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 mercerWar 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.
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 hobsonImposing 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 deweyThe 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 emersonOne 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 stoweIt 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 BottonThe real Antichrist is he who turns the wine of an original idea into the water of mediocrity.
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. cardozoGreat 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 fonteynYou know you've reached a new plateau of group mediocrity when even a Canadian is alarmed by your lack of individuality.
sarah vowellIn 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 BoccioniSince 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. boxA 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 hardyGood behavior is the last refuge of mediocrity.
henry s. haskinsVirtue is defined to be mediocrity, of which either extreme is vice.
rutherford b. hayesFor 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 hopkinsTo 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 spaldingThere is real magic in enthusiasm. It spells the difference between mediocrity and accomplishment. ... It gives warmth and good feeling to all your personal relationships.
Those who aim at faultless regularity will only produce mediocrity, and no one ever approaches perfection except by stealth, and unknown to themselves.
Politicians fascinate because they constitute such a paradox ; they are an elite that accomplishes mediocrity for the public good.