Quotes about Excellence

It's Almost Impossible to Overinvest in Becoming the Market Leader.

We hire for perfect, we manage for perfect, we measure for perfect, and we reward for perfect. So why are we surprised that people spend their precious minutes of self-directed, focused work time trying to achieve perfect? The problem is simple: Art is never defect-free. Things that are remarkable never meet spec, because that would make them standardized, not worth talking about. Rough

Quitting is difficult. Quitting requires you to acknowledge that you're never going to be #1 in the world. At least not at this. So it's easier just to put it off, not admit it, settle for mediocre.

real success goes to those who obsess. The focus that leads you through the Dip to the other side is rewarded by a marketplace in search of the best in the world. A woodpecker can tap twenty times on a thousand trees and get nowhere, but stay busy. Or he can tap twenty-thousand times on one tree and get dinner.

When you're the best in the world, you share the benefits (the income, the attention, the privileges, the respect) with just a handful of people or organizations or brands.

The second reason there are such tremendous benefits to being number one is a little more subtle. Being at the top matters because there's room at the top for only a few.

Marketerii nu realizeaz? lucruri mediocre pentru oameni mediocri. Ei determin? schimb?ri, ?i asta prin normalizarea unor comportamente noi.

A Nine-Year-Old Kid Can Do Edgecraft While the edges always change, the process never does. Here's how you do it: Find a product or service that's completely unrelated to your industry. Figure out who's winning by being remarkable. Discover which edge they went to. Do that in your own industry.

Let us not be satisfied with a mediocre life.

Perfection is worth striving for, even if it is ultimately unattainable in this life.

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius.

My mind," he said, "rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation. That is why I have chosen my own particular profession, or rather created it, for I am the only one in the world.