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'.
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))
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))
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))
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
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)
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
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
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
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
Jealousy is the tribute mediocrity pays to genius.
fulton j. sheen— American Archbishop of the Catholic Church
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
