Best 347 quotes in «mediocrity quotes» category

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

To punish failure is yet another way to encourage mediocrity.

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.

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

Trying to be cool is the easiest path to mediocrity

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

All people are standing; you got to standout! All people are breaking grounds; you got to breakthrough grounds! Don't settle for less; rise up and stand tall in what you do!

Accept not a mediocre effort but any end result of a super effort

A gifted violin player in danger of becoming a virtuoso and thus too attached to his instrument handed it over to the Oneida authorities and never played again. When a visiting Canadian teacher complained that the community did not foster “genius or special talent,” Noyes was delighted, replying, “We never expected or desired to produce a Byron, a Napoleon, or a Michelangelo.” You know you've reached a new plateau of group mediocrity when even a Canadian is alarmed by your lack of individuality.

A mediocre writer serves a life sentence. He has to go on. It's too late to change professions. He has to go on till the bitter end. Until death comes to get him. Only death can save him from his mediocrity. His writing is "not without merit," that's what we say about the mediocre writer. For him, that's the pinnacle of achievement, to produce books that are not without merit. You really do have to be mediocre to go on living once you've realized that.

All through high school and college, his judo coach and older teammates would often say to him, "You have the talent and the strength, and you practice enough, but you just don't have the desire." They were probably right. He lacked that drive to win at all costs, which is why he would often make it to the semifinals and the finals but lose the all-important championship match.

And I — my head oppressed by horror — said: "Master, what is it that I hear? Who are those people so defeated by their pain?"       And he to me: "This miserable way is taken by the sorry souls of those who lived without disgrace and without praise.       They now commingle with the coward angels, the company of those who were not rebels nor faithful to their God, but stood apart.       The heavens, that their beauty not be lessened, have cast them out, nor will deep Hell receive them — even the wicked cannot glory in them.

An artist must take comfort that there's no satisfaction whatsoever with one's creation, just a dissatisfaction that keeps one a step away from sliding into mediocrity.