Mediocrity Quotes
More Mediocrity Quotes
The generation of an infinite number of bogusly 'objective' sentences in an English of agonizing patchwork mediocrity is no cause for celebration, even if it eventually amounts to a Borgesian paraphrase of our entire universe. [...] I liked the internet better before. The mistakes had flavor, passion, transparent purpose.
— Jonathan Lethem, "All-Star Thinkers on Wikipedia's 10th Anniversary", The Atlantic, 13 January 2011
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.
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)
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).
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))
Only mediocrity can be trusted to be always at its best.
— Quoted in S N Behrman Conversations with Max (1960), but also attributed elsewhere to Jean Giraudoux and W Somerset Maugham.
The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity.
james fenimore cooper— 1838 The American Democrat,'On the Disadvantages of Democracy'.
It was the supreme expression of the mediocrity of the apparatus that Stalin himself rose to his position.
— 1930 My Life, p.501.
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", Edinburgh Magazine, July 1819, final paragraph
It is cruel to discover one's mediocrity only when it is too late.
— Ch. 51 (Of Human Bondage (1915))
Women who are either indisputably beautiful, or indisputably ugly, are best flattered upon the score of their understandings; but those who are in a state of mediocrity are best flattered upon their beauty, or at least their graces; for every woman who is not absolutely ugly thinks herself handsome.
stanhope, philip, 4th earl of chesterfield— September 5, 1748.
The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity.
james fenimore cooper— On the Disadvantages of Democracy
All greatness of character is dependent on individuality. The man who has no other existence than that which he partakes in common with all around him, will never have any other than an existence of mediocrity.
james fenimore cooper— On Individuality
We mistrust anything that too strongly challenges our ideal of mediocrity.
Robertson Davies— The Noble Greeks (1993)
Moderation, the Golden Mean, the Aristonmetron, is the secret of wisdom and of happiness. But it does not mean embracing an unadventurous mediocrity: rather it is an elaborate balancing-act, a feat of intellectual skill demanding constant vigilance. Its aim is a reconciliation of opposites.
Robertson Davies— "Aristonmetron" is an unusual formation of the Greek ? (ariston metron or metron ariston: "Moderation is best").
I, who have so much and so universally adored this [greek], "excellent mediocrity," 32 of ancient times, and who have concluded the most moderate measure the most perfect, shall I pretend to an unreasonable and prodigious old age?
Michel de Montaigne— Book III, ch. 13. Of Experience
Democracy is always, by nature and constitution, the triumph of mediocrity.
indro montanelli— Oggi, 11 October 2000
Economic analysis is the first principle of Marxism. Professors who were genuine leftists would have challenged the entire economics-driven machinery of American academe the wasteful multidepartmental structure, the divisive pedantry of overspecialization, the cronyism and sycophancy in recruitment and promotion, the boondoggling ostentation of pointless conferences, the exploitation of graduate students and part-time teachers, the subservience of faculty to overpaid administrators, the mediocrity and folly of the ruling cliques of the Modern Language Association.
camille paglia— p. xix (Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders : Academe in the Hour of the Wolf)
It is difficult to preach, this morality of mediocrity! It may never admit what it is and what it wants! It must speak about restraint and worth and duty and love of one’s neighbor.
friedrich nietzsche— Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, I. Johnston, trans., § 262
There is a sacred horror about everything grand. It is easy to admire mediocrity and hills; but whatever is too lofty, a genius as well as a mountain, an assembly as well as a masterpiece, seen too near, is appalling.
— Victor Hugo, in Ninety-Three? (1879) Pt. 2, Bk. 3, Ch. 1
I played over the music of that scoundrel Brahms. What a giftless bastard! It annoys me that this self-inflated mediocrity is hailed as a genius.
— Diary entry for October 9, 1886, quoted in Nicolas Slonimsky, Lexicon of Musical Invective (1953), p. 73.
I dislike modern memoirs. They are generally written by people who have either entirely lost their memories, or have never done anything worth remembering, which, however, is, no doubt, the true explanation of their popularity, as the English public always feels perfectly at its ease when a mediocrity is talking to it.
— Oscar Wilde, "The Critic as Artist" (1891), pt. 1
mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognises genius.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle— 1915 The Valley of Fear, ch.1.
mediocrity can talk, but it is for genius to observe.
isaac d'israeli— Men of Genius Deficient in Conversation
mediocrity triumphs because it presents itself as democratic and because it is dull, and so for many does not seem worth struggling against.
anthony daniels— Leveling Britain (March 22, 2007)
mediocrity is like a spot on your shirt, it never comes off.
haruki murakami— Dance, Dance, Dance
