Quotes on Standards
Opinionated quotations from the famous and not-so-famous.

Don't do anything you wouldn't be willing to explain on television.

Arjay Miller

Acceptance of prevailing standards often means we have no standards of our own.

Jean Toomer

Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well.

Chesterfield

Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.

Henry Ford

It is a funny thing about life: If you refuse to accept anything but the best you very often get it.

W. Somerset Maugham

Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody else expects of you.

Henry Ward Beecher

There's put-down humor, where a person or a group of people is the target of cruelty in the guise of a "joke." And then there's inclusive humor — the kind I practice and promote in my work. Inclusive humor means everyone is included in the laughter and it isn't at anyone else's expense.

Lynn Grasberg

Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.

Henry David Thoreau

You are only what you are when no one is looking.

Robert C. Edwards

The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he never would be found out.

Thomas B. Macaulay

Perfect Valor is to do, without a witness, all that we could do before the whole world.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

We are what we repeatedly do.

Aristotle

Never for the sake of peace and quiet deny your convictions.

Dag Hammarskjold

A ''No'' uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a ''Yes'' merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble.

Mahatma Gandhi

Ask yourself not if this or that is expedient, but if it is right.

Alan Paton

The superior man thinks always of virtue; the common man thinks of comfort.

Confucius

Men of genius are admired, men of wealth are envied, men of power are feared; but only men of character are trusted.

Unknown

I would rather be the man who bought the Brooklyn Bridge than the man who sold it.

Will Rogers

The bad deeds of others in the past do not excuse your bad deeds today.

Duane Alan Hahn

It is important that people know what you stand for. It's equally important that they know what you won't stand for.

Mary Waldrop

Character is much easier kept than recovered.

Thomas Paine

If the idiots hate you, it proves you're not one of them!

Ted Nugent

It's not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are.

Roy Disney

Be careful the environment you choose for it will shape you; be careful the friends you choose for you will become like them.

W. Clement Stone

The rotten apple spoils his companion.

Benjamin Franklin

He that cannot decidedly say, ''No,'' when tempted to evil, is on the highway to ruin. He loses the respect even of those who would tempt him, and becomes but the pliant tool and victim of their evil designs.

Joel Hawes

We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates.

Diderot

The time is always right to do what is right.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Right is right, even if everyone is against it; and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it.

William Penn

Virtue is its own reward. There's a pleasure in doing good which sufficiently pays itself.

Sir John Vanbrugh

Change the changeable, accept the unchangeable, and remove yourself from the unacceptable.

Denis Waitley

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, I tell them that absolutely the most important thing 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.

Anthony Robbins (adapted)

When you have a taste for exceptional people, you always end up meeting them everywhere.

Mac Orlan

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