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Mediocrity

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Mediocrity is the state of being mediocre, having only an average degree of quality or skills, and no better than standard. An individual with mediocre abilities or achievements may be referred to as a mediocrity.

Quotes

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  • 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.
  • They are the driven crowds that makes the army of the authoritarian overlord; they are the stuffing of conservatism ... mediocrity is their god. They fear the stranger, they fear the new idea; they are afraid to live, and scared to die."
  • She’s a little bit below mediocre, isn’t she? And the worst kind of below-par personality at that: the kind who believes herself destined for great things.
  • I've always been an independent thinker inclined to take risks in search of rewards—not just in the markets, but in most everything. I also feared boredom and mediocrity much more than I feared failure. For me, great is better than terrible, and terrible is better than mediocre, because terrible at least gives life flavor.
  • We mistrust anything that too strongly challenges our ideal of mediocrity.
  • Our democratic dogma has leveled not only all voters but all leaders; we delight to show that living geniuses are only mediocrities, and that dead ones are myths.
  • Only the mediocre are always at their best.
  • 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.
  • Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.
  • Even if he were mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren't they, and a little chance? We can't have all Brandeises, Frankfurters and Cardozos.
    • Roman Hruska, speaking in support of Supreme Court nominee G. Harrold Carswell (1970).
  • 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.
  • The appearance of a single great genius is more than equivalent to the birth of a hundred mediocrities.
  • Nothing is more ingenious, more obstinate, nastier—indeed, in a sense, more clear sighted, than mediocrity harrying every form of superiority that offends it.
    • Henri de Lubac, Paradoxes of Faith (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), p. 136.
  • There is nothing more demanding than the taste for mediocrity. Beneath its ever moderate appearance there is nothing more intemperate; nothing surer in its instinct; nothing more pitiless in its refusals. It suffers no greatness, shows beauty no mercy.
    • Henri de Lubac, Paradoxes of Faith (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), p. 137.
  • You have the army of mediocrities followed by the multitude of fools. As the mediocrities and the fools always form the immense majority, it is impossible for them to elect an intelligent government.
  • What else, indeed, should mediocrity be but widespread, anywhere?
    • Alice Meynell, Ch. VIII "International", Childhood (London: B. T. Batsford, 1913), pp. 44–45
  • Don’t set out to raze all shrines—you’ll frighten men. Enshrine mediocrity—and the shrines are razed.
  • Never were abilities so much below mediocrity so well rewarded; no, not when Caligula's horse was made Consul.
    • John Randolph of Roanoke, referring to Richard Rush, upon Rush's appointment as secretary of the treasury by President John Quincy Adams. Published as an appendix to a new edition of his speech in the House, February 1, 1828, on retrenchment and reform. In William Cabell Bruce, John Randolph of Roanoke, 1773–1833 (1922, reprinted 1970), vol. 2, chapter 7, p. 200. The quote references Caligula, Roman emperor from A.D. 37–41. There is some disagreement whether he actually made his horse, Incitatus, consul to humiliate the Senate, or merely proposed it.
  • Life, like war, is a series of mistakes; and he is not the best Christian nor the best general who makes the fewest false steps. Poor mediocrity may secure that; but he is the best who wins the most splendid victories by the retrieval of mistakes. Forget mistakes; organize victory out of mistakes.
  • It is the quality and intensity of the dream only which raises men above the biological norm; and it is fidelity to the dream which differentiates the exceptional figure, the man of heroic stature, from the muddling, aimless mediocrities about him.
  • Organisation is, after all, only a means to an end. When it becomes an end in itself, it kills the spirit and the vital initiative of its members and sets up that domination by mediocrity which is the characteristic of all bureaucracies.
    • Rudolf Rocker, Anarcho-Syndicalism (1938), Ch. 4 "The Objectives of Anarcho-syndicalism".
  • Your merciful God. He destroyed His own beloved rather than let a mediocrity share in the smallest part of His glory. He killed Mozart and kept me alive to torture! 32 years of torture! 32 years of slowly watching myself become extinct. My music growing fainter, all the time fainter till no one plays it at all, and his...
  • Most of our pocket wisdom is conceived for the use of mediocre people, to discourage them from ambitious attempts, and generally console them in their mediocrity. And since mediocre people constitute the bulk of humanity, this is no doubt very properly so.
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