Quotes About Mediocrity

Caution is the path to mediocrity. Gliding, passionless mediocrity is all that most people think they can achieve.

Mediocrity is always invisible until passion shows up and exposes it.

There are certain things in which mediocrity is intolerable: poetry, music, painting, public eloquence. What torture it is to hear a frigid speech being pompously declaimed, or second-rate verse spoken with all a bad poet's bombast!

When I think of normality I think of mediocrity

It is not that we had any unfair knowledge that other people didn't have, it is just that we did our homework. People just don't want to believe that anyone can break away from the crowd and rise above mediocrity.

It takes more energy to maintain mediocrity than it takes to pursue excellence.

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.

The thing I'm not good with is mediocrity, when someone isn't really trying to reach something.

Actors are loved because they are unoriginal. Actors stick to their script. The unoriginal man is loved by the mediocrity because this kind of artistic expression is something to which the merest five-eighth can climb.

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.

There are the those whose own vulgar normality is so apparent and stultifying that they strive to escape it. They affect flamboyant behaviour and claim originality according to the fashionable eccentricities of their time. They claim brains or talent or indifference to mores in desperate attempts to deny their own mediocrity.

I sometimes make pictures which are not up to my standard, but then it can only be said of a mediocrity that all his work is up to his standard.

Once you decide that mediocrity is unthinkable, your only choices are excellence and quitting.

There is always a heavy demand for fresh mediocrity. In every generation the least cultivated taste has the largest appetite.

Any corporate policy and plan which is typical of the industry is doomed to mediocrity. Where this is not so, it should be possible to demonstrate that all other competitors are at a distinct disadvantage.

The natural tendency of representative government, as of modern civilisation, is towards collective mediocrity: and this tendency is increased by all reductions and extensions of the franchise, their effect being to place the principal power in the hands of classes more and more below the highest level of instruction in the community.

If one wants to be active, one must not be afraid of going wrong, one must not be afraid of making mistakes now and then. Many people think that they will become good just by doing no harm -- but that's a lie.... That way lies stagnation, mediocrity.

Our literature, despite several false starts that promised much, is chiefly remarkable, now as always, for its respectable mediocrity.

What was alien was being ordinary, being humdrum, being trapped into appeasing...having to crush and stifle my opinions, not being allowed to be brilliant, tricking myself into mediocrity.

When we are placed in a set of circumstances where we have to take initiative and be creative, some of us find it hard to transition. Those people have been trained not to think but to obey orders. They are slaves to the training, unconsciously pledging allegiance to the average. Mentally they recite from the manual of mediocrity.

You have to surrender to your mediocrity, and just write. Because it's hard, really hard, to write even a crappy book. But it's better to write a book that kind of sucks rather than no book at all, as you wait around to magically become Faulkner. No one is going to write your book for you and you can't write anybody's book but your own.

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.

There is plenty of room at the top because very few people care to travel beyond the average route. And so most of us seem satisfied to remain within the confines of mediocrity.

We often reward mediocrity because it is comforting. If they can do it, anyone can do it.

The mediocrity principle simply states that you aren't special. The universe does not revolve around you; this planet isn't privileged in any unique way; your country is not the perfect product of directed, intentional fate; and that tuna sandwich you had for lunch was not plotting to give you indigestion.

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

Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend

When I imagine God creating each one of us and planting a purpose deep in our hearts, I never imagine that purpose being mediocrity.

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

Christianity does not oppose debauchery and uncontrollable passions and the like as much as it opposes... flat mediocrity, this nauseating atmosphere, this homey, civil togetherness, where admittedly great crimes, wild excesses, and powerful aberrations cannot easily occur - but where God's unconditional demand has even greater difficulty in accomplishing what it requires: the majestic obedience of submission.

You can always spot a 'television personality', even when they aren't actually on television, because they carry their 'made-up' persona in front of them, like some sort of baffler, or Ready Brek force field. Their reach for notoriety predicated on that fulsome mediocrity of talent detailed above has become frozen in their faces.

Intolerance of mediocrity has been the main prop of my independence.

Mediocrity requires aloofness to preserve its dignity.

Once you compromise yourself in one way, you compromise yourself in another way. And you've just opened the door to compromise, mediocrity, settling.

Nothing is more expensive than mediocrity.

Let some holy ambition invade our souls, so that, dissatisfied with mediocrity, we shall eagerly desire the highest things and shall toil with all our strength to obtain them, since we may if we wish.

The industrial age brought compliance and compliance brought fear and fear brought us mediocrity.

In sum, all actions and habits are to be esteemed good or evil by their causes and usefulness in reference to the commonwealth, and not by their mediocrity, nor by their being commended. For several men praise several customs, and, contrarily, what one calls vice, another calls virtue, as their present affections lead them.

In an age of militant mediocrity, an 'extremist' is anyone who takes a position.

... the major rule in the American belief system - that anyone can do anything ... is a lie that we have perpetuated, and it fosters mediocrity. Knowing what you're good at and doing even more of it creates excellence.

Attain and maintain a reputation, for it is the usufruct of fame. A stiff climb, for it is the issue of excellence, as rare as mediocrity is common.

There are certain things in which mediocrity is not to be endured, such as poetry, music, painting, public speaking.

Men in general are too material and do not make enough human contacts. If we search for the fundamentals which actually motivate us we will find that they come under four headings: love, money, adventure and religion. It is to some of them that we always owe that big urge which pushes us onward. Men who crush these impulses and settle down to everyday routine are bound to sink into mediocrity. No man is a complete unit of himself; he needs the contact, the stimulus and the driving power which is generated by his contact with other men, their ideas, and constantly changing scenes.

Rules are foolish, arbitrary, mindless things that raise you quickly to a level of acceptable mediocrity, then prevent you from progressing further.