#Standards Quotes

“One woman is fair, yet I am well; another is wise, yet I am well; another virtuous, yet I am well; but till all graces be in one woman, one woman shall not come in my grace.”

“Again, the great number of cultivated men keep each other up to a high standard. The habit of meeting well-read and knowing men teaches the art of omission and selection.”

“I am easily satisfied with the very best.”

“What is adequacy? Adequacy is no standard at all.”

“Till all grace be in one woman, one woman shall not come in my grace.”

“Sometimes our best is simply not enough.... We have to do what is required.”

“For changes to be of any true value, they've got to be lasting and consistent. Any time you sincerely want to make a change, the first thing you must do is to raise your standards... If you don't set a baseline standard for what you'll accept in life, you'll find it's easy to slip into behaviors and attitudes or a quality of life that's far below what you deserve... Whatever happens, take responsibility... The only thing that's keeping you from getting what you want is the story you keep telling yourself.”

“Your income right now is a result of your standards, it is not the industry, it is not the economy.”

“Who you spend time with is who you become! Change your life by consciously choosing to surround yourself with people with higher standards!”

“I certainly do believe anyone engaged in the management of money should have a standard of measurement, and that both he and the party whose money is managed should have a clear understanding why it is the appropriate standard, what time period should be utilized, etc.”

“If you raise your standards but don't really believe you can meet them, you've already sabotaged yourself. You won't even try; you'll be lacking the sense of certainty that allows you to tap the deepest capacity that's within you... Our beliefs are like unquestioned commands, telling us how things are, what's possible and impossible and what we can and can not do. They shape every action, every thought and every feeling that we experience. As a result, changing our belief systems is central to making any real and lasting change in our lives.”

“Whatever you really want, wants don't get met consistently, standards do.”

“If you don't set a baseline standard for what you'll accept in life, you'll find it's easy to slip into behaviours and attitudes or a quality of life that's far below what you deserve.”

“Any time you sincerely want to make a change, the first thing you must do is to raise your standards.”

“If you want to change your life you have to raise your standards.”

“Your life experience will never far exceed the expectations of your peers, because to stay connected to them there is an unconscious contract that says we're going to be within this range of each other. Now, on the other hand, if for some reason your friends have a higher expectation for life than you do, just to stay on the team you've got to raise your standard.”

“Set high standards for yourself and don't settle for anything less. You are the best judge of yourself and your capabilities.”

“The difference between MUST & SHOULD is the life you want and the life you have.”

“Always fight for quality, whether giving or receiving.”

“When I started on Disneyland, my wife used to say, "But why do you want to build an amusement park? They're so dirty." I told her that was just the point - mine wouldn't be.”

“Stop bullshitting yourself. You're not satisfied. You lowered your standards and are settling for a lot less.”

“Raise your standards for the one thing over which you have complete control--yourse lf. It means you're committed to being intelligent, flexible, and creative enough to consistently find a way to look at your life in a fashion that makes any experience enriching.”

“Any time you sincerely want to make a change, the first thing you must do is to raise your standards. When people ask me what really changed my life eight years ago, I tell them that absolutely the most important thin was changing what I demanded of myself. I wrote down all the things I would no longer accept in my life, all the things I would no longer tolerate, and all the things that I aspired to becoming.”

“Just make sure you never do less than your best”

“I don't want to please everybody. I'd get a little worried if I did something and everybody was pleased with it.”

“I have watched constantly that in our work the highest moral and spiritual standards are upheld, whether my productions deal with fable or with stories of living action.”

“As long as our people quote English standards they dwarf their own proportions.”

“People always try to be perfect. That's why they don't start anything. Perfection is the lowest standard in the world. Because if you're trying to be perfect, you know you can't be. So what you really have is a standard you can never achieve. You want to be outstanding, not perfect.”

“I wrote down all the things I would no longer accept in my life, all the things I would no longer tolerate, and all the things that I aspired to becoming.”

“The big problem in the long process of dumbing down the schools is that you can reach a point of no return. How are parents who never received a decent education themselves to recognize that their children are not getting a decent education?”

“It is amazing how many people think they are doing blacks a favor by exempting them from standards that others are expected to meet.”

“The stream will not permanently rise higher than the main source; and the main source of national power and national greatness is found in the average citizenship of the nation. Therefore it behooves us to do our best to see that the standard of the average citizen is kept high; and the average cannot be kept high unless the standard of the leaders is very much higher.”

“Any policy is a success by sufficiently low standards and a failure by sufficiently high standards.”

“The stricter standards and independent, often conclusive, evidence in the physical sciences cannot be generalized to intellectual activity as a whole, even though the aura of scientific processes and results is often appropriated by other intellectuals.”

“Whenever people talk glibly of a need to achieve educational "excellence," I think of what an improvement it would be if our public schools could just achieve mediocrity.”

“Let none presume to measure the irregularities of Michael Angelo or Socrates by village scales.”

“Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched?”

“Bad artists always admire each other's work. They call it being large-minded and free from prejudice. But a truly great artist cannot conceive of life being shown, or beauty fashioned, under any conditions other than those he has selected.”

“We don't settle for anything less than excellence.”

“Nature wishes that woman should attract man, yet she often cunningly moulds into her face a little sarcasm, which seems to say, 'Yes, I am willing to attract, but to attract a little better kind of a man than any I yet behold”

“Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected.”

“There is nothing more frustrating than a good example.”

“Every first-rate editor I have ever heard of reads, edits and rewrites every word that goes into his publication.... Good editors are not 'permissive'; they do not let their colleagues do 'their thing'; they make sure that everybody does the 'paper's thing.' A good, let alone a great editor is an obsessive autocrat with a whim of iron, who rewrites and rewrites, cuts and slashes, until every piece is exactly the way he thinks it should have been done.”

“I have a simple taste, only the best.”

“I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.”

“I don't yell at people, I don't mistreat people. I don't talk down to people, so no one else in this building, in this vicinity, has the right to do it.”

“Adequacy is the enemy of excellence.”

“Art finds her own perfection within, and not outside of, herself. She is not to be judged by any external standard of resemblance.”

“I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue china.”

“No one can tell me what is a good cigar--for me. I am the only judge... There are no standards--no real standards. Each man's preference is the only standard for him, the only one which he can accept, the only one which can command him.”