Quotes About Average

Setting aside the vast herd which shows no definable character at all, it seems to me that the minority distinguished by what is commonly regarded as an excess of sin is very much more admirable than the minority distinguished by an excess of virtue. My experience of the world has taught me that the average wine-bibbler is a far better fellow than the average prohibitionist, and that the average rogue is better company than the average poor drudge, and that the worst white-slave trader of my acquaintance is a decenter man than the best vice crusader.

The average net worth of the lower half of the distribution, representing 62 million households, was $11,000 in 2013. About one-fourth of these families reported zero wealth or negative net worth, and a significant fraction of those said they were "underwater" on their home mortgages, owing more than the value of the home. This $11,000 average is 50 percent lower than the average wealth of the lower half of families in 1989, adjusted for inflation.

Books in a large university library system: 2,000,000. Books in an average large city library: 10,000. Average number of books in a chain bookstore: 30,000. Books in an average neighborhood branch library: 20,000.

I tell people not to do their best. I don't know when that started. Quite a while ago. Because I . . . when they're doing their best I don't get their best. So I try to persuade them to be average. Because if you're wonderful and you're average, you're still wonderful. If you're a bad improviser and you're average, you're what you are.

When the average American consumes 43 times as much as the average African, we've got to think that consumption is an issue. It's not just about population.

Properly measured, the average actively managed dollar must underperform the average passively managed dollar, net of costs. Empirical analyses that appear to refute this principle are guilty of improper measurement.

The average Mexican lives longer now than the average Briton did in 1955. Infant mortality is lower today in Nepal than it was in Italy in 1951. The proportion of Vietnamese living on less than $2 a day has dropped from 90 per cent to 30 per cent in twenty years. The rich have got richer, but the poor have done even better.

The average term length of a member of congress is approaching 15 years, and the average term length of a convicted criminal is less than three. We've got that backward.

I should favour anything that would increase the present enormous authority of women and their creative action in their own homes. The average woman...is a despot; the average man is a serf.

The average dog is a nicer person than the average person.

The real beauty of democracy is that the average man believes he is above average.

It’s our generation that is witnessing the end of Western predominance. The average American used to be more than 20 times richer than the average Chinese. Now it’s just five times, and soon it will be 2.5 times.

Our leading men are not of much account and never have been, but the average of the people is immense, beyond all history. Sometimes I think in all departments, literature and art included, that will be the way our superiority will exhibit itself. We will not have great individuals or great leaders, but a great average bulk, unprecedentedly great.

We've become so used to the concept as a measuring and sorting tool, that it and its correlates - below-average, above-average - are everyday speech. We don't even question the language, although the challenges we face require a different mindset.

Behind a remarkable scholar we not infrequently find an average human being, and behind an average artist we often find a very remarkable human being.

Exercising during the cold and flu season will help people stay in shape, and most likely fight off colds or reduce the number of days a person is ill. The cold season should not be an excuse for the average person to refrain from exercising - working out at the gym, a brisk walk in the park or a jog through the neighborhood.

As much as I'd like to think I'm an expert in quarterbacks I'm probably not. But, I think college quarterbacks are put in positions where they have to do a lot of the things that are done at the professional level. The collegiate quarterback probably does on average a little more running than a pro quarterback. But outside of that, I think they're faced with some of the same difficult decisions and choices.

Average Americans, middle-class citizens, just feel disenfranchised by our government. And they feel particularly unhappy by what is perceived as business-as-usual politics in Washington.

Life is short. If you doubt me, ask a butterfly. Their average life span is a mere five to fourteen days.

The potential of the average person is like a huge ocean unsailed, a new continent unexplored, a world of possibilities waiting to be released and channeled toward some great good.

Apparently the average man sees woman alternatelyas an inferior being and as an angel.

When I work I have a sculptor's sense of the shape of the words I'm making. I use a machine with larger than average letters: the bigger the better.

The average pencil is seven inches long, with just a half-inch eraser - in case you thought optimism was dead In fact maybe there is a lesson there for how we should approach the future...with fourteen parts optimism - anticipating what could go right and the benefits - and one part pessimism - anticipating what could go wrong so we can avoid them.

In peace-armies discipline meant the hunt, not of an average but of an absolute; the hundred per cent standard in which the ninety-nine were played down to the level of the weakest man on parade.... The deeper the discipline, the lower was the individual excellence; also the more sure the performance.

The French are a smallish, monkey-looking bunch and not dressed any better, on average, than the citizens of Baltimore. True, you can sit outside in Paris and drink little cups of coffee, but why this is more stylish than sitting inside and drinking large glasses of whiskey I don't know.

The reason we've been growing at 1.8 percent for the last eight, ten years, which is way below the historical average, is in large part because of our tax code. It is important to us to get the biggest, broadest tax reduction, tax cuts, tax reform that we can possibly get because it's the only way we get back to 3 percent growth. That's what's driving all of this, how do you get the American economy back on that historical growth rate of 3 percent and out of these doldrums of 1.8, 1.9 that we had of the previous Barack Obama administration?

The Internet is really our meeting place. We have this amazing listserv. Every time I log onto it I feel a sense of pride, because if you log on and say, "Oh I was just in San Diego and I was in a park and I saw a lion," the flurry of replies on average is just like--wow! All these existential questions about what it means to be an African, and never having seen a lion at home, but having seen a lion here. Everything you say turns into this real philosophical debate--it's incredible in so many ways. And it's an invigorating place to be.

It followed from the special theory of relativity that mass and energy are both but different manifestations of the same thing - a somewhat unfamiliar conception for the average mind. Furthermore, the equation E = mc², in which energy is put equal to mass, multiplied by the square of the velocity of light, showed that very small amounts of mass may be converted into a very large amount of energy and vice versa.

The scalable, profitable strategy is to change the game, not to become the most average.

Walt had a seat-of-the-pants approach on what he wanted musically. We kind of 'read' the boss and had a very high batting average, but there were occasions when he felt we had just written the wrong piece for the situation he wanted. We invariably listened to what he wanted - he was very descriptive in what he wanted and we could read him. We'd go back to the drawing board and work out what he wanted. He was a great inspiration, but a tough taskmaster.

Avoiding the appearance of queenly behavior is politically wise. But it does American culture no favors if a first lady tries so hard to be average that she winds up looking common.

I thought the Hall of Fame was for superstars, not just average players like me.

Many animal rescue organizations hit with a hard-core, heartbreaking message. Their videos and stories can become difficult for average people to watch. By taking a more positive, heartwarming approach to animal rescue, I've been able to engage people and keep them engaged for years. Instead of selling the agony and misery - and sadly, there is no shortage of that - I start with the happy endings. I work backwards so the first message they get is joy and success due to their involvement. Opening the mind with humor and joy gets the rescue message in that much deeper.

I personally think that we can win the World Cup. We are improving with every game. With such a young average age in the squad we can only carry on improving.

Every superior personality, and every superior performance, has, for the average of mankind, something mysterious.

In an average day, you may well be confronted with some species of bullying or bigotry, or some ill-phrased appeal to the general will, or some petty abuse of authority. If you have a political loyalty, you may be offered a shady reason for agreeing to a lie or a half-truth that serves some short-term purpose. Everybody devises tactics for getting through such moments; try behaving "as if" they need not be tolerated and are not inevitable.

A warrior takes responsibility for his acts, for the most trivial of acts. An average man acts out his thoughts, and never takes responsibility for what he does.When we feel stuck, going nowhere -- even starting to slipbackward -- we may actually be backing up to get a runningstart.

As an actor, you most often play relatively average parts, so to get to play extreme versions of anything, those are the most exciting parts.

In the average European oil painting of the nude the principal protagonist is never painted. He is the spectator in front of the picture and he is presumed to be a man.

I've always considered myself to be just average talent and what I have is a ridiculous insane obsessiveness for practice and preparation.

We have to judge politicians by their cumulative score. In one innings they make a great catch, in another they drop the ball. In one they score a home run, in another they strike out. But it is their cumulative batting average that we are interested in.

Education in our family was not merely emphasized, it was our raison d'etre ... In this family of accomplished scholars, I was to become the academic black sheep. I performed adequately at high school, but in comparison to my older brother, who set the record for the highest cumulative average for our high school, my performance was decidedly mediocre.

Hispanic unemployment is higher than the national average and when the federal government is killing small businesses and killing jobs it is hurting the future of the Hispanic community and we need to carry that message.

I knew I was different. I thought that I might be gay or something because I couldn't identify with any of the guys at all. None of them liked art or music, they just wanted to fight and get laid. It was many years ago but it gave me this real hatred for the average American macho male.

One nice thing about the Third World, you don't have to fasten your seat belt. (Or stop smoking. Or cut down on saturated fats.) It takes a lot off your mind when average life expectancy is forty-five minutes.

Everybody thinks their website is above average.

While it is almost certainly true that leaders ought to eat last, the evidence on the ever-widening difference between CEO and average employee pay and the enormous severance packages leaders obtain even as front-line workers see their economic well-being eviscerated makes a mockery of the idea that leaders do anything other than take care of themselves.

In our lives, on average, we will be asleep for a total of 8,477 days. If we're lucky, some of that time will be sleeping next to someone we love.