Best 347 quotes in «mediocrity quotes» category

The mediocrity of everything in the great world of today is simply appalling. We live in intellectual slums.

The goal is to avoid mediocrity by being prepared to try something and either failing miserably or triumphing grandly.

The mediocrity with which Africa has been ruled is responsible for its underdevelopment.

There are circumstances of peculiar difficulty and danger, where a mediocrity of talent is the most fatal quantum that a man can possibly possess. Had Charles the First and Louis the Sixteenth been more wise or more weak, more firm or more yielding, in either case they had both of them saved their heads.

The only way we can develop muscle is through regular exercise. As soon as we stop stretching and working toward higher ethics, our standards start to sag. The muscle gets soft, and instead of excellence we have to settle for mediocrity. Maybe something even worse.

The overwhelming pressure of mediocrity, sluggish and indomitable as a glacier, will mitigate the most violent, and depress the most exalted revolution.

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

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!

There is no greater path to mediocrity in life than trying to be realistic.

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

There is nothing in the world that I loathe more than group activity, that communal bath where the hairy and slippery mix in a multiplication of mediocrity.

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

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.

The signature of mediocrity is chronic inconsistency.

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

The way that I am now, I don't want to accept mediocrity. I don't want to accept the easy road.

The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity.

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

The world is a republic of mediocrities, and always was.

Think you are weak, think you lack what it takes, think you will lose, think you are second class - think this way and you are doomed to mediocrity.

They keep creating new ways to celebrate mediocrity.

Today is the most important day of our lives.

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

Today I begin a new life. Today I shed my old skin which hath, too long, suffered the bruises of failure and the wounds of mediocrity. Today I am born anew and my birthplace is a vineyard where there is fruit for all.

To punish failure is yet another way to encourage mediocrity.

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

To encourage excellence is to go beyond the encouraged mediocrity of our society

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.

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.

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

Trying to be cool is the easiest path to mediocrity

Virtue is defined to be mediocrity, of which either extreme is vice.

We have no Arab intellectuals of international stature because we live in a state of generalized mediocrity. We are suspended in the pit without touching the bottom.

We have been stuffed full of praise for mediocrity and had our foibles diagnosed away with hyphenated jargon and pop psychology.

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

We only rise above mediocrity when there's something at stake. p. 174

The mark of mediocrity is to look for precedent.

We mistrust anything that too strongly challenges our ideal of mediocrity.

We must not reduce the bosom of the universal church to a nest protecting our mediocrity.

When Americans decry our politicians, we must remember that ultimately, politicians reflect us. When we demand more than mediocrity - and the passing comforts it bestows - we will certainly attain it. One hopes and prays it doesn't take an historic crisis for us to demand and reward excellence in public service.

What the crowd requires is mediocrity of the highest order.

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.

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

Whenever the tissue of life is woven of legalistic relationships, this creates an atmosphere of spiritual mediocrity that paralyzes a person's noblest impulses.

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

When I think of normality I think of mediocrity

You cannot have people in your organization who are pessimists. They take you to mediocrity.

You can’t talk mediocrity and expect to have victory. You are prophesying your future. If you want a shift to occur, you’ve got to think positive.