Raising the Bar Quotes

The good is the enemy of the best.

People rise and fall to meet your level of expectations for them. If you express skepticism and doubt in others, they will return your lack of confidence with mediocrity. But if you believe in them and expect them to do well, they will go the extra mile trying to do their best.

Good is not good, where better is expected

Don't settle for mediocrity; never let good enough be good enough.

Good enough never is. Set your standards so high that even the flaws are considered excellent.

Believe in better is one of the most powerful words you can use in the business community.

I just set the bar, niggas fall under it like a limbo

Don't ever let good enough be good enough.

Never be comfortable.... .with just good enough.

There is no such thing as perfection, there are only standards. And after you have set a standard you learn that it was not high enough. You want to surpass it.

I'm not the perfectionist anymore. It's my staff. They're the ones always insisting on doing something better and better.

I think we always have to put forth music that's better than the last.

I'm not satisfied with doing well or doing good.

We only rise above mediocrity when there's something at stake. p. 174

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.

We're not going to dumb down for them. They have to move up. They're the network and we're the show.

I went to Washington to challenge the soft bigotry of low expectations

A while back, I came across a line attributed to IBM founder Thomas Watson. If you want to achieve excellence, he said, you can get there today. As of this second, quit doing less-than-excellent work.

Next year we have to be even better. If we want to be a big club this has to be one of many.

It's very easy to be different, but very difficult to be better.

The way you get a better world is, you don't put up with substandard anything.

I'm not looking to set a standard... but, I believe I have offered a challenge to others with my work.

Excellence isn't about meeting the spec, it's about setting the spec.

Show people how to have success and then you can push their expectations up.

You have to give 110% all the time. 100% isn't good enough anymore.