A Quote by Eric Thomas

The only way to get out of mediocrity is to keep shooting for excellence. — © Eric Thomas
The only way to get out of mediocrity is to keep shooting for excellence.
Perfection, fortunately, is not the only alternative to mediocrity. A more sensible alternative is excellence. Striving for excellence is stimulating and rewarding; striving for perfection--in practically anything--is both neurotic and futile.
Once you decide that mediocrity is unthinkable, your only choices are excellence and quitting.
If you want excellence, you must aim at perfection. It makes you go into detail that you can avoid. It takes a lot of energy out of you but that's the only way you finally actually achieve excellence. So in that sense, being finicky is essential.
Excellence is THE trend of the '80s. Walk into any shopping mall bookstore, go to the rack where they keep the best-sellers such as Garfield Gets Spayed, and you'll see a half-dozen books telling you how to be excellent: In Search of Excellence, Finding Excellence, Grasping Hold of Excellence, Where to Hide Your Excellence at Night So the Cleaning Personnel Don't Steal It, etc.
It is never easy to demand the most from ourselves, from our lives, from our work. To encourage excellence is to go beyond the encouraged mediocrity of our society is to encourage excellence. But giving in to the fear of feeling and working to capacity is a luxury only the unintentional can afford, and the unintentional are those who do not wish to guide their own destinies.
The only way we can develop muscle is through regular exercise. As soon as we stop stretching and working toward higher ethics, our standards start to sag. The muscle gets soft, and instead of excellence we have to settle for mediocrity. Maybe something even worse.
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.
I was at a Madonna show many, many years ago and I was in the sweet spot and she came out and I mean it was the best part of the show. And I was shooting, shooting, shooting, shooting. And I'm like, "God, I must have shot a hundred pictures have I not run out of film?" And I opened the back of my camera and there was no film in there. So that happened to me only once.
One of Pixar's key mechanisms is the Braintrust, which we rely on to push us toward excellence and to root out mediocrity. It is our primary delivery system for straight talk.
Sometimes, directors are afraid to stop shooting, because the second you stop and say, "We got it," and move on, you'll never get another chance. And they're terrified to get in the cutting room and not be happy. So they just keep shooting.
Mediocrity always attacks excellence.
Mediocrity is excellence in the eyes of the mediocre.
Excellence is a better teacher than mediocrity.
The price of excellence is discipline. The cost of mediocrity is disappointment.
When you have had a taste of excellence, you cannot go back to mediocrity.
I think some people get just locked into 'this is the way it has to be,' and they're afraid of messing something up. I don't ever want to be that way with shooting or with anything, really - not just shooting.
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