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

Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.

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

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

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.

Success is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.

Good leadership consists of showing average people how to do the work of superior people.

The quality of research in the U.S. is absolutely the best.

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.

One cannot develop taste from what is of average quality but only from the very best.

No crime is so great as daring to excel.

Whatever your life’s work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.

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

What is a danger is that we stay stuck in a new normal where unemployment rates stay high, people who have jobs see their incomes go up, businesses make big profits. But they’re learned to do more with less, and so they don’t hire.

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

Things done well and with a care, exempt themselves from fear.

In art the best is good enough.

When you tell a recruiter that you’re almost 300 pounds and you want to be a SEAL, it doesn’t go too well. I got hung up on a lot.

I’m not gonna be bad at anything, and I want to actually be the best at anything I’m doing. So if I’m playing basketball, if I’m taking the SATs, like, there’s a competitive spirit behind it. With production, it’s the same thing.

Our goal is to make the best devices in the world, not to be the biggest.

The will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to reach your full potential… these are the keys that will unlock the door to personal excellence.

As a soccer player, I wanted an FA Cup winner’s medal. As an actor you want an Oscar. As a chef it’s three-Michelin’s stars, there’s no greater than that. So pushing yourself to the extreme creates a lot of pressure and a lot of excitement, and more importantly, it shows on the plate.

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

Winning takes precedence over all. There’s no gray area. No almosts.

All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.

Next to excellence is the appreciation of 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.

If he’s got golf clubs in his truck or a camper in his driveway, I don’t hire him.

I have the Midas touch, in the way that when I hook up with a project, I feel, not speaking cocky or conceited, but there’s a confidence I have. I learned that from Muhammad Ali; I used to bodyguard him. He taught me about confidence. So when it comes to any job I work, I’m gonna do it good; I’m going to bring it over the top.

Perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are good, and alike in excellence; for these wish well alike to each other qua good, and they are good in themselves.

A true critic ought to dwell upon excellencies rather than imperfections, to discover the concealed beauties of a writer, and communicate to the world such things as are worth their observation.

Among all kinds of Writing, there is none in which Authors are more apt to miscarry than in Works of Humour, as there is none in which they are more ambitious to excel.

The noblest search is the search for excellence.

Conviction never so excellent, is worthless until it coverts itself into conduct.

When hiring somebody, I never ask to see a curriculum vitae. I feel that since I didn’t have one myself, it would be a bit presumptuous to ask to see anyone else’s.

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.

Excellence is a continuous process and not an accident.

I feel that the best companies are started not because the founder wanted a company but because the founder wanted to change the world… If you decide you want to found a company, you maybe start to develop your first idea. And hire lots of workers.

Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.

I believe God wants you to have money to pay your bills, send your kids to college and do charity work and build orphanages. There’s the teaching that we’re supposed to be poor to show that we’re humble. I don’t buy that. I think we’re supposed to be leaders. We’re supposed to excel.

I always tell people that you should only hire people to be on your team if you would work for them.

You can’t hire someone to practice for you.

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

Those who attain any excellence, commonly spend life in one pursuit; for excellence is not often gained upon easier terms.

I don’t run restaurants that are out of control. We are about establishing phenomenal footholdings with talent.

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

Nothing is more noble, nothing more venerable than fidelity. Faithfulness and truth are the most sacred excellences and endowments of the human mind.

I had rather excel others in the knowledge of what is excellent, than in the extent of my power and dominion.

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

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.

At United, there are great traditions, which you can’t buy in one or two years. They are created by victories. You need to prove again and again that you are better than the others. Manchester United have always done this, and are still doing it, so they are the best.

I will only hire someone to work directly for me if I would work for that person. It’s a pretty good test.

I won’t accept anything less than the best a player’s capable of doing… and he has the right to expect the best that I can do for him and the team!

To recruit staff, I traveled all over the country talking with people who had been working on one or another aspect of the atomic-energy enterprise and people in radar work, for example, and underwater sound, telling them about the job, the place that we are going to, and enlisting their enthusiasm.

What is easy is seldom excellent.

To excel at the highest level – or any level, really – you need to believe in yourself, and hands down, one of the biggest contributors to my self-confidence has been private coaching.

The dispersal of juniper seeds is effected by the plum and cherry plan of hiring birds at the cost of their board, and thus obtaining the use of a pair of extra good wings.

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

Life’s like a play: it’s not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters.

All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.

Excellence encourages one about life generally; it shows the spiritual wealth of the world.