It is an immutable law in business that words are words, explanations are explanations, promises are promises-but only performance is reality.

It is much more difficult to measure nonperformance than performance.

I've been looking at some video clips on YouTube of President Obama - then candidate Obama - going through Iowa making promises. The gap between his promises and his performance is the largest I've seen, well, since the Kardashian wedding and the promise of 'til death do we part.

Some directors cast you because they trust you to do the performance - but then they forget to direct you.

That's how you get a performance - they put trust in you.

I used to be very controlling with visuals and editing, and I would pretty much craft the performances; now I have learned to trust the material and the actors.

Trust gives you the permission to give people direction, get everyone aligned, and give them the energy to go get the job done. Trust enables you to execute with excellence and produce extraordinary results. As you execute with excellence and deliver on your commitments, trust becomes easier to inspire, creating a flywheel of performance.

Doing Shakespeare once is not fair to the play. I have been in Shakespeare plays when it's not until the last two or three performances when I even understand certain things. In the old days star actors would travel the world doing the same parts over and over again.

The more work you put in, and the more you constantly and consistently give good performances against good opponents and constantly exceed people's expectations, the more you really endear yourself to the crowd. That's how your career takes off - it's just consistency and time.

I'm a role model as a footballer and not as a politician. I want to see myself as a footballer. People respect me for my performances. That's why they support me, and I'm very thankful for that. But I'm not a politician.

I went to a performance-art high school, and a teacher there was signing me up for open-mic nights at the comedy club. I think about it now, and I think, 'Well, that may be inappropriate,' but it was great!'

The teacher of history's work should be, ideally, not simply a description of past cultures, but a performance of the culture in which we live and are increasingly taking our being.

There is no better teacher than adversity. Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance the next time.

In a sinful world, no community can exist for long where nobody is ever held accountable: no teacher would grade a student's performance; no citizen would sit on a jury or call a failed leader to account.

I hate tenure. Tenure allows teachers to put their feet up on the desk and possibly have a job forever. That's why I got turned on to charter schools. It's a business model. Every employee and every teacher will be monitored by performance.

Being in an acting class, you always feel like, you know, you're insecure, a lot of ways, when the teacher is commenting on your performance.

Teaching is the only major occupation of man for which we have not yet developed tools that make an average person capable of competence and performance. In teaching we rely on the 'naturals', the ones who somehow know how to teach.

Your identity is firmly anchored in Christ's accomplishment, not yours; his strength, not yours; his performance, not yours; his victory, not yours.

I'm a father of four so whenever I'm not working my kids have their different sports, or plays, or school performances, so I don't do a whole lot of other stuff besides being a dad.

Today, we have sophisticated building technology: we can calculate and simulate the environments and performance of the building, the thermal exposure of envelop, or the air flow through an urban space or structure.

I don't know how, at an age when you're trying to put your identity together, how you cope with the pressure of a performance space, which is what social media is.

So many girls second-think their pose or what they're doing. And, in turn, the photos will come out really unnatural. I say to really give the camera a performance - that, and make sure you're comfortable with how you look, and give it a good smile and a filter.

I love the live performances and Las Vegas. I also like making films that are being discovered by another generation. Having been a teen idol of the '60s is great because you realize you left your generation with a smile and good memories.

I think opera has gained a kind of glamorous appeal. It's a live performance that aligns all of the arts, and when it is represented in the media, in film in particular, it is presented as something that is really a special event, whether it's a great date or something that's just hugely romantic.