"Mediocrity" doesn't mean average intelligence, it means an average intelligence that resents and envies its betters.
Ayn RandThe spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. Whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles.
Ayn RandThroughout the centuries there were men who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision.
Ayn RandIf there is any one proof of a man's incompetence, it is the stagnant mentality of a worker who, doing some small routine job in a vast undertaking, does not care to look beyond the lever of a machine, does not choose to know how the machine got there or what makes his job possible, and proclaims that the management of the undertaking is parasitical and unnecessary.
Ayn Rand