Quotes and Sayings about Mediocrity
"Radio is a bag of mediocrity where little men with carbon minds wallow in sluice of their own making."
- Fred Allen
(Related: Men, Mediocrity)
"Literature is air, and I'm suffocating in mediocrity."
- Armand Assante
(Related: Literature, Mediocrity)
"I have a horror of not rising above mediocrity."
- Robert Baldwin
(Related: Horror, Mediocrity)
"Renouncement: the heroism of mediocrity."
- Natalie Clifford Barney
(Related: Heroism, Mediocrity)
"Creative Artists Agency put together a project of extraordinary mediocrity and colossal stupidity. Otherwise, it was great."
- Mikhail Baryshnikov
(Related: Artists, Mediocrity, Project, Stupidity)
"In America, I would say New York and New Orleans are the two most interesting food towns. In New Orleans, they don't have a bad deli. There's no mediocrity accepted."
- Mario Batali
(Related: Food, America, Mediocrity)
"Only mediocrity can be trusted to be always at its best."
- Max Beerbohm
(Related: Mediocrity)
"It's a sign of mediocrity when you demonstrate gratitude with moderation."
- Roberto Benigni
(Related: Gratitude, Mediocrity, Moderation)
"Excellence is a better teacher than mediocrity. The lessons of the ordinary are everywhere. Truly profound and original insights are to be found only in studying the exemplary."
- Warren G. Bennis
(Related: Excellence, Mediocrity)
"Perseverance - a lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an inglorious success."
- Ambrose Bierce
(Related: Success, Perseverance, Virtue, Mediocrity)
"Only mediocrity of enjoyment is allowed to man."
- Hugh Blair
(Related: Enjoyment, Man, Mediocrity)
"When small men attempt great enterprises, they always end by reducing them to the level of their mediocrity."
- Napoleon Bonaparte
(Related: Men, End, Mediocrity)
"The difference between greatness and mediocrity is often how an individual views a mistake."
- Nelson Boswell
(Related: Mistake, Greatness, Difference, Mediocrity)
"Media, the plural of mediocrity."
- Jimmy Breslin
(Related: Media, Mediocrity)
"There are certain things in which mediocrity is not to be endured, such as poetry, music, painting, public speaking."
- Jean de la Bruyere
(Related: Music, Poetry, Mediocrity, Painting, Public, Public speaking)
"People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents."
- Andrew Carnegie
(Related: People, Content, Mediocrity)
"Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success."
- Dale Carnegie
(Related: Age, Business, Home, Men, Success, Adventure, Content, Mediocrity)
"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."
- Kim Cattrall
(Related: Work, Genius, Vision, Film, Mediocrity, Will, Worth)
"A talent somewhat above mediocrity, shrewd and not too sensitive, is more likely to rise in the world than genius."
- Charles Horton Cooley
(Related: Talent, Genius, Mediocrity, World)
"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."
- Jackie Cooper
(Related: Work, Hope, Dying, Mediocrity, Now, Public, Reason, Right)
"The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity."
- James F. Cooper
(Related: Mediocrity)
"All greatness of character is dependent on individuality. The man who has no other existence than that which he partakes in common with all around him, will never have any other than an existence of mediocrity."
- James F. Cooper
(Related: Character, Greatness, Existence, Individuality, Man, Mediocrity, Will)
"Mediocrity requires aloofness to preserve its dignity."
- Charles G. Dawes
(Related: Dignity, Mediocrity)
"Mediocrity can talk, but it is for genius to observe."
- Benjamin Disraeli
(Related: Genius, Mediocrity, Talk)
"Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius."
- Arthur Conan Doyle
(Related: Talent, Genius, Mediocrity, Nothing)
"I try to keep an open mind but I'm so tired of the mediocrity."
- Clea Duvall
(Related: Mediocrity, Mind, Open)
"Mediocrity in politics is not to be despised. Greatness is not needed."
- Hans Magnus Enzensberger
(Related: Politics, Greatness, Mediocrity)
"Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike."
- Margot Fonteyn
(Related: Art, Life, Mediocrity, Pretension)
"Great artists are people who find the way to be themselves in their art. Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike."
- Margot Fonteyn
(Related: Art, Life, People, Artists, Mediocrity, Pretension)
"The idea for which this nation stands will not survive if the highest goal free man can set themselves is an amiable mediocrity. Excellence implies striving for the highest standards in every phase of life."
- John W. Gardner
(Related: Life, Idea, Goal, Excellence, Man, Mediocrity, Nation, Will)
"There is always a heavy demand for fresh mediocrity. In every generation the least cultivated taste has the largest appetite."
- Paul Gauguin
(Related: Appetite, Mediocrity, Taste)
"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."
- William E. Gladstone
(Related: Successful, Mediocrity, Now, Prose, Writers)
"Mediocrity would always win by force of numbers, but it would win only more mediocrity."
- Ellen Glasgow
(Related: Force, Mediocrity, Numbers)
"The only sin is mediocrity."
- Martha Graham
(Related: Mediocrity, Sin)
"Good behavior is the last refuge of mediocrity."
- Henry S. Haskins
(Related: Behavior, Mediocrity)
"Virtue is defined to be mediocrity, of which either extreme is vice."
- Rutherford B. Hayes
(Related: Virtue, Extreme, Mediocrity, Vice)
"Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them."
- Joseph Heller
(Related: Men, Mediocrity)
"Some people are born mediocre, some people achieve mediocrity, and some people have mediocrity thrust upon them."
- Joseph Heller
(Related: People, 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."
- Bruce Henderson
(Related: Policy, Corporate, Mediocrity)
"The real Antichrist is he who turns the wine of an original idea into the water of mediocrity."
- Eric Hoffer
(Related: Idea, Mediocrity, Water, Wine)
"There is a sacred horror about everything grand. It is easy to admire mediocrity and hills; but whatever is too lofty, a genius as well as a mountain, an assembly as well as a masterpiece, seen too near, is appalling."
- Victor Hugo
(Related: Genius, Horror, Mediocrity)
"Being famous is not something that would make me feel successful - unless one was striving for mediocrity."
- William Hurt
(Related: Successful, Being, Famous, 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."
- William Hurt
(Related: Financial, Being, Energy, Mediocrity)
"In the republic of mediocrity, genius is dangerous."
- Robert Green Ingersoll
(Related: Genius, Mediocrity)
"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."
- Tahar Ben Jelloun
(Related: Intellectuals, Mediocrity, State)
"Malice is only another name for mediocrity."
- Patrick Kavanagh
(Related: Malice, Mediocrity, Name)
"Anyone in the humor business isn't thinking clearly if he doesn't surround himself with idea people. Otherwise, you settle for mediocrity - or you burn yourself out."
- Hank Ketcham
(Related: Business, Humor, People, Idea, Mediocrity, Thinking)
"We gain nothing by being with such as ourselves. We encourage one another in mediocrity. I am always longing to be with men more excellent than myself."
- Charles Lamb
(Related: Men, Being, Gain, Longing, Mediocrity, Nothing)
"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."
- Ernst Lubitsch
(Related: Work, Mediocrity)
"The present reeks of mediocrity and the atom bomb."
- Rene Magritte
(Related: Mediocrity, Present)
"We shouldn't accept mediocrity as the best a politician can do."
- Joe Manchin
(Related: Mediocrity)
"There is an infinite difference between a little wrong and just right, between fairly good and the best, between mediocrity and superiority."
- Orison Swett Marden
(Related: Superiority, Difference, Infinite, Mediocrity, Right, Wrong)
"Let America first praise mediocrity even, in her children, before she praises... the best excellence in the children of any other land."
- Herman Melville
(Related: America, Children, Excellence, First, Land, Mediocrity, Praise)
"The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind."
- John Stuart Mill
(Related: Power, Mankind, Mediocrity, World)
"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."
- Vladimir Nabokov
(Related: Mediocrity, Nothing, World)
"Nothing is as approved as mediocrity, the majority has established it and it fixes it fangs on whatever gets beyond it either way."
- Blaise Pascal
(Related: Majority, Mediocrity, Nothing)
"There is a real magic in enthusiasm. It spells the difference between mediocrity and accomplishment."
- Norman Vincent Peale
(Related: Enthusiasm, Accomplishment, Difference, Magic, Mediocrity)
"There's a lot of mediocrity being celebrated, and a lot of wonderful stuff being ignored or discouraged."
- Sean Penn
(Related: Being, Mediocrity)
"A common danger tends to concord. Communism is the exploitation of the strong by the weak. In Communism, inequality comes from placing mediocrity on a level with excellence."
- Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
(Related: Communism, Danger, Excellence, Exploitation, Inequality, Mediocrity)
"The world doesn't need any more mediocrity or hedged bets."
- Anne Rice
(Related: Mediocrity, World)
"The function of a genius is not to give new answers, but to pose new questions which time and mediocrity can resolve."
- Hugh Trevor Roper
(Related: Time, Genius, Answers, Mediocrity, Questions)
"Jealousy is the tribute mediocrity pays to genius."
- Fulton J. Sheen
(Related: Genius, Jealousy, Mediocrity, Tribute)
"Go for the gold: better one great column and some undistinguished ones than constant mediocrity."
- Allan Sloan
(Related: Mediocrity)
"Most of our pocket wisdom is conceived for the use of mediocre people, to discourage them from ambitious attempts, and generally console them in their mediocrity."
- Robert Louis Stevenson
(Related: Wisdom, People, Mediocrity)
"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."
- Harriet Beecher Stowe
(Related: Mediocrity)
"Politicians fascinate because they constitute such a paradox; they are an elite that accomplishes mediocrity for the public good."
- George Will
(Related: Mediocrity, Paradox, Politicians, Public)
"Mechanization best serves mediocrity."
- Frank Lloyd Wright
(Related: Mediocrity)