QUALITY & EXCELLENCE
Quotes
1
If you don’t do it excellently, don’t do it at all. Because if it’s not excellent, it won’t be profitable or fun, and if you’re not in business for fun or profit, what the hell are you doing there?
— Robert Townsend
2
What the crowd requires is mediocrity of the highest order.
— Antoine-Auguste Préault
3
When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty . . . but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.
— R. Buckminster Fuller
4
As there is but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous, so also there is but one from the ridiculous to the sublime.
— Samuel Butler
5
Give me the luxuries of life and I will willingly do without the necessities.
— Frank Lloyd Wright
6
It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.
— Mark Twain
7
Only mediocrity can be trusted to be always at its best.
— Max Beerbohm
8
Every man is entitled to be valued by his best moment.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
9
There is no perfectly Epicurean corner; there is no perfectly irresponsible place. Everywhere men have made the way for us with sweat and submission. We may fling ourselves into a hammock in a fit of divine carelessness. But we are glad that the netmaker did not make the hammock in a fit of divine carelessness.
— G. K. Chesterton
10
Good is not good, where better is expected.
— Thomas Fuller
11
If I cannot overwhelm with my quality, I will overwhelm with my quantity.
— Emile Zola
12
There is hardly anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper.
— John Ruskin
13
It is a funny thing about life: if you refuse to accept anything but the best you very often get it.
— W. Somerset Maugham
14
It isn’t evil that’s running the earth, but mediocrity. The crime is not that Nero played while Rome burned, but that he played badly.
— Ned Rorem
15
The secret of joy in work is contained in one word-- excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.
— Pearl Buck
16
All I want is the best of everything, and there’s very little of that left.
— Lucius Beebe
17
The true test of civilization is not the census, not size of cities, but the kind of man that the country turns out.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
18
Not much meat on her, but what’s there is choice.
— Spencer Tracy, about Katharine Hepburn
19
A perfectionist is a man who takes infinite pains and gives them to others.
— Alan Benner
20
First-rate people hire first-rate people; second-rate people hire third-rate people.
— Leo Rosten
21
The road to business success is paved by those who continually strive to produce better products or services. It does not have to be a great technological product like television. Ray Kroc of McDonald’s fame did it with a simple hamburger.
— G. Kingsley Ward
22
Quality is not an act. It is a habit.
— Aristotle
23
My parents always told me that people will never know how long it takes you to do something. They will only know how well it is done.
— Nancy Hanks
24
QSCV (Quality, Service, Cleanliness, and Value).
— Standard imposed by Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald’s fast-food chain
Sayings
1
If it isn’t perfect, make it better.
— Japanese manufacturing slogan
2
The bitterness of poor quality persists long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten.
3
To err is human; to try to prevent recurrence of error is science.
Jokes
1
Sign in a New York restaurant window: “Courteous and efficient self-service.”
2
“What a superb performance,” gushed the woman when the recital was over. “I’d give half my life to be able to play the piano like that.”
“Madam,” responded the pianist with a little bow, “that is exactly what it took.”
3
The television factory boosted quality control with a little sign above each work station. It read: “Careful — this may be the one you get.”
4
A women went to dinner one morning and ordered breakfast. “I want two eggs over easy,” she instructed, “one of them runny as water and the other cooked hard enough to bounce. I want the toast burned black, the coffee cold, and the butter too hard to cut.”
“We can’t do that, ma’am,” protested the waitress.
“Sure you can,” said the customer. “You did yesterday.”
5
Customer: “Gee, if these machines are sold way under cost like you say they are, how do you make a living?” Salesman: “Simple. We make our money fixing them.”