Mediocrity Quotes
More Mediocrity Quotes
Cognitive consonance is what writing in the Age of the idiot is all about. The key to success in the scribbling profession is to strike the right balance of mediocrity in writing and thinking, which invariably entails echoing one of two party lines, poorly.
ilana mercer— “National Review Eunuchs,” RT, April 13, 2012.
War is a condition of progress; the whip-cut that prevents a country from going to sleep and forces satisfied mediocrity to shake off its apathy.
— 1871La Re forme intellectuelle et morale.
A third-rate political wheel-horse, with the face of a moving-picture actor, the intelligence of a respectable agricultural implement dealer, and the imagination of a lodge joiner? A benign blanka decent, harmless, laborious, hollow-headed mediocrity.
Fred hobson— Said of President Warren G. Harding. Quoted by Fred Hobson in Mencken: A Life (1994).
Imposing an alleged uniform general method upon everybody breeds mediocrity in all but the very exceptional. And measuring originality by deviation from the mass breeds eccentricity in them.
john dewey— John Dewey, Democracy and Education, Section 13: The Nature of Method, Method as General and as Individual (1916)
The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity. The inventor did it because it was natural to him, and so in him it has a charm. In the imitator something else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty, to come short of another man's.
ralph waldo emerson— The Divinity College Address (1838)
I thought I might teach philosophy but the atmosphere of a college faculty repelled me; the few islands of greatness seemed to be washed by seas of pettiness and mediocrity.
i. f. stone— I.F. Stone's Bi-Weekly (1971-12-14)
One would like to be grand and heroic, if one could; but if not, why try at all? One wants to be very something, very great, very heroic; or if not that, then at least very stylish and very fashionable. It is this everlasting mediocrity that bores me.
harriet beecher stowe— "Dress, or Who Makes the Fashions" in The Atlantic Monthly (1864).
It appeared that the one area in which Sir Bob excelled was anxiety. He was marked out by his relentless ability to find fault with others’ mediocrity suggesting that a certain kind of intelligence may at heart be nothing more or less than a superior capacity for dissatisfaction.
Alain de Botton— p. 284 (The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (2009))
The real Antichrist is he who turns the wine of an original idea into the water of mediocrity.
— Eric Hoffer, “Thoughts of Eric Hoffer, Including: ‘Absolute Faith Corrupts Absolutely,’” The New York Times Magazine, April 25, 1971, p. 60.
In truth, I am nothing but a plodding mediocrity — please observe, a plodding mediocrity — for a mere mediocrity does not go very far, but a plodding one gets quite a distance. There is joy in that success, and a distinction can come from courage, fidelity and industry.
benjamin n. cardozo— As quoted in Nine Old Men (1936) by Drew Pearson and Robert Sharon Allen, p. 221.
A good number of works owe their success to the mediocrity of their authors' ideas, which match the mediocrity of those of the general public.
nicolas chamfort— Reflections
Great artists are people who find the way to be themselves in their art. Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike.
margot fonteyn— p. 81 (Margot Fonteyn : Autobiography? (1975))
You know you've reached a new plateau of group mediocrity when even a Canadian is alarmed by your lack of individuality.
sarah vowell— p. 144 (Assassination Vacation (2005))
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 (1971), No. 5
Parodies are hard to do well, as is shown by the mediocrity of so many recent attempts. No matter how ripe a genre is for satirizing, unless you know how to do it, there are no guarantees.
james berardinelli— Review of Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993)
In the first manifesto that we launched on the 8th of March, 1910, from the stage of the Chiarella Theater in Turin,1 we expressed our deep-rooted disgust with, our proud contempt for, and our happy rebellion against vulgarity, mediocrity, the fanatical and snobbish worship of all that is old, attitudes which are suffocating Art in our Country.
Umberto Boccioni— In: Rainey et al. (eds.) Futurism: An Anthology, (2009), p. 64 : Lead paragraph
Since all models are wrong the scientist cannot obtain a "correct" one by excessive elaboration. On the contrary following William of Occam he should seek an economical description of natural phenomena. Just as the ability to devise simple but evocative models is the signature of the great scientist so overelaboration and overparameterization is often the mark of mediocrity.
george e. p. box— p.792 (Science and Statistics (1976))
A well proportioned mind is one which shows no particular bias; one of which we may safely say that it will never cause its owner to be confined as a madman, tortured as a heretic, or crucified as a blasphemer. Also, on the other hand, that it will never cause him to be applauded as a prophet, revered as a priest, or exalted as a king. Its usual blessings are happiness and mediocrity.
thomas hardy— Bk. III, ch. 2.
Good behavior is the last refuge of mediocrity.
henry s. haskins— p. 135 (Meditations in Wall Street (1940))
Virtue is defined to be mediocrity, of which either extreme is vice.
rutherford b. hayes— Diary (21 December 1843), referring to Aristotle's Ethics.
For I think it is the case with genius that it is not when quiescent so very much above mediocrity as the difference between the two might lead us to think, but that it has the power and privilege of rising from that level to a height utterly far from mediocrity: in other words that its greatness is that it can be so great.
gerard manley hopkins— Letter to A.W.M. Baillie (September 10, 1864)
To secure approval one must remain within the bounds of conventional mediocrity. Whatever lies beyond, whether it be greater insight and virtue, or greater stolidity and vice, is condemned. The noblest men, like the worst criminals, have been done to death.
john lancaster spalding— p. 196 (Aphorisms and Reflections (1901))
It was as the supreme expression of the mediocrity of the apparatus that Stalin himself rose to his position.
— Ch. 40 (My Life (1930))
It was as the supreme expression of the mediocrity of the apparatus that Stalin himself rose to his position.
— Ch. 40 (My Life (1930))
There is real magic in enthusiasm. It spells the difference between mediocrity and accomplishment. ... It gives warmth and good feeling to all your personal relationships.
— Norman Vincent Peale, as quoted in Spiritual Literacy: Reading the Sacred in Everyday Life (1998) by Frederic Brussat and Mary Ann Brussat
Those who aim at faultless regularity will only produce mediocrity, and no one ever approaches perfection except by stealth, and unknown to themselves.
— William Hazlitt, "Thoughts on Taste", The Edinburgh Magazine, July 1819, final paragraph.
Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success.
Francis Bacon— Francis Bacon, Essay XLII, Of Youth and Age.
Politicians fascinate because they constitute such a paradox ; they are an elite that accomplishes mediocrity for the public good.
— George Will (2009), in Embracing Your Inner Mediocrity: Making Peace with Reality, p.19
