Measure a thousand times and cut once.
Turkish proverb

"Good is not good, where better is expected."
Thomas Fuller

"Never mind what others do; do better than yourself, beat your own record from day to day, and you are a success."
William J. H. Boetcker

"Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching."
Thomas Jefferson

"I have offended God and mankind because my work didn't reach the quality it should have."
Michelangelo

"Only the mediocre are always at their best."
Jean Giraudoux

"On course doesn't mean perfect. On course means that even when things don't go perfectly—you are still going in the right direction."
Charles Garfield

"Every day you miss playing or practicing is one day longer it takes to be good."
Ben Hogan, golfer

"The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak."
Hans Hoffman

"Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or doing it better."
John Updike

"A little inaccuracy sometimes saves a ton of explanation."
H. H. Munro (Saki)

"I don't want to get into anything that would only behalf-way. If we're going to commit to it, then we're going to commit to it all the way."
Al Unser, Jr., race car driver

"Accuracy of observation is the equivalent of accuracy of thinking."
Wallace Stevens

"If you do the best you can, you will find, nine times out of ten, that you have done as well as or better than anyone else."
William Feather

"It is necessary to try to surpass oneself always; this occupation ought to last as long as life."
Queen Christina of Sweden

"A man who has committed a mistake and doesn't correct it is committing another mistake."
Confucius

"If you aren't going all the way; why go at all?"
Joe Namath

"The world has the habit of making room for the man whose actions show that he knows where he is going."
Napoleon Hill

"The only man who behaved sensibly was my tailor; he took my measurements anew every time he saw me, while all the rest went on with their old measurements and expected them to fit me."
George Bernard Shaw

"Don't be afraid to give up the good to go for the great."
Kenny Rogers

"We aim above the mark to hit the mark."
Ralph Waldo Emerson

"It's never crowded along the extra mile."
Dr. Wayne Dyer

"Life is often compared to a marathon, but I think it is more like being a sprinter; long stretches of hard work punctuated by brief moments in which we are given the opportunity to perform at our best."
Michael Johnson, 200 and 400 meter world record holder

"The quality of an individual is reflected in the standards they set for themselves."
Ray Kroc

"The principle is competing against yourself. It's about self-improvement, about being better than you were the day before."
Steve Young, football player

"A problem is your chance to do your best."
Duke Ellington

"Achievement is largely the product of steadily raising one's level of aspiration."
Jack Nicklaus

"I've always tried to go a step past wherever other people expected me to end up."
Beverly Sills

"The difference between failure and success is doing a thing nearly right and doing a thing exactly right."
Edward Simmons

"There is a passion for perfection which you rarely see fully developed but . . . in successful lives it is never wholly lacking."
Bliss Carmen

"Skill and confidence are an unconquered army."
George Hebert

"Other people may not have had high expectations for me . . . but I had high expectations for myself."
Shannon Miller, Olympic gymnast

"He who stops being better stops being good."
Oliver Cromwell

"You go back to the gym and you just do it again and again until you get it right."
Arnold Schwarzenegger

"We have to do the best we can. This is our sacred human responsibility."
Albert Einstein, physicist

"Quality means doing it right when no one is looking."
Henry Ford

"If you would hit the mark, you must aim a little above it; every arrow that flies feels the attraction of earth."
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Striving for excellence motivates you; striving for perfection is demoralizing."
Harriet Braiker

"Any man can make mistakes, but only an idiot persists in his error."
Cicero

"Have no fear of perfection—you'll never reach it."
Salvador Dali

"Be true to the best you know. This is your high ideal. If you do your best, you cannot do more."
Jean Paul Richter, German novelist

"To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift."
Steve Prefontaine

"It takes less time to do a thing right, than it does to explain why you did it wrong."
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"There is only one real failure in life that is possible, and that is, not to be true to the best one knows."
John Farrar

"The noblest search is the search for excellence."
Lyndon B. Johnson

"The roots of true achievement lie in the will to become the best that you can become."
Harold Taylor

"Commit yourself to quality from day one . . . it's better to do nothing at all than to something badly."
Mark McCormack

"Accuracy of observation is the equivalent of accuracy of thinking."
Wallace Stevens

"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

"Excellence is in the details. Give attention to the details and excellence will come."
Perry Paxton

"My motto was to keep swinging. Whether I was in a slump or feeling badly or having trouble off the field, the only thing to do was to keep swinging."
Hank Aaron

"When I was young, I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. So I did ten times more work."
George Bernard Shaw

"If a man is called a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and Earth will pause to say, 'Here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well.'"
Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Mistakes are a fact of life. It is the response to error that counts."
Nikki Giovanni, poet

"Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance."
George Bernard Shaw

"Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody expects of you. Never excuse yourself."
Henry Ward Beecher

"The roots of true achievement lie in the will to become the best that you can become."
Harold Taylor

"Simplify the task. Continually look for faster, better, easier ways to get the job done."
Brian Tracy, speaker and author