You know about bulletin board material. It’s something brash an athlete says that gets quoted in the media, gets posted in the other team’s locker room as extra motivation.
You know — like Joe Willie Namath guaranteeing a Jets’ victory over the Colts in Super Bowl III. Or Plaxico Burress predicting a Giants’ win over the unbeaten Patriots in this year’s Super Bowl.
OK, bad examples. Anyway, bulletin board material can be something we use to inspire ourselves to do better. We can find a world of wisdom in quotations about life and excellence from famous and successful people.
Quality is a critical attribute for people in service businesses. So in the spirit of bulletin board material, here are a few favorite quotations about quality — a few of which you might consider putting where you can see them every day.
“Associate yourself with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation. It is better to be alone than in bad company.”
- George Washington
“If standard of living is your major objective, quality of life almost never improves, but if quality of life is your number one objective, your standard of living almost always improves.”
- Zig Ziglar
“Just make up your mind at the very outset that your work is going to stand for quality — that you are going to stamp a superior quality upon everything that goes out of your hands; that whatever you do shall bear the hallmark of excellence.”
- Orison Swett Marden
“Watch your thoughts; they become your words. Watch your words; they become your actions. Watch your actions; they become your habits. Watch your habits; they become your character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.”
- Frank Outlaw
“It’s unwise to pay too much, but it’s worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money — that is all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything because the thing you bought was incapable of doing what it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot — it can’t be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run. And if you do that, you will have enough to pay for something better.”
- John Ruskin
“The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor.”
- Vince Lombardi
“A big, spectacular thing can frequently be accomplished quickly. Quality usually takes longer. Fanfare and fireworks are not part of quality; therefore, only those who know true values are attracted to it. But when fanfare and fireworks are over, quality will remain.”
- Alfred A. Montapert
“Quality in a product or service is not what the supplier puts in. It is what the customer gets out and is willing to pay for. A product is not quality because it is hard to make and costs a lot of money, as manufacturers typically believe. This is incompetence. Customers pay only for what is of use to them and gives them value. Nothing else constitutes quality.”
- Peter Drucker
“It is commonly said by farmers that a good pear or apple costs no more time or pains to rear than a poor one; so I would have no work of art, no speech, or action, or thought, or friend, but the best.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Quality, quality, quality: never waver from it, even when you don’t see how you can afford to keep it up. When you compromise, you become a commodity, and then you die.”
- Gary Hirshberg
“It is a funny thing about life: if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.”
- W. Somerset Maugham
“I consider a bad bottle of Heineken to be a personal insult to me.”
- Freddy Heineken
“Our chief want in life is having someone who will make us do what we can.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
“There’s only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.”
- Aldous Huxley
