Excellence, then, is a state concerned with choice, lying in a mean, relative to us, this being determined by reason and in the way in which the man of practical wisdom would determine it.

What starts the process, really, are laughs and slights and snubs when you are a kid. If your anger is deep enough and strong enough, you learn that you can change those attitudes by excellence, personal gut performance.

The superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions.

What is easy is seldom excellent.

What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god.

It’s the niceties that make the difference fate gives us the hand, and we play the cards.

We hire people who want to make the best things in the world.

The ruling passion, be it what it will. The ruling passion conquers reason still.

The law is reason, free from passion.

None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.

We can be thankful to a friend for a few acres, or a little money; and yet for the freedom and command of the whole earth, and for the great benefits of our being, our life, health, and reason, we look upon ourselves as under no obligation.

Leadership is a choice, not a position.

Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of man will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.

Excellence is a continuous process and not an accident.

The noblest search is the search for excellence.

Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form.

Freedom means you are unobstructed in living your life as you choose. Anything less is a form of slavery.

My father was a mean, controlling and manipulative person for most of his life. He was unpredictable and unstable.

I’m afraid that reason will triumph and that the world will become a place where anyone who doesn’t fit that will become unnecessary.

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be.

Every family should have the right to spend their money, after tax, as they wish, and not as the government dictates. Let us extend choice, extend the will to choose and the chance to choose.

For my own part, I would rather excel in knowledge of the highest secrets of philosophy than in arms.

Prejudices are what fools use for reason.

For as the eyes of bats are to the blaze of day, so is the reason in our soul to the things which are by nature most evident of all.

In the final choice a soldier’s pack is not so heavy as a prisoner’s chains.

Agency is a divine gift to you. You are free to choose what you will be and what you will do.

Resort is had to ridicule only when reason is against us.

Time is the friend of the wonderful company, the enemy of the mediocre.

After one has been in prison, it is the small things that one appreciates: being able to take a walk whenever one wants, going into a shop and buying a newspaper, speaking or choosing to remain silent. The simple act of being able to control one’s person.

If you are going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little matters. Excellence is not an exception, it is a prevailing attitude.

We know the truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart.

If you were to ask me to choose between democratic values and wealth, power, prosperity and fame, I will very easily and without any doubt choose democratic values.

Errors of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.

By appreciation, we make excellence in others our own property.

Free will carried many a soul to hell, but never a soul to heaven.

An explanation of cause is not a justification by reason.

As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed.

Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way.

The truth is often terrifying, which I think is one of the motifs of Larry and Andrew’s cinema. The cost of knowledge is an important theme. In the second and third films, they explore the consequences of Neo’s choice to know the truth. It’s a beautiful, beautiful story.

We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know? So this is what we’ve chosen to do with our life.

Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe.

The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.

We had hundreds of thousands of people all dedicated to doing the perfect job, and I think they did about as well as anyone could ever have expected.

I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live and could not spare any more time for that one.

War contains so much folly, as well as wickedness, that much is to be hoped from the progress of reason.

The sons of Judah have to choose that God may again choose them. The divine principle of our race is action, choice, resolved memory.

I think the word rich is all relative.

If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you’re a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.

Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.

It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.

I think – I don’t know, maybe it’s nostalgia. But the choice, losing the choice to be able to use film is going to be – it’s gone. It’s going to be gone.

We are born weak, we need strength; helpless, we need aid; foolish, we need reason. All that we lack at birth, all that we need when we come to man’s estate, is the gift of education.

It is impossible to reason without arriving at a Supreme Being.

I believe the destiny of your generation – and your nation – is a rendezvous with excellence.

Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination.

Law is mind without reason.

Test a servant while in the discharge of his duty, a relative in difficulty, a friend in adversity, and a wife in misfortune.

He only employs his passion who can make no use of his reason.

It vexes me when they would constrain science by the authority of the Scriptures, and yet do not consider themselves bound to answer reason and experiment.

We need to internalize this idea of excellence. Not many folks spend a lot of time trying to be excellent.

The blame is his who chooses: God is blameless.