"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." (Aristotle)
"With regard to excellence, it is not enough to know, but we must try to have and use it." (Aristotel, "Nochomachean Ethics", cca. 340 BC)
"It takes a long time to bring excellence to maturity." (Publilius Syrus, "Moral Sayings", cca. 1st century BC)
"The best way to come to grips with one’s own business knowledge is to look at the things the business has done well, and the things it apparently does poorly. […] Knowledge is a perishable commodity. It has to be reaffirmed, relearned, repracticed all the time. One has to work constantly at regaining one’s specific excellence. […] The right knowledge is the knowledge needed to exploit the market opportunities." (Peter F Drucker, "Managing for Results: Economic Tasks and Risk-taking Decisions", 1964)
"Because ease of use is the purpose, this ratio of function to conceptual complexity is the ultimate test of system design. Neither function alone nor simplicity alone defines a good design. [...] Function, and not simplicity, has always been the measure of excellence for its designers." (Fred P Brooks, "The Mythical Man-Month: Essays", 1975)
"The achievement of excellence can occur only if the organization promotes a culture of creative dissatisfaction." (Lawrence M Miller, "American Spirit", 1984)
"Managers jeopardize product quality by setting unreachable deadlines. They don’t think about their action in such terms; they think rather that what they’re doing is throwing down an interesting challenge to their workers, something to help them strive for excellence."
"When a team outgrows individual performance and learns team confidence, excellence becomes a reality." (Joe Paterno, American Heritage, 1988)
"Excellence is a better teacher than is mediocrity. The lessons of the ordinary are everywhere. Truly profound and original insights are to be found only in studying the exemplary." (Warren G Bennis, "Organizing Genius: The Secrets of Creative Collaboration", 1997)
"The desire for excellence is an essential feature for doing great work. Without such a goal you will tend to wander like a drunken sailor. The sailor takes one step in one direction and the next in some independent direction. As a result the steps tend to cancel each other, and the expected distance from the starting point is proportional to the square root of the number of steps taken. With a vision of excellence, and with the goal of doing significant work, there is tendency for the steps to go in the same direction and thus go a distance proportional to the number of steps taken, which in a lifetime is a large number indeed." (Richard Hamming, "The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn", 1997)
"If a team cannot perform with excellence at a moment's notice, they probably will fail in the long run."
"In the pursuit of excellence, there is no finish line." (Robert H Farman)
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