Quotes about quality
page 4

“I was thought to be 'stuck up.' I wasn't. I was just sure of myself. This is and always has been an unforgivable quality to the unsure.”

Bette Davis (1908–1989) film and television actress from the United States

“Sarcasm and compassion are two of the qualities that make life on Earth tolerable.”

Nick Hornby book Songbook

Source: Songbook

Life

“Show me a man who lives alone and has a perpetually clean kitchen, and eight times out of nine I'll show you a man with detestable spiritual qualities.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Tales of ordinary madness (1967-83)

Time

“She lived frugally, but her meals were the only things on which she deliberately spent her money. She never compromised on the quality of her groceries, and drank only good-quality wines.”

Haruki Murakami book 1Q84

Source: 1Q84

Money, Wine

“What a quality of innocence people have when they don't expect to be harmed.”

Hanif Kureishi (1954) English playwright, screenwriter, novelist

Source: Intimacy: das Buch zum Film von Patrice Chéreau

People

“Youth is not an age thing. It's a quality. Once you've had it, you never lose it.”

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American architect (1867-1959)

Youth, Age

“Okay," Claire finally said. "I admit, he has significant ninja qualities."
"Booyah. I will summon the ninja. Oh, and take a lunch break while we burgle."
"You’re going too?"
"Am I not ninja enough? Are you saying that I lack ninja?”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Bite Club

“Despite a lack of natural ability, I did have the one element necessary to all early creativity: naïveté, that fabulous quality that keeps you from knowing just how unsuited you are for what you are about to do.”

Steve Martin (1945) American actor, comedian, musician, author, playwright, and producer

Source: Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life

Nature

“I have infinite capacity to do more work as long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero.”

Scott Adams (1957) cartoonist, writer

“There is almost a sensual longing for communion with others who have a large vision. The immense fulfillment of the friendship between those engaged in furthering the evolution of consciousness has a quality impossible to describe.”

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin (1881–1955) French philosopher and Jesuit priest

Friendship

“One can no more approach people without love than one can approach bees without care. Such is the quality of bees…”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Love, People, Bee

“Love is needing someone. Love is putting up with someone's bad qualities because they somehow complete you.”

Sarah Dessen book This Lullaby

Source: This Lullaby

Love

“He recognized with authentic realism that anyone who permits another to determine the quality of his inner life gives into the hands of the other the keys to his destiny.”

Howard Thurman book Jesus and the Disinherited

Source: Jesus and the Disinherited

Life

“A leader is one who, out of madness or goodness, volunteers to take upon himself the woe of the people. There are few men so foolish, hence the erratic quality of leadership in the world.”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic

"They Thought They Were Better" in TIME magazine (21 July 1980) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,924295,00.html

Men, People, World, Madness

“Cleverness is a quality a man likes to have in his wife as long as she is some distance away from him. Up close, he'll take kindness any day of the week, if there's nothing more alluring to be had.”

Margaret Atwood book The Penelopiad

Source: The Penelopiad

“You can listen to silence, Reuven. I've begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and dimension all its own.”

Chaim Potok book The Chosen

Danny Saunders to Reuven Malter
Source: The Chosen (1967)

Silence, Learning

“The elegance is as physical, as moral quality that has nothing common with the clothing. You can see a countrywoman more elegant than one so called elegant woman.”

Karl Lagerfeld (1933–2019) German fashion designer

Clothes

“This world demands the qualities of youth; not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the life of ease.”

Robert F. Kennedy (1925–1968) American politician and brother of John F. Kennedy

Life, Youth, World, Imagination

“Whether you be man or woman you will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.”

James Allen (1864–1912) British philosophical writer

World, Courage

“Wasn't it? Is loyalty still a commendable quality when it is misdirected?”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

Loyalty

“A sense of humour is the only divine quality of man”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

Sense, For Men

“The truest art I would strive for in any work would be to give the page the same qualities as earth: weather would land on it harshly; light would elucidate the most difficult truths; wind would sweep away obtuse padding.”

Gretel Ehrlich (1946) American writer

Source: The Solace of Open Spaces

Truth, Art, Light, Weather

“The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership. What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the singlehanded defiance of the world.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Source: The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

World, Idea

“Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.”

Henry Ford (1863–1947) American industrialist

Business

“The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Nature

“The Fremen were supreme in that quality the ancients called "spannungsbogen" -- which is the self-imposed delay between desire for a thing and the act of reaching out to grasp that thing.”

Frank Herbert book Dune

Source: Dune

“A life isn't measured in hours and minutes. It's the quality, not the length.”

Gabrielle Zevin book Elsewhere

Source: Elsewhere

Life

“There is in certain living souls a quality of loneliness unspeakable, so great it must be shared as company is shared by lesser beings. Such a loneliness is mine; so know by this that in immensity there is one lonelier than you.”

Theodore Sturgeon book E Pluribus Unicorn

Source: E Pluribus Unicorn

Soul, Loneliness

“The greatest art is to shape the quality of the day.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Art

“It is far more impressive when others discover your good qualities without your help.”

Judith Martin (1938) American etiquette expert

Help

“I avoid that bleak first hour of the working day during which my still sluggish senses and body make every chore a penance. I find that in arriving later, the work which I do perform is of a much higher quality.”

John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces

Source: A Confederacy of Dunces

Sense

“Jealousy isn't a pleasant quality, but if it isn't overdone (and if it's combined with modesty), apart from its inconvenience there's even something touching about it.”

Milan Kundera book Laughable Loves

Source: Laughable Loves

Jealousy

“The real cycle you're working on is a cycle called yourself. The machine that appears to be "out there" and the person that appears to be "in here" are not two separate things. They grow toward Quality or fall away from Quality together.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 26
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

Appearance, Personality

“I was half asleep but I smiled. In spite of all his irritating qualities, I couldn't help liking a man who despised a fictional character with such passion.”

David Benioff book City of Thieves

Source: City of Thieves

Smile, Passion, Help

“The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we live, and upon the changes which we hope to bring about through those lives. It is within this light that we form those ideas by which we pursue our magic and make it realized. This is poetry as illumination, for it is through poetry that we give name to those ideas which are, until the poem, nameless and formless-about to be birthed, but already felt. That distillation of experience from which true poetry springs births thought as dream births concept, as feeling births idea, as knowledge births (precedes) understanding.”

Audre Lorde (1934–1992) writer and activist

"Poetry is Not a Luxury"
Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)

Dreams, Hope, Feeling, Spring

“There is no difference in quality between a life lived forward and a life lived backwards, she thinks. She had come to love this backward life. It was, after all, the only life she had.”

Gabrielle Zevin book Elsewhere

Source: Elsewhere

Love, Life, Thinking

“Flaming enthusiasm, backed up by horse sense and persistence, is the quality that most frequently makes for success.”

Dale Carnegie (1888–1955) American writer and lecturer

As quoted in A Joke, a Quote, & the Word : Feed Your Body, Soul and Spirit (2006) by Ronald P. Keeven, p. 147

Sense, Success, Horse

“… quality of life lies in knowledge, in culture. Values are what constitute true quality of life, the supreme quality of life, even above food, shelter and clothing.”

Fidel Castro (1926–2016) former First Secretary of the Communist Party and President of Cuba

Source: My Life: A Spoken Autobiography

Life, Food, Knowledge, Clothes

“Giants are not what we think they are. The same qualities that appear to give them strength are often the sources of great weakness.”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

Source: David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

Thinking, Appearance

“I believe empathy is the most essential quality of civilization.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

First published in the "Roger Ebert's Journal" column (19 May 2010) http://www.rogerebert.com/rogers-journal/cannes-7-a-campaign-for-real-movies

“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations

Life, Happiness, Nature, Dependency

“Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty.”

David Hume book Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary

Part I, Essay 23: Of The Standard of Taste
Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary (1741-2; 1748)
Source: Of the Standard of Taste and Other Essays
Context: Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty. One person may even perceive deformity, where another is sensible of beauty; and every individual ought to acquiesce in his own sentiment, without pretending to regulate those of others.

Beauty, Beauty

“Remember: The best deceivers do everything they can to cloak their roguish qualities. They cultivate an air of honesty in one area to disguise their dishonesty in others. Honesty is merely another decoy in their arsenal of weapons.”

Robert Greene book The 48 Laws of Power

Source: The 48 Laws of Power

“The quality of owning freezes you forever in "I," and cuts you off forever from the "we.”

John Steinbeck book The Grapes of Wrath

Source: The Grapes of Wrath

“Well sure, who doesn't need a boyfriend? but realistically, those exotic creatures are hard to come by. At least a quality one.”

Rachel Cohn (1968) American writer

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“I think that the most necessary quality for any person to have is imagination. It makes people able to put themselves in other people's places. It makes them kind and sympathetic and understanding.”

Jean Webster book Daddy-Long-Legs

Source: Daddy-Long-Legs

People, Imagination, Understanding, Thinking

“The first symptom of true love in a man is timidity, in a young woman, boldness. This is surprising, and yet nothing is more simple. It is the two sexes tending to approach each other and assuming each the other's qualities.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Love, Sex

“There's a special quality to the loneliness of dusk, a melancholy more brooding even than the night's.”

Ed Gorman (1941–2016) American writer

Source: Everybody's Somebody's Fool

Loneliness, Night

“Besides love and sympathy, animals exhibit other qualities connected with the social instincts which in us would be called moral.”

Charles Darwin book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

volume I, chapter III: "Comparison of the Mental Powers of Man and the Lower Animals — continued", pages 100-101 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=113&itemID=F937.1&viewtype=image The Descent of Man (1871) Context: As man advances in civilisation, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all the members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races. If, indeed, such men are separated from him by great differences in appearance or habits, experience unfortunately shews us how long it is before we look at them as our fellow-creatures. Sympathy beyond the confines of man, that is humanity to the lower animals, seems to be one of the latest moral acquisitions. It is apparently unfelt by savages, except towards their pets. How little the old Romans knew of it is shewn by their abhorrent gladiatorial exhibitions. The very idea of humanity, as far as I could observe, was new to most of the Gauchos of the Pampas. This virtue, one of the noblest with which man is endowed, seems to arise incidentally from our sympathies becoming more tender and more widely diffused, until they are extended to all sentient beings. As soon as this virtue is honoured and practised by some few men, it spreads through instruction and example to the young, and eventually through public opinion.

Love, Animals

“Nothing has an unlikely quality. It is heavy.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles

“True courage, in the face of almost certain death, is the rarest quality on earth.”

Christopher Pike (1954) American author Kevin Christopher McFadden

Source: Black Blood

Death, Courage

“There were certain qualities you possessed carelessly. And you couldn't retrieve them when they were gone. The very act of caring made them impossible to regain.”

Ann Brashares book Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood

Source: Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood

“It is amazing the quality of human beings that are in this world if we can just get past people not dressing the way we want them to dress.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

People, World, Way, Past

“Critical and radical thought will only bear fruit when it is blended with the most precious quality man is endowed with - the love of life”

Erich Fromm (1900–1980) German social psychologist and psychoanalyst

Source: The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness

Love, Life

“We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities… still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.”

Charles Darwin book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

volume II, chapter XXI: "General Summary and Conclusion", page 405 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=422&itemID=F937.2&viewtype=image (Closing paragraph of the book.) The Descent of Man (1871) Context: Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale; and the fact of his having thus risen, instead of having been aboriginally placed there, may give him hopes for a still higher destiny in the distant future. But we are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with the truth as far as our reason allows us to discover it. I have given the evidence to the best of my ability; and we must acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system — with all these exalted powers — Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.

“The grandiose person is never really free; first because he is excessively dependent on admiration from others, and second, because his self-respect is dependent on qualities, functions, and achievements that can suddenly fail.”

Alice Miller (1923–2010) Swiss psychologist

Source: The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self

Dependency, Personality

“The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are intelligence and necessity when unblunted by formal education.”

Maya Angelou book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Source: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Education, Intelligence

“Of all the virtues we can learn no trait is more useful, more essential for survival, and more likely to improve the quality of life than the ability to transform adversity into an enjoyable challenge.”

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1934) Hungarian American psychologist

Source: Flow: The Psychology of Happiness

Life, Learning

“Entertainment is a sacred pursuit when done well. When done well, it raises the quality of human life.”

Michael Chabon (1963) Novelist, short story writer, essayist

Life

“I find there is a quality to being alone that is incredibly precious. Life rushes back into the void, richer, more vivid, fuller than before.”

Anne Morrow Lindbergh book Gift from the Sea

Source: Gift from the Sea

Life

“Quantity produces quality. If you only write a few things, you're doomed.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

“Audrey had an angelic quality about her. She didn't act like she was better than everyone, she just had a presence, an energy, a sort of light coming from within her that was overwhelming.”

Kevyn Aucoin (1962–2002) American make-up artist and photographer

Angels, Light

“If one should desire to know whether a kingdom is well governed, if its morals are good or bad, the quality of its music will furnish the answer.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Music

“I like that Zarek. He quality people! He even gave me a can opener so I don’t have to use my fangs. I like that. Metal is hard on the teeth. Pork and beans popsicle. Yummy! My favorite! (Simi)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon book Dance with the Devil

Source: Dance with the Devil

People

“What's the trick to remembering that a sandwich is masculine? What qualities does it share with anyone in possession of a penis? I'll tell myself that a sandwich is masculine because if left alone for a week or two, it will eventually grow a beard.”

David Sedaris book Me Talk Pretty One Day

Source: Me Talk Pretty One Day

“Commit yourself to constant improvement. Commit yourself to quality. Be persistent, persistent, persistent… and have a grateful heart!”

H. Jackson Brown, Jr. (1940) American writer

Heart

“I'll let you and Zia have some quality time," she told me. "Just the two of you and your coat.”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

Time

“the first quality of an honest man is contempt for religion, which would have us afraid of the most natural thing in the world, which is death; and would have us hate the one beautiful thing destiny has given us, which is life.”

Umberto Eco book The Island of the Day Before

Source: The Island of the Day Before

Life, Death, Hate, World

“You should never hate anyone, even your worst enemies. Everyone has something good about them. You have to find the redeeming quality and love the person for that.”

Jeannette Walls book The Glass Castle

Source: The Glass Castle

Love, Hate, Personality

“Look beneath the surface; let not the several quality of a thing nor its worth escape thee.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

VI, 3
Source: Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VI

“Mooner was walking around laying his hands on the cars, divining karma. "this is it", he said, standing by a small khaki-colored jeep."this car has protective qualities"
You mean like a guardian angel?"
I mean, like, it has seatbelts”

Janet Evanovich book Hot Six

Source: Hot Six

Angels, Cars, Color

“If you want a quality, act as if you already have it. If you want to be courageous, act as if you were - and as you act and persevere in acting, so you tend to become.”

Norman Vincent Peale (1898–1993) American writer

Courage, Perseverance

“And there, in that phrase, the bitterness leaks again out of my pen. What a dull lifeless quality this bitterness is. If I could I would write with love, but if I could write with love I would be another man; I would never have lost love.”

Graham Greene book The End of the Affair

Source: The End of the Affair

Love

“Protest that endures, I think, is moved by a hope far more modest than that of public success: namely, the hope of preserving qualities in one's own heart and spirit that would be destroyed by acquiescence.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

"A Poem of Difficult Hope".
Source: What Are People For? (1990)
Context: Much protest is naive; it expects quick, visible improvement and despairs and gives up when such improvement does not come. Protesters who hold out for longer have perhaps understood that success is not the proper goal. If protest depended on success, there would be little protest of any durability or significance. History simply affords too little evidence that anyone's individual protest is of any use. Protest that endures, I think, is moved by a hope far more modest than that of public success: namely, the hope of preserving qualities in one's own heart and spirit that would be destroyed by acquiescence.

Hope, Thinking, Success, Heart

“5. You feel he has a lot of admirable qualities.”

Bisco Hatori (1975) Japanese manga artist

Source: Ouran High School Host Club, Vol. 13

Feeling

“He certainly seemed to have all the qualities of a gentleman, but the interesting kind who knows exactly when to stop behaving like one.”

Michael Dibdin Medusa

Source: Medusa

“If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all. And so today I still have a dream.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Dreams, Hope, Courage, Help

“Beauty is that quality which, next to money, is generally the most attractive to the worst kinds of men;”

Anne Brontë book The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. XVI : The Warning of Experience; Mrs. Maxwell to Helen
Context: Beauty is that quality which, next to money, is generally the most attractive to the worst kinds of men; and, therefore, it is likely to entail a great deal of trouble on the possessor.

Men, Money, Beauty

“The most attractive quality of all is dignity.”

Sherry Argov (1977) American writer

Source: Why Men Love Bitches: From Doormat to Dreamgirl—A Woman's Guide to Holding Her Own in a Relationship

“It's about the quality of the worry," I said. "I have happier worries now than I used to.”

David Gilmour (1946) guitarist, singer, best known as a member of Pink Floyd

Source: The Film Club: A True Story of a Father and Son

“The confidence that individuals have in their beliefs depends mostly on the quality of the story they can tell about what they see, even if they see little.”

Daniel Kahneman book Thinking, Fast and Slow

Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow

Confidence, Dependency

“my good qualities are under your protection, and you are to exaggerate them as much as possible; and, in return, it belongs to me to find occasion for teasing and quarreling with you as often as may be…”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

“At all costs the true world of childhood must prevail, must be restored; that world whose momentous, heroic, mysterious quality is fed on airy nothings, whose substance is so ill-fitted to withstand the brutal touch of adult inquisition.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

Source: The Holy Terrors

World, Childhood

“Sometimes when you work in advertising you'll get a product that's really garbage and you have to make it seem fantastic, something that is essential to the continued quality of life.”

Augusten Burroughs book Dry

Source: Dry

Life

“The value and quality of any love is determined solely by the lover himself.”

Carson McCullers (1917–1967) American writer

Source: The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories

Love, Lovers

“There is one rule for the industrialist and that is: Make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible.”

Henry Ford (1863–1947) American industrialist

Variant: There is one rule for the industrialist and that is: Make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wage possible.

Business

“She never inquired, but she never recoiled, either. This is a quality that I look for in a person, not recoiling.”

Miranda July (1974) American performance artist, musician and writer

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

Personality

“I have stolen ideas from every book I have ever read. My principle in researching a novel is 'Read like a butterfly, write like a bee', and if this story contains any honey, it is entirely because of the quality of the nectar I found in the work of better writers.”

Philip Pullman book The Amber Spyglass

Acknowledgements, p. 549
Source: His Dark Materials, The Amber Spyglass (2000)

Books, Idea, Bee, Reading

“Because you’re a creation of God, you reflect the Divine qualities of creativity, wisdom, and love.”

Doreen Virtue (1958) American writer

Love, Wisdom, God

“… Emma Morley wasn't such a paragon either: pretentious, petulant, lazy, speechifying, judgmental. Self-pitying, self righteous, self-important, all the selfs except self-confident, the quality that she had always needed the most.”

David Nicholls book One Day

Source: One Day

Confidence, Self-confidence

“And this you can know- fear the time when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept, for this one quality is man, distinctive in the universe.”

John Steinbeck book The Grapes of Wrath

Source: The Grapes of Wrath

Fear, Suffering, Universe, Time

“For if there is one thing I have learned over the years about men, it is that feelings of powerlessness do not usually bring forth their finest qualities.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

Source: Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

Men, Feeling, Learning

“Because Wikipedia is a process, not a product, it replaces guarantees offered by institutions with probabilities supported by process: if enough people care enough about an article to read it, then enough people will care enough to improve it, and over time this will lead to a large enough body of good enough work to begin to take both availability and quality of articles for granted, and to integrate Wikipedia into daily use by millions.”

Clay Shirky (1964) American technology writer

Source: Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations (2008), p. 139-140

People, Support, Time, Reading

“Mathematics because of its nature and structure is peculiarly fitted for high school instruction [Gymnasiallehrfach]. Especially the higher mathematics, even if presented only in its elements, combines within itself all those qualities which are demanded of a secondary subject. It engages, it fructifies, it quickens, compels attention, is as circumspect as inventive, induces courage and self-confidence as well as modesty and submission to truth. It yields the essence and kernel of all things, is brief in form and overflows with its wealth of content. It discloses the depth and breadth of the law and spiritual element behind the surface of phenomena; it impels from point to point and carries within itself the incentive toward progress; it stimulates the artistic perception, good taste in judgment and execution, as well as the scientific comprehension of things. Mathematics, therefore, above all other subjects, makes the student lust after knowledge, fills him, as it were, with a longing to fathom the cause of things and to employ his own powers independently; it collects his mental forces and concentrates them on a single point and thus awakens the spirit of individual inquiry, self-confidence and the joy of doing; it fascinates because of the view-points which it offers and creates certainty and assurance, owing to the universal validity of its methods. Thus, both what he receives and what he himself contributes toward the proper conception and solution of a problem, combine to mature the student and to make him skillful, to lead him away from the surface of things and to exercise him in the perception of their essence. A student thus prepared thirsts after knowledge and is ready for the university and its sciences. Thus it appears, that higher mathematics is the best guide to philosophy and to the philosophic conception of the world (considered as a self-contained whole) and of one’s own being.”

Christian Heinrich von Dillmann (1829–1899) German educationist

Source: Die Mathematik die Fackelträgerin einer neuen Zeit (Stuttgart, 1889), p. 40.

Truth, World, School, Law

“The regulative principles of management along scientific lines include four important elements:
(a) Planning of the processes and operations in detail by a special department organized for this purpose.
(b) Functional organization by which each man superintending the workman is responsible for a single line of effort. This is distinctly opposed to the older type of military organization, where every man in the management is given a combination of executive, legislative and judicial functions.
(c) Training the worker so as to require him to do each job in what has been found to be the best method of operation.
(d) Equable payment of the workers based on quantity and quality of output of each individual. This involves scientific analysis of each operation to determine the proper time that should be required for its accomplishment and also high payment for the worker who obtains the object sought.”

Hugo Diemer (1870–1937) American mechanical engineer

(1921, p. 10); Diemer quotes the ASCM committee
Factory organization and administration, 1910

Effort, Time, Training

“The great moral lesson which Saul's history leaves for the instruction of mankind is this: That without true piety the finest qualities of character and the highest position in society will utterly fail to make a true and noble man. If Saul's heart had been true to God, he would have been one of the grandest specimens of humanity; but, lacking this true obedience to God, he made his life an utter failure, and his character amoral wreck.”

William Mackergo Taylor (1829–1895) American theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 453.

Life, God, History, Failure

“The Leader of the Future 2 is divided into five parts. In Part One, our book begins where it should, with Peter Drucker’s vision of leadership… Part Two, "Leading in a Diverse World," begins with the recognized world authority on building a learning organization. "Systems Citizenship" presents MIT’s Peter Senge at his best, as he challenges us to understand systems, implement systems intelligence, and build partnerships that are a mandate for the new millennium… Part Three, "Leading in a Time of Crisis and Complexity," begins with Ron Heifetz of Harvard’s Kennedy School. Ron describes new approaches to solving leadership dilemmas as he challenges leaders in "Anchoring Leadership in the Work of Adaptive Progress"… Part Four, "Leading Organizations of the Future," shows how changing context has an impact leadership needs, demanding changes in leadership styles. Charles Handy is one of the great social philosophers of our time… Part Five, "The Quality and Character of the Leader of the Future," begins with one of the most influential thought leaders in history, Stephen Covey. In "Leading in the Knowledge Worker Age."”

Marshall Goldsmith (1949) American author of leadership and management literature

Source: The leader of the future 2, 2006, p. xiv-xvii; preview

Books, Age, World, School

“When I walk along with two others, they may serve me as my teachers. I will select their good qualities and follow them, their bad qualities and avoid them.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

§ 21, as translated by James Legge
Variant translations:
When I walk along with two others, from at least one I will be able to learn.
Walking among three people, I find my teacher among them. I choose that which is good in them and follow it, and that which is bad and change it.
The Analects, Chapter I, Chapter VII

Teachers

“How right politicians are to look upon their constituents as cattle! Anyone who has any experience of dealing with any class as such knows the futility of appealing to intelligence, indeed to any other qualities than those of brutes.”

Aleister Crowley book Magick Without Tears

Ch LXXIII
Magick Without Tears (1954)

Intelligence

“Our rockets can find Halley's comet, and fly to Venus with amazing accuracy, but side by side with these scientific and technical triumphs is an obvious lack of efficiency in using scientific achievements for economic needs, and many Soviet household appliances are of poor quality.”

Mikhail Gorbachev (1931) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Perestroika: New Thinking For Our Country and the World (1987)
As quoted in TIME magazine (4 January 1988)
1980s
Variant: Soviet rockets can find Halley's comet and fly to Venus with amazing accuracy, but . . . many household appliances are of poor quality.

Flying

Quotes about quality page 4

Quotes about quality
page 4