Tom Peters Quotes

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

It's about being the very best you can be. Nothing else matters as long as you're working and striving to be your best. Always compete. It's truly that simple. Find the way to do your best. Compete in everything you do.

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

The good is the enemy of the best.

Set the bar high - do the best you possibly can.

I can't stand satisfaction. To me, greatness comes from that quest for perfection.

Excellence - Take what you have and do the BEST with it.

You’ll never achieve 100 percent if 99 percent is okay.

I always want to be the best at what I do. As a kid, whatever I was doing, if I was playing football or whatever I was applying my energy to at the time, I always wanted to do it to the best of my abilities. And I was always interested in finding out how I could do it better.

To encourage excellence is to go beyond the encouraged mediocrity of our society

If you want to be successful, don't seek success - seek competence, empowerment; do nothing short of the best that you can do.

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

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.

There is no such thing as good enough. You, your team, and your equipment must be the best. That is how you will win victories.

I'm training all the time. My goal is perfection. But I will never reach perfection.

In everything you do aim to excel for what is worth doing is worth doing well

The pursuit of excellence is a continuous process through life. Enjoy the pursuit.

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.

One of the great undiscovered joys of life comes from doing everything one attempts to the best of one's ability. The smallest task, well done, becomes a miracle of achievement.

Strive for perfection, but settle for excellence.

The race for excellence has no finish line.

Strive for perfection - never be content with mediocrity. You don't win until you conquer the little flaws. You don't beat these great ones until your form is perfect. This is true in all of life. A flaw in a product can ruin a business. A personal failing, a little one, can ruin a person's life. Don't be content with mediocrity - strive to live up to the greatest within you.

Never be satisfied with less than your very best effort. If you strive for the top and miss, you'll still 'beat the pack.'

Always give your best and try to figure out how to do an even better job.

Aspiration lifts the life; groveling lowers it. When we are striving for excellence in everything we do the entire life grows and expands, but if we allow our standards to drop, there is a natural progression that follows, a tendency for a downward effort in all that we do thereafter.