Mediocrity Quotes

People don't want to think. And the deeper they get into trouble, the less they want to think. But by some sort of instinct, they feel that they ought to and it makes them feel guilty. So they'll bless and follow anyone who gives them a justification for not thinking. Anyone who makes a virtue - a highly intellectual virtue - out of what they know to be their sin, their weakness and their guilt... They envy achievement, and their dream of greatness is a world where all men have become their acknowledged inferiors. They don't know that that dream is the infallible proof of mediocrity, because that sort of world is what the man of achievement would not be able to bear

~ Ayn Rand

It's because I haven't courage,' said Samuel. 'I could never quite take the responsibility. When the Lord God did not call my name, I might have called his name - but I did not. There you have the difference between greatness and mediocrity. It's not an uncommon disease. But it's nice for a mediocre man to know that greatness must be the loneliest state in the world.''I'd think there are degrees of greatness,' Adam said.'I don't think so,' said Samuel. 'That would be like saying there is a little bigness. No. I believe when you come to that responsibility the hugeness and you are alone to make your choice. On one side you have warmth and companionship and sweet understanding, and on the other - cold, lonely greatness. There you make your choice. I'm glad I chose mediocrity, but how am I to say what reward might have come with the other? None of my children will be great either, except perhaps Tom. He's suffering over the choosing right now. It's a painful thing to watch. And somewhere in me I want him to say yes. Isn't that strange? A father to want his son condemned to greatness! What selfishness that must be.

~ John Steinbeck

Those touchy mediocrities who sit trembling lest someone's work prove greater than their own - they have no inkling of the loneliness that comes when you reach the top. The loneliness for an equal - for a mind to respect and an achievement to admire.

~ Ayn Rand

Those touchy mediocrities who sit trembling lest someone's work prove greater than their own - they have no inkling of the loneliness that comes when you reach the top. The loneliness for an equal - for a mind to respect and an achievement to admire...They envy achievement, and their dream of greatness is a world where all men have become their acknowledged inferiors. They don't know that that dream is the infallible proof of mediocrity, because that sort of world is what the man of achievement would not be able to bear.

~ Ayn Rand

We need to get acquainted with mediocrity to notice greatness.

~ Olivier Magny

You are a manager nonetheless who you are. There is a business worth keeping and you are the manager of that business. Yes, the business of your life. There is a big asset worth managing. Yes, your choices. As a manager of your own life, your choices are your assets. They form the pivot for the doom or boom of the business of your life. Some will be great managers and others will collapse the business of their lives by their choices or stay in mediocrity with the business of their lives.

~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Ten years from now, no one is going to care how quickly the books came out. The only thing that will matter, the only thing anyone will remember, is how good they were. That's my main concern, and always will be.

~ George R.r. Martin

We like to stress the commonness of heroes. Essences seem undemocratic. We feel oppressed by the call to greatness. We regard an interest in glory or perfection as a sign of mental unhealthiness, and have decided that high achievers, who are called overachievers, owe their surplus ambition to a defect in mothering (either too little or too much). We want to admire but think we have a right not to be intimidated. We dislike feeling inferior to an ideal. So away with ideals, with essences. The only ideals allowed are healthy ones -- those everyone may aspire to, or comfortably imagine oneself possessing.

~ Susan Sontag

I made a big mistake, and I didn’t use it to make my life better. I used it to be okay with a life less lived. I used it to be okay with mediocrity and the mundane. And I didn’t make myself any better because of it.And that’s not okay with me.

~ Dan Pearce

Reading is a choice. The will to do depends the reader. We may or may not do it but when we kill reading, we kill a purposeful mind. Reading a page of a purposeful book per day is not only a great medicine to the mind but also a powerful antidote to ignorance and mediocrity

~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Religion asks followers to believe in things nobody can see, however, animal activists ask people to see things they can prove. When Christian animal and environmental activists finally demand that their church be better stewards over the world, we will see change. Until then, one percent of sermons will teach parishioners about the importance of being stewards over our animals in a year. Mega churches and corporate religious empires will continue to own stock in companies that pollute our earth and exploit our animals. Ignorance and hypocrisy will continue to corrupt the pureness of the Gospel. From here, we will not be truly “saved” because we choose not to save ourselves.

~ Shannon L. Alder

You have the army of mediocrities followed by the multitude of fools. As the mediocrities and the fools always form the immense majority, it is impossible for them to elect an intelligent government.

~ Guy De Maupassant

Most humans, in varying degrees, are already dead. In one way or another they have lost their dreams, their ambitions, their desire for a better life. They have surrendered their fight for self-esteem and they have compromised their great potential. They have settled for a life of mediocrity, days of despair and nights of tears. They are no more than living deaths confined to cemeteries of their choice. Yet they need not remain in that state. They can be resurrected from their sorry condition. They can each perform the greatest miracle in the world. They can each come back from the dead...

~ Og Mandino

The only sin is mediocrity.

~ Martha Graham

So many people can now write competent stories that the short story is in danger of dying of competence.

~ Flannery O'connor

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

~ Manoj Arora

Only the mediocre artist is always at his best.

~ Victor J. Banis

To simply survive appears to be the choice of the plodding hoards that wander all around me. Therefore, I’ve adamantly committed to never hoard hoards.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Often we don’t see the majesty of God’s design because we’re caught up in the mediocrity of our own designs.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Faith revels in the liberating fact that only a terribly miniscule part of life lies within the constricted confines of my reach, and that I am graciously invited out to live in a place beyond my grasp.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

The real zombie-apocalypse is the pandemic of drama and mediocrity.

~ Bryant Mcgill

To be of good quality, you have to excuse yourself from the presence of shallow and callow minded individuals.

~ Michael Bassey Johnson

But why diminish your soul being run-of-the-mill at something? Mediocrity: now there is ugliness for you. Mediocrity's a hairball coughed up on the Persian carpet of Creation.

~ Tom Robbins

When you lower the definition of success to such a level that any person can reach it, you don’t teach people to have big dreams; instead you inspirit mediocrity and nurture people’s inadequacies.

~ Shannon L. Alder

Mediocrity is Death.

~ Suleman Abdullah

Snark often functions as an enforcer of mediocrity and conformity. In its cozy knowingness, snark flatters you by assuming that you get the contemptuous joke. You've been admitted, or readmitted, to a club, though it may be the club of the second-rate.

~ David Denby

Acceptable hypocrisy is often called politeness.

~ Shannon L. Alder

Being our best is asking how can we take ourselves to the precipice of our own limits in any and every situation?

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

There exist words of mediocrity, songs of mediocrity, and life lessons of mediocrity. Advice of mediocrity, books of mediocrity and companions of mediocrity are also available.One may also meet songs of purpose that can make us ponder to wonder and advice filled with authority to dare in life. We may also hear life lessons that can challenge and change us. What do you listen to? If what you listen to will not make you, it will mar you.

~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

I admit that I myself am far from having a complete command of every topic I touch on, but my knowledge of my subject is always greater than the interest or the understanding of my auditors. You see, there is one very good thing about mankind; the mediocre masses make very few demands of the mediocrities of a higher order, submitting stupidly and cheerfully to their guidance

~ Alfred De Vigny

Life is too short to chase perfection, yet too long to be satisfied with mediocrity.

~ Russell Eric Dobda

There is something maddening about mediocrity that calls forth the worst in those who are forced to deal with it.

~ Moss Hart

it is not only what we have that enhance our dignity but what we do with what we have also magnifies our reputation to the highest level

~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

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.

~ Sarah Vowell

In the race of life I would rather to be around the best and sink than to be around mediocrity and swim.

~ Xela Ffonrims

The highest level than can be reached by a mediocre but experienced mind is a talent for uncovering the weaknesses of those greater than itself.

~ Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

I felt I was drawing close to that age, that place in life, where you realize one day what you'd told yourself was a Zen detachment turns out to be naked fear. You'd had one serious love relationship in your life and it had ended in tragedy, and the tragedy had broken something inside you. But instead of trying to repair the broken place, or at least really stop and look at it, you skated and joked. You had friends, you were a decent citizen. You hurt no one. And your life was somehow just about half of what it could be.

~ Roland Merullo

Attitude is your number one weapon against mediocrity.

~ Angela Lynne Craig

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

~ Gordon B. Hinckley

One should waste as little effort as possible on improving areas of low competence. It takes far more energy and work to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence.

~ Peter Drucker