MEDIOCRITY QUOTES II

quotations about mediocrity

Mediocrity is not the average but the conformity to the average in the absence of desires, aspirations, and inner strivings for one's highest value and meaning in life.

AVIKAL COSTANTINO

Without a Mask: Discovering Your Authentic Self


Mediocrity not unfrequently wins the honors and emoluments that talent often aspires to in vain. It is the great golden rule of cautious prudence, and sure, undeviating wisdom. Its days abound with peace, and its nights with sweet repose. While the great and lofty are hazarding their safety in the clouds, and inhaling attenuated vapors, the humble but prudent advocates of mediocrity securely rest upon the earth, not where grow the reeds and flowers, but amidst harvest fields and well-stored granaries.

LORD ACTON

Acton; Or, The Circle of Life

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The mass do not now take their opinions from dignitaries in Church or State, from ostensible leaders, or from books. Their thinking is done for them by men much like themselves, addressing them or speaking in their name, on the spur of the moment, through the newspapers. I am not complaining of all this. I do not assert that anything better is compatible, as a general rule with the present low state of the human mind. But that does not hinder the government of mediocrity from being mediocre government.

JOHN STUART MILL

On Liberty

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If one wants to be active, one must not be afraid of going wrong, one must not be afraid of making mistakes now and then. Many people think that they will become good just by doing no harm -- but that's a lie.... That way lies stagnation, mediocrity.

VINCENT VAN GOGH

letter to Theo van Gogh, October 1884

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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

Stello


I'd made it back to the land of the living. No matter how boring or mediocre a world it might be, this was it.

HARUKI MURAKAMI

A Wild Sheep Chase

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

JOSEPH HELLER

Catch-22

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It's a disease. Nobody thinks or feels or cares any more; nobody gets excited or believes in anything except their own comfortable little Goddamn mediocrity.

RICHARD YATES

Revolutionary Road


There is no greater consolation for mediocrity than that the genius is not immortal.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe

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Mediocrity is excellent to the eyes of mediocre people.

JOSEPH JOUBERT

Pensées of Joubert

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Only mediocrity can be trusted to be always at its best.

MAX BEERBOHM

Conversations with Max

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We are the mediocre,
we are the half givers,
we are the half lovers,
we are the savourless salt.

Break the hard crust
of complacency.
Quicken in us
the sharp grace of desire.

CARYLL HOUSELANDER

attributed, Soul Weavings

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The art of putting well into play mediocre qualities often begets more reputation than true merit achieves.

ROCHEFOUCAULD

attributed, Day's Collacon

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Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre.

ALBERT CAMUS

Happy Death

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Mediocre men often mistake aspiration for inspiration; they have first-class ambition along with third-rate powers; and these coming together make a most ill-matched pair of legs, which bear a person along awkwardly in his path of life, and expose him to endless mortifications.

WILLIAM MATHEWS

Hints on Success in Life


In sober truth, whatever homage may be professed, or even paid, to real or supposed mental superiority, the general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind.

JOHN STUART MILL

On Liberty

Tags: John Stuart Mill


It is the quality and intensity of the dream only which raises men above the biological norm; and it is fidelity to the dream which differentiates the exceptional figure, the man of heroic stature, from the muddling, aimless mediocrities about him.

BURTON RASCOE

introduction, Chivalry


A mediocre failure is as insufferable as a mediocre success.

TOM ROBBINS

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

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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.

ALAIN DE BOTTON

The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work

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Do you know the hallmark of a second rater? It's resentment of another man's achievement. 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.

AYN RAND

Atlas Shrugged

Tags: Ayn Rand