Quotes About Mediocrity

One must indeed be ignorant of the methods of genius to suppose that it allows itself to be cramped by forms. Forms are for mediocrity, and it is fortunate that mediocrity can act only according to routine. Ability takes its flight unhindered.

The signature of mediocrity is not an unwillingness to change. The signature of mediocrity is inconsistency.

But why diminish your soul being run-of-the-mill at something? Mediocrity: now there is ugliness for you. Mediocrity's a hairball coughed up on the Persian carpet of Creation.

The success of many books is due to the affinity between the mediocrity of the author's ideas and those of the public.

Being famous is not something that would make me feel successful - unless one was striving for mediocrity.

There is a point of view among astronomical researchers that is generally referred to as the Principle of Mediocrity. ... If the Sun and its retinue of worlds is only one system among many, then many other systems will be like ours: home to life. Indeed, to the extent that this is true, we should be prepared for the possibility that, even in the Milky Way galaxy, billions of planets may be carpeted by the dirty, nasty business known as life.

Goodness is weakness, pleasantness is poisonous, serenity is mediocrity and kindness is for losers. The best reason for committing loathsome and detestable acts – and let’s face it, I am considered something of an expert in this field – is purely for their own sake. Monetary gain is all very well, but it dilutes the taste of wickedness to a lower level that is obtainable by almost anyone with an overdeveloped sense of avarice. True and baseless evil is as rare as the purest good.

I have a low tolerance for mediocrity in music and life. I'm into pain and joy and the in-between doesn't interest me.

Only mediocrity of enjoyment is allowed to man.

Life gives to all the choice. You can satisfy yourself with mediocrity if you wish. You can be common, ordinary, dull, colorless, or yyou can channel your life so that it will be clean, vibrant, useful, progressive, colorful, and rich.

Defending mediocrity is exhausting.

Music is a place to take refuge. It's a sanctuary from mediocrity and boredom. It's innocent and it's a place you can lose yourself in thoughts, memories and intricacies.

I love that the level of mediocrity rises.

Mediocrity is now, as formerly, dangerous, commonly fatal, to the poet; but among even the successful writers of prose, those who rise sensibly above it are the very rarest exceptions.

We know of no spectacle more ridiculous—or more contemptible—than that of the religious reactionaries who dare to re-write the history of our republic. Or who try to do so. Is it possible that, in their vanity and stupidity, they suppose that they can erase the name of Thomas Jefferson and replace it with the name of some faith-based mediocrity whose name is already obscure? If so, we cheerfully resolve to mock them, and to give them the lie in their teeth.

Channel your emotion into the excellence of doing something rather than the mediocrity of deciding whether or not to do it.

Mediocrity is contextual.

Take back the beauty and wit you bestow upon me; leave me my own mediocrity of agreeableness and genius, but leave me also my sincerity, my constancy, and my plain dealing; 'Tis all I have to recommend me to the esteem either of others or myself.

Passionately protest mediocrity.

Push yourself to do more and to experience more. Harness your energy to start expanding your dreams. Yes, expand your dreams. Don't accept a life of mediocrity when you hold such infinite potential within the fortress of your mind. Dare to tap into your greatness.

Ninety-nine percent of people believe they can't do great things, so they aim for mediocrity.

Once genius is submerged by bureaucracy, a nation is doomed to mediocrity.

Watch, listen and learn. You can't know it all yourself. Anyone who thinks they do is destined for mediocrity.

There, I was just a secretary-shaped confederation of atoms, fighting the inevitability of mediocrity and decay. But here, in the Juliaverse... energy was never lost, merely converted from one form to another. Here, I took butter and cream and meat and eggs and I made delicious sustenance.

It's a sign of mediocrity when you demonstrate gratitude with moderation.

Beware the mediocrity that threatens middle age, its limitation of thought and interest, its dullness of fancy, its too external life, and mental thinness.

The only certain means of success is to render more and better service than is expected of you, no matter what the task may be. This is a habit followed by all successful people since the beginning of time. Therefore I saith the surest way to doom yourself to mediocrity is to perform only the work for which you are paid.

Neat trick: to be roused to ambition and reconciled to one's mediocrity at the same time.

I feel connected to every other creative element because I have a creative soul. My isolation is not through the work it's through not being able to connect with mediocrity. When I was younger I was a punk and then when I got married and had children I became a mother. They are the only two memberships to any clan-like cultures that I have ever embraced.

Mediocrity requires aloofness to preserve its dignity.

We will meet our challenges head on and we will do it by rejecting the politics of mediocrity and corruption. You voted for change; I intend to deliver it. ... I will govern as a reformer.

It is a proof of philosophical mediocrity, today, to look for a philosophy.

It would be a healthy exercise for every politician to look in the mirror every morning and remind himself that he holds office only because, in a two-man race against another mediocrity, a modest majority of those half-informed people who imagined that their votes mattered reckoned that he was the lesser evil. And they weren't too sure about that.

Tradition! We scarcely know the word anymore. We are afraid to be either proud of our ancestors or ashamed of them. We scorn nobility in name and in fact. We cling to a bourgeois mediocrity which would make it appear we are all Americans, made in the image and likeness of George Washington.

Why is it that when a baby is born, we often refer to him or her as 'the miracle of life' but then we accept mediocrity for our own lives? Where along the way did we lose sight of the miracle that WE are?

Among many parallels which men of imagination have drawn between the natural and moral state of the world, it has been observed that happiness as well as virtue consists in mediocrity.

No wonder we are all more or less pleased with mediocrity, since it leaves us at rest, and gives the same comfortable feeling as when one associates with his equals.

Anyone in the humor business isn't thinking clearly if he doesn't surround himself with idea people. Otherwise, you settle for mediocrity - or you burn yourself out.

For what level of mediocrity will you settle?

in architecture, mediocrity is more glaringly obvious than in other lines - because there's a huge, physical object such as a building to demonstrate it.

They keep creating new ways to celebrate mediocrity.

Man's proper stature is not one of mediocrity, failure, frustration, or defeat, but one of achievement, strength, and nobility. In short, man can and ought to be a hero.

Whenever people talk glibly of a need to achieve educational "excellence," I think of what an improvement it would be if our public schools could just achieve mediocrity.