Mediocrity Quotations

Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike

The appearance of a single great genius is more than equivalent to the birth of a hundred mediocrities

All good is hard. All evil is easy. Dying, losing, cheating, and mediocrity is easy. Stay away from easy.

Only the mediocre are always at their best.

Mediocrity in politics is not to be despised. Greatness is not needed.

Competition is always a good thing. It forces us to do our best. A monopoly renders people complacent and satisfied with mediocrity.

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.

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

As far as I'm concerned, it's a damned shame that a field as potentially dynamic and vital as journalism should be overrun with dullards, bums, and hacks, hag-ridden with myopia, apathy, and complacence, and generally stuck in a bog of stagnant mediocrity.

The thing is, I don't believe in most of what's done. The amount of financial and imaginative energy that's put into mediocrity is just amazing which I find to be fundamentally offensive as a human being.

Go for the gold: better one great column and some undistinguished ones than constant mediocrity.

Only mediocrity of enjoyment is allowed to man.

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.

We shouldn't accept mediocrity as the best a politician can do.

Only mediocrity can be trusted to be always at its best

By and large, talent is in such short supply that mediocrity can be taken for brilliance rather more than genius can go undiscovered.

Politicians fascinate because they constitute such a paradox; they are an elite that accomplishes mediocrity for the public good.

Nothing is as approved as mediocrity, the majority has established it and it fixes it fangs on whatever gets beyond it either way.

A talent somewhat above mediocrity, shrewd and not too sensitive, is more likely to rise in the world than genius.

One would like to be grand and heroic, if one could; but if not, why try at all? One wants to be very something, very great, very heroic; or if not that, then at least very stylish and very fashionable. It is this everlasting mediocrity that bores me.

The present reeks of mediocrity and the atom bomb.

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

Mediocre men often have the most acquired knowledge

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.

If you stick with a vision, it might not all work, but some of it will be absolute genius. To me, 15 minutes worth of absolute genius in a film is so much better than two hours of mediocrity. I would rather pay to see something different like that.

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

Mediocrity would always win by force of numbers, but it would win only more mediocrity.

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

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

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

There's so much in the 21st century that is stymied by bureaucracy and mediocrity and committee.

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.

I think we live in an age of increasing mediocrity.

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.

When small men attempt great enterprises, they always end by reducing them to the level of their mediocrity.

Mediocrity can talk, but it is for genius to observe.

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

I could've just walked away but I never could have forgiven myself to allow Starbucks to drift into mediocrity or not be relevant. I just couldn't be a bystander.

Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities.

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

Philadelphians are every whit as mediocre as their neighbors, but they seldom encourage each other in mediocrity by giving it a more agreeable name.

We encourage one another in mediocrity.

That in all times, mediocrity has dominated, that is indubitable; but that it reigns more than ever, that it is becoming absolutely triumphant and inhibiting, this is what is as true as it is distressing.

Awards are merely the badges of mediocrity.

Mediocrity's easy, the good things take time, the great need commitment.

I cannot live in mediocrity, content with merely knowing that there is more of God to experience and explore -and then do nothing about it. Truths that are not experienced are, in effect, more like theories than truths. Whenever God reveals truth to us He is inviting us into a divine encounter.

The culture has got to be only the best for Collingwood. I reckon Collingwood accepts defeat far too easily and accepts mediocrity far too easily,

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

Mediocrity is perhaps due not so much to lack of imagination as to lack of faith in the imagination, lack of the capacity for this abandon.

There is nothing more vapid than a philistine petty bourgeois existence with its farthings, victuals, vacuous conversations, and useless conventional virtue.

Private-equity and hedge-fund guys typically come into a situation of mediocrity, where rapid change may result in a profit.

Literature is air, and Im suffocating in mediocrity.

Gregariousness is always the refuge of mediocrities, whether they swear by Soloviev or Kant or Marx. Only individuals seek the truth, and they shun those whose sole concern is not the truth.

For what level of mediocrity will you settle?

In truth, I am nothing but a plodding mediocrity — please observe, a plodding mediocrity — for a mere mediocrity does not go very far, but a plodding one gets quite a distance. There is joy in that success, and a distinction can come from courage, fidelity and industry.

He was marked out by his relentless ability to find fault with others' mediocrity--suggesting that a certain type of intelligence may be at heart nothing more or less than a superior capacity for dissatisfaction.

Mediocrity - It takes a lot less time and most people won't notice the difference until it's too late.

PERSEVERANCE, n. A lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an inglorious success."Persevere, persevere!" cry the homilists all, Themselves, day and night, persevering to bawl."Remember the fable of tortoise and hare -- The one at the goal while the other is --where?" Why, back there in Dreamland, renewing his lease Of life, all his muscles preserving the peace, The goal and the rival forgotten alike, And the long fatigue of the needless hike. His spirit a-squat in the grass and the dew Of the dogless Land beyond the Stew, He sleeps, like a saint in a holy place, A winner of all that is good in a race. --Sukker Uffro

Never were abilities so much below mediocrity so well rewarded; no, not when Caligula's horse was made Consul

I am driven by a fear of mediocrity and a sense of purpose.

Basically, the evidence shows you have to be a superstar to get into the door, if you are African American. If you are white, you can be good, you can be average, you can be mediocre, and you can get in. Mediocrity is OK for the white candidates, but you have to be a superstar for the black candidates.

Over-seriousness is a warning sign for mediocrity and bureaucratic thinking. People who are seriously committed to mastery and high performance are secure enough to lighten up.

Part of the reason why Willingham didn't have a long tenure is because he followed a mediocre coach, ... You can't follow years of mediocrity and expect to get top high school recruits. The UW will have the same problem.

People of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon and seldom drive business home to it's conclusion, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success.

Some men are born Mediocre men, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them

We do live in a time, you know, it's the Land of McDonald's - mediocrity rules.

Just as King Midas turned everything to gold, Stalin turned everything to mediocrity.

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

I always wanted to be commander-in-chief of my one-woman army, But I can envision the mediocrity of my finest hour.

You must have the guts to throw off the chains of modesty and mediocrity in order to be the light that the world needs.

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.

Be great at what you do, and don't ever settle for mediocrity or else you will always wonder how great you could have been.

Will I allow my fear to bind me to mediocrity?

Cherish your friends and family as if your life depended on it. Because it does.

Mediocrity triumphs because it presents itself as democratic and because it is dull, and so for many does not seem worth struggling against.

Mediocrity is always in a rush; but whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing with consideration. For genius is nothing more nor less than doing well what anyone can do badly.

Merely to have survived is not an index of excellence.

Mediocrity is contextual.

Mix sheer hypocrisy with mediocrity, You play it safe every time...

Perhaps it's true that I'm very hard on myself, but that's better than exhibiting mediocre work... too few were satisfactory enough to trouble the public with.

I have a deathly fear of mediocrity and that nips at my heels and gets me into a lot of trouble.

Embracing mediocrity is not the way to improve schools.

There's just a lot of mediocrity out there. It's going to be real tough year for the committee.

People sometimes disagree. I don't think you can have healthy relationships without disagreements and an organization is not going to evolve beyond mediocrity without them. This is not the same organization that Theo left. There was enough discord then to give Theo legitimate reasons to move on.

Anybody who accepts mediocrity -- in school, on the job, in life -- is a person who compromises, and when the leader compromises, the whole organization compromises.

The U.S. ranks behind virtually every other developed country when it comes to seat belt use, and never has mediocrity been so deadly for a nation.

All of us are pushing the envelope. All of us are going to go for gold or get nothing. Mediocrity is not going to cut it.

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

Do not accept mediocrity from yourselves, do not accept it from your teachers and do not accept it from your elected officials.

That's a good thing. That's how you should look at football. If you don't have anything to compare, you start to cheer for watered-down things. If you don't have standard bearers then you're going to allow mediocrity to be looked at as great.

Nothing is more expensive than mediocrity.

Everything about mediocrity kills me.

An artist would not rise above the mediocrity if he condemns it.

Fear of failure is a ticket to mediocrity. If you’re not failing from time to time, you’re not pushing yourself. And if you’re not pushing yourself, you’re coasting.

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.

Each time a mediocre singer performs, he is saying, in effect, "This is good enough for you." The audience, thrust into that familiar American mood of knowing something is wrong but not knowing what it is, unconsciously absorbs the insult and projects it back onto the mediocre performer in the form of inattention, rudeness and noise.

Golf asks something of a man. It makes one loathe mediocrity. It seems to say, "If you are going to keep company with me, don't embarrass me.

Forget the fountain of youth, pal of mine. You can live to be a thousand, and it won't matter. Mediocrities like you deserve immortality.