quotations about mediocrity
The emotion most profoundly experienced by ambitious mediocrity is envy at the success of industrious merit; every word of praise he hears bestowed on the deserving is bewailed as a leaf torn from his own scanty garland.
ELIAS LYMAN MAGOON
Proverbs for the People
A mediocre idea acted on has 100 times the chance for success than the great idea left buried.
ROBERT CABRAL
Mastering the Art of Success
Our democratic dogma has leveled not only all voters but all leaders; we delight to show that living geniuses are only mediocrities, and that dead ones are myths.
WILL DURANT
The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time
Mediocrity is so common and pervasive that those who are labeled as genius or exceptional have to do only a little extra.
MYLES MUNROE
Myles Munroe Devotional & Journal: 365 Days to Realize Your Potential
Mediocrity is another form of hell, perhaps not as intense as misery, but hell none the less. To accept a life of mediocrity is to accept being less than I Am. It is to deny the fulfilling of my Divine Purpose. To deny this is for the light in my soul to be dimmed or even extinguished and I enter into a life of limit.
STEVEN DIERINGER
I Am the Creator: Empowering Life with Purpose, Passion, and Joy
Mediocrity is not allowed to poets, either by the gods or men.
HORACE
attributed, Day's Collacon
Caution is the path to mediocrity.
FRANK HERBERT
God Emperor of Dune
As it is better to excel in any single art than to arrive only at mediocrity in several, so moderate skill in several is to be preferred where one cannot attain to perfection in any.
PLINY THE YOUNGER
attributed, Day's Collacon
We mistrust anything that too strongly challenges our ideal of mediocrity.
ROBERTSON DAVIES
The Noble Greeks
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 Greatest Miracle in the World
There is plenty of room at the top because very few people care to travel beyond the average route. And so most of us seem satisfied to remain within the confines of mediocrity.
NNAMDI AZIKIWE
My Odyssey: An Autobiography
It must be confessed, however, that sentiment is the charm, as it always is the affection of mediocrity, which, without it, would often be insufferable, and yet with it, is as often ridiculous.
LORD ACTON
Acton; Or, The Circle of Life
Mediocrity has more interpreters and sympathizers than genius; for that which the many call genius has not the merit of being a decent imitation of it.
HERMAN HOOKER
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
"Sundays of a Bourgeois"
It is not accidental that mediocrity is the flesh of cultures. It covers the skeletal structure of expendability. Mediocrity is one of the answers in people's attempt to reduce their feelings of worthlessness. It is not a genetic phenomenon, instead it is a social statement.
BENJAMIN M. BRAGINSKY
Dynamics of Expendability
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.
SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
The Valley of Fear
The appearance of a single great genius is more than equivalent to the birth of a hundred mediocrities.
CESARE LOMBROSO
The Man of Genius
Mediocrity's like a spot on a shirt--it never comes off.
HARUKI MURAKAMI
Dance Dance Dance
Mediocrity in external circumstances is exempt from all the evils which attend either poverty or riches.
GEORGE CRABB
Crabb's English Synonymes
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. And since mediocre people constitute the bulk of humanity, this is no doubt very properly so.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers