Quotes About Mediocrity

Quit or be exceptional. Average is for losers.

People settle. They settle for less than they are capable of.

Mediocre is merely a failed attempt to be really good.

The next time you catch yourself being average when you feel like quitting, realize that you have only two good choices: Quit or be exceptional. Average is for losers.

Finding security in mediocrity is an exhausting process. You can work only so many hours, fret only so much. Being a slightly better typist or a slightly faster coder is insufficient. You're always looking over your shoulder, always trying to be a little less mediocre than the guy next to you. It wears you out.

Quitting is difficult. Quitting requires you to acknowledge that you're never going to be #1 in the world. At least not at this. So it's easier just to put it off, not admit it, settle for mediocre.

People settle. They settle for less than they are capable of. Organizations settle too. For good enough instead of best in the world. If you're not going to put in the effort to be my best possible choice, why bother?

That voice is the resistance your lizard brain and it wants you to be average (and safe)

The most common response to the Dip is to play it safe. To do ordinary work, blameless work, work that's beyond reproach. When faced with the Dip, most people suck it up and try to average their way to success.

Average feels safe, but it's not. It's invisible. It's the last choice—the path of least resistance. The temptation to be average is just another kind of quitting…the kind to be avoided. You deserve better than average.

Remarkable visions and genuine insight are always met with resistance. And when you start to make progress, your efforts are met with even more resistance. Products, services, career paths—whatever it is, the forces for mediocrity will align to stop you, forgiving no errors and never backing down until it's over. If it were any other way, it would be easy. And if it were any other way, everyone would do it and your work would ultimately be devalued.

It's easier to be mediocre than it is to confront reality and quit. Quitting is difficult. Quitting requires you to acknowledge that you're never going to be #1 in the world. At least not at this. So it's easier just to put it off, not admit it, settle for mediocre. What a waste.

If you actually work for an organization that insists you be mediocre, that enforces conformity in all its employees, why stay? What are you building? The work can't possibly be enjoyable or challenging, your skills aren't increasing, and your value in the marketplace decreases each day you stay there. And if history is a guide, your job there isn't as stable as you think, because average companies making average products for average people are under huge strain.

We've been trained to believe that mediocre obedience is a genetic fact for most of the population, but it's interesting to note that this trait doesn't show up until after a few years of schooling.

We're hitting an asymptote, a natural ceiling for how cheaply and how fast we can deliver uninspired work. Becoming more average, more quick, and more cheap is not as productive as it used to be.

Settling is no fun. It's a malignant habit, a slippery slope that takes you to mediocrity.

Settling is no fun. It's a malignant habit, a slippery slope that takes you to mediocrity. Managers settle all the time. They don't really have a choice because there are too many competing priorities.

To run with the majority during the race of life is to be mediocre all of the time and wrong most of the time.

I would rather spend my entire life doing nothing than have my name attached to something mediocre.

not bad isn't good enough, not bad can get you killed.

Mere adequacy is never adequate.

the great is seldom a deterrent to the mediocre

Anyone could be in the orchestra, or sports team, or arts club at my school. It was precisely the kind of inclusivity that now meets with a sort of scorn and derision as a prizes-for-all culture that generates only mediocrity. There's something so insulting about the idea that including lots of people means mediocrity.

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius.