What’s worse than mediocrity? Insincere competence.

If we become embarrassed by the quality of our work, the answer is not to embellish it with dishonest confidence; the answer is to do better work.

When it comes time to reveal what we’ve accomplished, the quality of our work is no longer up to us. It’s only in the doing that we have any control, at all.

Humility pays dividends whenever we could have done better; and we can always do better.