Mediocrity Quotes - page 8

Mediocrity is underrated. (Mary-Louise Parker)
The difference between greatness and mediocrity is often how an individual views a mistake. View quote
Nelson Boswell
I find mediocrity hard. I find that whole area difficult. I'm a very passionate person; I care very much about what I do. I believe I give it a lot, so it's gotta be good; otherwise, what's the point? View quote
Phoebe Philo
I have a horror of not rising above mediocrity. View quote
Robert Baldwin
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. View quote
William Hurt
Moderation? It's mediocrity, fear, and confusion in disguise. It's the devil's dilemma. It's neither doing nor not doing. It's the wobbling compromise that makes no one happy. Moderation is for the bland, the apologetic, for the fence-sitters of the world afraid to take a stand. It's for those afraid to laugh or cry, for those afraid to live or die. Moderation...is lukewarm tea, the devil's own brew. View quote
Dan Millman
Measures should be enacted which, without violating the rights of property, would reduce extreme wealth towards a state of mediocrity, and raise extreme indigence towards a state of comfort. View quote
James Madison
Mediocrity doesn't mean average intelligence, it means an average intelligence that resents and envies its betters. View quote
Ayn Rand
Mediocrity is a constant, as one Russian writer put it. Russians have a way with aphorisms. They probably spend all winter thinking them up. View quote
Haruki Murakami
Mediocrity triumphs because it presents itself as democratic and because it is dull, and so for many does not seem worth struggling against. View quote
Anthony Daniels (psychiatrist)
A grand absurdity, a great deception, a delusion of momentous proportions based on preposterous notions and on ideas whose time should never have come. Simplicity, grossly distorted and complicated. Insanity, passed off as logic. Grandiose schemes built on falsehoods with the morality of Ponzi and Madoff. Evil described as virtue. Ignorance pawned off as wisdom. Destruction and impoverishment in the name of humanitarianism. Violence, the tool of change. Preventive wars used as a road to peace. Tolerance delivered by government guns. Reactionary views in the guise of progress. An empire replacing the republic. Slavery sold as liberty. Excellence and virtue traded for mediocrity. Socialism to save capitalism. A government out of control, unrestrained by the constitution, the rule of law or morality. Bickering over petty politics as we descend into chaos. (Ron Paul)
The history of an art is the history of masterwork, not of failures, or mediocrity. View quote
Ezra Pound
The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity. View quote
James Fenimore Cooper
The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity, since the tastes, knowledge, and principles of the majority form the tribunal of appeal. View quote
James Fenimore Cooper
Let a certain saving ambition invade our souls so that, impatient of mediocrity, we pant after the highest things and (since, if we will, we can) bend all our efforts to their attainment. View quote
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
NOTORIETY, n. The fame of one's competitor for public honors. The kind of renown most accessible and acceptable to mediocrity. A Jacob's-ladder leading to the vaudeville stage, with angels ascending and descending. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
Education in India has made monumental progress since Independence but continues to face daunting challenges at multiple levels, particularly in terms of quality, infrastructure and dropout rates. We have islands of excellence floating in a sea of mediocrity. View quote
Shashi Tharoor
Organisation is, after all, only a means to an end. When it becomes an end in itself, it kills the spirit and the vital initiative of its members and sets up that domination by mediocrity which is the characteristic of all bureaucracies. View quote
Rudolf Rocker
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. View quote
Hunter S. Thompson
Low standards are a tactic that takes pressure off teachers' unions by accepting mediocrity and failure for kids. View quote
Jeb Bush
People settle for mediocrity for one reason - they're lazy. (Donald Trump)
Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike. View quote
Margot Fonteyn
There's so much in the 21st century that is stymied by bureaucracy and mediocrity and committee. View quote
Benedict Cumberbatch
Every memorable act in the history of the world is a triumph of enthusiasm. Nothing great was ever achieved without it because it gives any challenge or any occupation, no mater how frightening or difficult, a new meaning. Without enthusiasm you are doomed to a life of mediocrity but with it you can accomplish miracles. View quote
Og Mandino
What I always hated and detested and cursed above all things was this contentment, this healthiness and comfort, this carefully preserved optimism of the middle classes, this fat and prosperous brood of mediocrity. View quote
Hermann Hesse