Quotes About Mediocrity

Mediocrity doesn't mean average intelligence, it means an average intelligence that resents and envies its betters.

The bar is so low in rap - mediocrity is king!

The essence of business to me is great people run great companies. Mediocre people don't do a very good job.

It is the mistaken idea that if I reward mediocrity, I will curtail the person's aspirations to be better. That is a commonly held myth that keeps some parents from verbally affirming children. Of course, it's untrue.

Forget the fountain of youth, pal of mine. You can live to be a thousand, and it won't matter. Mediocrities like you deserve immortality.

By a peculiar thermometric adjustment, when a woman's talent is at zero, journalistic approbation is at the boiling pitch; when she attains mediocrity, it is already at no more than summer heat; and if ever she reaches excellence, critical enthusiasm drops to the freezing point.

Technology is a bit of a double-edged sword. Used right, it's a wonderful tool, but unfortunately, it makes it easier for a lot of mediocre people to get really crappy ideas out.

There's a lot of mediocrity being celebrated, and a lot of wonderful stuff being ignored or discouraged.

There aren't enough people who are passionate with what they do. They're content just going through life being mediocre, being average. They don't want to thrive. They don't want to strive for greater. They're happy being where they are.

The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind.

The function of genius is not to give new answers, but to pose new questions which time and mediocrity can resolve.

You don't have enough time to be both unhappy & mediocre. It's not just pointless; it's painful.

Three quarters of our intellectual performances are no more than decorations upon a void; I wondered if that increasing vacuity was due to the lowering of intelligence or to moral decline; whatever the cause, mediocrity of mind was matched almost everywhere by shocking selfishness and dishonesty.

Il mio insegnante (un uomo assai mediocre, ma pieno di buona volontà) consigliava mia madre di mandarmi all'estero a perfezionare la mia educazione musicale. Sapevo che vi avrei trovato difficile l'esistenza; ciononostante desideravo partire. Abbiamo tanti legami con luoghi dove abbiamo vissuto che ci sembra più facile, lasciandoli, lasciare noi stessi.

podría satisfacer su curiosidad morbosa, su apetito chismográfico, ese placer inmenso que produce a los mediocres, la mayoría de la humanidad, saber que los famosos, los respetables, las celebridades, los decentes, están hechos también del mismo barro mugriento que los demás.

La literatura es puro artificio, pero la gran literatura consigue disimularlo y la mediocre lo delata.

No es el mundo de la burguesía, sino algo más ancho, que cubre transversalmente las clases sociales, lo que Madame Bovary convierte en materia central de la novela: el reino de la mediocridad, el universo gris del hombre sin cualidades. Sólo por esto merecería la novela de Flaubert ser considerada fundadora de la novela moderna, casi toda ella erigida en torno a la esmirriada silueta del antihéroe.

El socialismo democrático había ido aletargando al país de la Revolución industrial, que languidecía ahora en una monótona mediocridad

To avoid criticism: Say noting, do nothing, be nothing.

It is not until an age has receded into history, and all its mediocrity has dropped away from it, that we can see it as it is — as a group of men of genius. We forget the immense amount of twaddle that the great epochs produced.

Con sólo temer a la mediocridad, ya se está a salvo: he aquí el consuelo que usted me ofrece. Mas yo le pregunto: ¿A salvo de qué? ¿No se estará a salvo en la certeza de no ser un mediocre? ¿Qué importa lo que uno teme o deja de temer? ¿Acaso lo más importante no es que las cosas sean efectivamente como tememos que sean?

I'm not sure that I shall. I'm trying to develop my own large capacity for dullness and contentment. I've failed at every positive thing I've tried. I'd better 'settle down,' as they call it, and be satisfied to be—nothing.

Babbitt looked up irritably from the comic strips in the Evening Advocate. They composed his favorite literature and art, these illustrated chronicles in which Mr. Mutt hit Mr. Jeff with a rotten egg, and Mother corrected Father's vulgarisms by means of a rolling-pin. With the solemn face of a devotee, breathing heavily through his open mouth, he plodded nightly through every picture, and during the rite he detested interruptions.

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