful life.” - Steve Maraboli

53. “0 true and heavenly grace, without which our own merits are nothing, and our natural gifts of no account! Neither arts nor riches, beauty nor strength, genius nor eloquence have any value in Your eyes, Lord, unless allied to grace. For the gifts of nature are common to good men and bad alike, but grace or love are Your especial gift to those whom You choose, and those who are sealed with this are counted worthy of life everlasting.” - Thomas A. Kempis

54. “Most of us are continually engaged in some form of pursuit. We are seeking excellence within one or more areas in our lives, and that is the basis of our motivation. It is human nature to have a need to get ahead, need a little something more—it’s in our DNA. Although we may not be certain of what we need at any given moment, we know there’s something. It’s a competitive itch and desire to improve that never goes away.” - Lorii Myers

55. “True sportsmanship is excellence in motion!” - Lorii Myers

56. “When I think of excellence in motion, I think of the big picture. Because of the magnitude of this concept, I look at it from an aerial perspective. It is a mindset that challenges the boundaries of self-induced limits—that point where you aspire to exceed your expectations, where the mind-body-achievement connection resides and wins time and time again.” - Lorii Myers

57. “Excellence prospers in the absence of excuses.” - Lorii Myers