"Perfection is not attainable. But if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence." –Vince Lombardi
"It needs to be about: Do you want to be the best you can be? Are you driven to be the best player you can be? Are you driven to have the intensity, the sense of urgency, the intelligence. Are you going to work to do the things you need to do to be your absolute best? And that's not normal. Everybody thinks it's normal, but it's not normal." –Nick Saban
“People are most inspired when they feel they are working for an organization in which excellence is expected.” –Brian Tracy
“A real winning attitude is about standards of excellence — which are variable from year to year, from team to team. Being the best you can be — and doing the best you can — are the constants.” –Mike Krzyzewski
“Sometimes being innovative simply means doing something very common in a more efficient or productive way.” -Bill Walsh
“My hunger is not for success, it is for excellence. When you attain excellence, success just naturally follows.” –Mike Krzyzewski
"Each play has a history and a life of its own. How is that play going to be remembered? If you're focusing on that play and what you have to do that single play, usually you'll do pretty good on it." –Nick Saban
“It is great to seek excellence. Aspire to excel in your chosen work. Adopt the creed of the maker of the immortal Stradivarius violins: 'Perfection consists not in doing extraordinary things but in doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.'” –Wilfred Peterson
“Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but rather we have those [qualities] because we’ve acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an art but a habit.” -Aristotle
"If you don’t seek perfection, you can never reach excellence." –Don Shula
“As a leader, your job is to be excellent at what you do, to be the best in your chosen field of endeavor. Your job is to have a vision of high standards in serving people. You not only exemplify excellence in your own behavior, but you also translate it to others so that they, too, become committed to this vision.” –Brian Tracy
“The best do ordinary things better than everyone else.” –Chuck Noll
"Make your personal standard of performance -- your behavior in all areas -- so exemplary that those under your supervision will find it hard to match, harder to surpass. Be hardest on yourself -- the model for what you want your team to become. Don't look for others to be your quality control expert. Be your own harshest critic." -John Wooden
“If a team cannot perform with excellence at a moment’s notice, they probably will fail in the long run.” –Mike Krzyzewski
"Excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better." -Pat Riley
"Be committed to excellence. You must be willing to work extremely hard and make whatever reasonable sacrifices are necessary to achieve the organizational goals that have been established for the team. At all times, the focus must be on doing things properly. In reality, the talent level of most NFL teams is relatively even. As such, one of the critical keys to success is execution. Players making plays is what wins football games. More often than not, the primary catalyst for the occurrence of such plays is an unwavering commitment to excellence." –Bill Walsh
“Intensity is the desire to strive for excellence. Athletes with intensity know what they want to accomplish. They show up every day with a strong work ethic.” –Joe Gibb
“I think a lot of people spend their life being average or good at something, but they don’t strive to be great.” –Jon Gordon
"I tried to explain to my players it's impossible to be perfect, but we can try hard every day to be as close as we can." -Geno Auriemma
"Great leaders are never satisfied with current levels of performance. They are restlessly driven by possibilities and potential achievements." -Donna Harrison
"If you are going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little matters. Excellence is not an exception, it is a prevailing attitude." -Colin Powell
"Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way." -Booker T. Washington
"No man ever reached to excellence in any one art or profession without having passed through the slow and painful process of study and preparation." -Horace
“Achieving excellence is about surpassing expectations—our own and those that others have for us—and reaching for new heights.” –Joe Montana
"It's not human nature to be great. It's human nature to survive, to be average and do what you have to do to get by. That is normal. When you have something good happen, it's the special people that can stay focused and keep paying attention to detail, working to get better and not being satisfied with what they have accomplished." –Nick Saban
"You have to have a special commitment and willingness to do a lot of things that some aren't willing to do.” –Nick Saban
"If you are called to be a street sweeper, sweep streets even as Michaelangelo painted or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.'" –Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
