What is excellence? Excellence can be described as distinction, quality, superiority, brilliance, greatness, calibre and eminence.

With the description, what does excellence actually mean to you and your life, family, ministry, business, vision, career, marriage, relationship and goals? We are in the 3rd month of 2013 and before we know it, we will be saying “happy New Year” and getting ready for 2014. So from today, the rest of 2013 and to be fair every day you are alive, will you be striving for excellence or struggling in mediocrity?

Below are some quotes on excellence which will challenge you to hit the target called distinction.

Do you know people of excellence stand up to be counted while the mediocre sit down and remain numbered? © O. Anyado 2013.

All labour that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence. © Martin Luther King, Jr.

Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected. © Steve Jobs.

But, I don’t want to assume that our tradition of excellence is a guarantee of future excellence. © Dave Heineman.

By appreciation, we make excellence in others our own property. © Voltaire.

Get excellence or live average.  © O. Anyado 2012.

Desire is the key to motivation, but it’s determination and commitment to an unrelenting pursuit of your goal,  a commitment to excellence that will enable you to attain the success you seek. © Mario Andretti.

Each honest calling, each walk of life, has its own elite, its own aristocracy based on excellence of performance. © James Bryant Conant.

Excellence always sells. © Earl Nightingale.

Excellence is a better teacher than mediocrity. The lessons of the ordinary are everywhere. Truly profound and original insights are to be found only in studying the exemplary. © Warren G. Bennis.

Excellence is a process that should occupy all our days. © Ted W. Engstrom.

Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do.

Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.  © Aristotle.

Excellence is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well. © John W. Gardner.

Excellence is the best deterrent to racism or sexism. © Oprah Winfrey.

Excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better. © Pat Riley.

Excellence is the unlimited ability to improve the quality of what you have to offer. © Rick Pitino.

Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way. © Booker T. Washington.

Excellence means when a man or woman asks of himself more than others do. © Jose Ortega y Gasset.

I believe the destiny of your generation – and your nation – is a rendezvous with excellence. © Lyndon B. Johnson.

I have always struggled to achieve excellence. One thing that cycling has taught me is that if you can achieve something without a struggle it’s not going to be satisfying. © Greg LeMond.

I think the challenges for me was to go into the studio with these incredible jazz players and come up to their level of excellence. That’s always a challenge. © Rita Coolidge.

I’ve spent my life pursing excellence as an artist, which is what I always wanted to do anyhow. © Claire Bloom.

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.

In today’s global economy, however, it is important to raise the bar of excellence even higher. Today’s students must be prepared to compete effectively on an international level. © Kenny Marchant.

Life’s like a play: it’s not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters. © Annaeus Seneca.

Mediocre men work at their best; men seeking excellence strive to do better. © Edwin Louis Cole.

My philosophy all my life has been the pursuit of excellence. © John Kluge.

Next to excellence is the appreciation of it. © William Makepeace Thackeray.

No student ever attains very eminent success by simply doing what is required of him: it is the amount and excellence of what is over and above the required that determines the greatness of ultimate distinction. © Charles Kendall Adams.

Do you know you don’t need the permission from the mediocre to be excellent? © O. Anyado 2012.

Perfection has to do with the end product, but excellence has to do with the process. © Jerry Moran.

Poetry is an art, and chief of the fine art; the easiest to dabble in, the hardest in which to reach true excellence. © Edmund C. Stedman.

Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort. © Paul J. Meyer.

For many, 2013 will be the year they will become a reference point of excellence and a blessing to their generation while others will be referred to as mediocre and remain a burden to their generation. What will you become? © O. Anyado 2013.