Three excellent quotes on excellence:
- “Some people have greatness thrust upon them. Very few have excellence thrust upon them.”
- “Excellence is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.”
- “We must learn to honor excellence in every socially-acceptable human activity—and to scorn shoddiness, however exalted the activity. An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher. The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity—and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity—will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.”
~ John Gardner