Mediocrity Quotations | Page 2

The mark of mediocrity is to look for precedent.

There is one gratification an old author can afford a certain class of critics; that namely, of comparing him as he is with what he was. It is a pleasure to mediocrity to have its superiors brought within range.

The very minute a thought is threatened with publicity it seems to shrink towards mediocrity.

What depresses me is the inevitable way the second rate forges ahead and the deserving is left behind.

Democracy: a festival of mediocrity.

A man who fears ridicule will never go far, for good or ill: he remains on this side of this talents, and even if he has genius, he is doomed to mediocrity.

Mediocrity is the elephant in the room.

Indiscriminate pursuit of perfection infallibly leads to mediocrity.

It is a great sign of mediocrity to praise always moderately.

Mediocre men sometimes fear great office, and when they do not aim at it, or when they refuse it, all that is to be concluded is that they are aware of their mediocrity.

A quiet mediocrity is still to be preferred before a troubled superfluity.

It's a season with few highs and few lows, but the general level of mediocrity is higher than it has been.

There are as many mediocrities exalted through pity as masters decried through envy.

Mediocrity borrows, genius steals.

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

We are in danger of developing a cult of the Common Man, which means a cult of mediocrity.

Mediocrity is more dangerous in a critic than in a writer.

Mediocrity in poets has never been tolerated by either men, or gods, or booksellers.

Minds of moderate caliber ordinarily condemn everthing which is beyond their range.

To love what is below the human is degradation; to love what is human for the sake of the human is mediocrity; to love the human for the sake of the Divine is enriching; to love the Divine for its own sake is sanctity.

Those who build and perpetuate mediocrity...are motivated more by the fear of being left behind.

Mediocrity results first and foremost from management failure, not technological failure.

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

The signature of mediocrity is chronic inconstancy. The signature of greatness is a disciplined and consistent focus on the right things.

The signature of mediocrity is chronic inconsistency.

The history of an art is the history of masterwork, not of failures, or mediocrity.

Low standards are a tactic that takes pressure off teachers' unions by accepting mediocrity and failure for kids.

The ordinary American voter does not object to mediocrity. He likes his candidate to be sensible, vigorous, and, above all, what he calls 'magnetic,' and does not value, because he sees no need for, originality or profundity, a fine culture or a wide knowledge.

I hope this series is good work, but it is in the half-hour medium, which is limited to a kind of mediocrity that sponsors are just dying to have right now, and the public, for some reason, is unconsciously demanding.

Mediocrity will never do. You are capable of something better.

Mediocrity is not allowed to poets, either by the gods or men.

Over and over again mediocrity is promoted because real worth isn't to be found.

Mediocrity is underrated.

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

Renouncement: the heroism of mediocrity....

Mediocrity is excellent to the eyes of mediocre people.

... one doesn't want to read badly any more than live badly, since time will not relent. I don't know that we owe God or nature a death, but nature will collect anyway, and we certainly owe mediocrity nothing, whatever collectivity it purports to advance or at least represent.

I wouldn't say I'm normal. But I'm relatively stable. When I think of normal, I think of mediocrity, and mediocrity scares the f--- out of me.

When I think of normality I think of mediocrity

Communism is exploitation of the strong by the weak.

Today is the most important day of our lives.

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.

The only sin is mediocrity.

Everyone wants a prodigy to fail; it makes our mediocrity more bearable.

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

I'm going to rub your faces in things you try to avoid. I don't find it strange that all you want to believe is only that which comforts you. How else do humans invent the traps which betray us into mediocrity? How else do we define cowardice?

Caution is the path to mediocrity.

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!

I take sanctuary in an honest mediocrity.

Only mediocrities rise to the top in a system that won't tolerate wave making.

Our party's most outstanding mediocrity.

Malice is only another name for mediocrity.

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.

To punish failure is yet another way to encourage mediocrity.

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

I am incapable of mediocrity.

You don't need a hand-out, you need a hand-up! And that's what we need to portray: 'Look, do you want to live in mediocrity? Because that's all that the entitlements are going to do for you. Keep you living in the lowest socio-economic scale.

You can raise the bar or you can wait for others to raise it, but it's getting raised regardless.

You don't have to settle. It's a choice you get to make every day.

'Good enough' stopped being good enough a long time ago. so why not be great?

Defending mediocrity is exhausting.

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

It's uncomfortable to challenge the status quo.

It's uncomfortable to resist the urge to settle.

In our desire to please everyone, it's very easy to end up being invisible or mediocre.

The reason they want you to fit in... is that once you do, then they can ignore you.

The status quo is leaving the building, and quickly.

Never surrender to the momentum of mediocrity.

A good number of works owe their success to the mediocrity of their authors' ideas, which match the mediocrity of those of the general public.

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

In the age of mediocrity and clones, John Stowell's uniqueness and originality are a breath of fresh air. I love playing with him.

Greatness is always envied - it is only mediocrity that can boast of a host of friends.

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

Attaining even mediocrity is often a struggle.

Excellence implies striving for the highest standards in every phase of life.

Only mediocrity escapes criticism.

It is not always the highest talent that thrives best. Mediocrity, with tact, will outweigh talent oftentimes.

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.

The business world worships mediocrity. Officially we revere free enterprise, initiative and individuality. Unofficially we fear it.

To secure approval one must remain within the bounds of conventional mediocrity. Whatever lies beyond, whether it be greater insight and virtue, or greater stolidity and vice, is condemned. The noblest men, like the worst criminals, have been done to death.

Measures should be enacted which, without violating the rights of property, would reduce extreme wealth towards a state of mediocrity, and raise extreme indigence towards a state of comfort.

You will not experience all life has to offer you or begin to experience life at its fullest as long as you are satisfied with mediocrity. You have to be disgusted with your current circumstances before your circumstances can change.

The only way to get out of mediocrity is to keep shooting for excellence.

Media, the plural of mediocrity.

It is fatal for art if it is forced into official respectability and condemned to sterile mediocrity.

That's probably one of my biggest gripes with the Internet - that it settles for mediocrity and disinformation, which puts all information on the same level. Everything has the same value, whether it's Albert Einstein speaking, or [email protected].

Mediocrity's like a spot on a shirt—it never comes off.

Pumpkin pie is a living symbol of mediocrity. The best pumpkin pie you ever ate wasn't all that much different from the worst pumpkin pie you ever ate.

Mechanization best serves mediocrity.

You know, larger than life is always better than smaller than life in politicians. And, you know, God save us from mediocrities.

Imposing an alleged uniform general method upon everybody breeds mediocrity in all but the very exceptional. And measuring originality by deviation from the mass breeds eccentricity in them.

Half talent is no talent.

A man is culpable in the eyes of society when he escapes from the jurisdiction of its mediocrity.

That Monica who's just gonna sit there in mediocrity... That Monica died in Samoa

Once you start compromising your thoughts, you're a candidate for mediocrity.

Some of you may be perfectly happy with mediocrity. Some of you will get nothing but heartbreak. Some of you will be heralded as geniuses and become huge. Of course, all of you think that one describes you...hence the delusion necessary to push on.

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.

Today we've learned to celebrate mediocrity. Back in the day we had creative artists; today we have created artists.

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.

Go after what you want as if your life depended on it. Because it Does!