Mediocre Quotes

• A mediocre idea that generates enthusiasm will go further than a great idea that inspires no one.

  Mary Kay Ash

  Inspirational, Success, Enthusiasm For Life

  Mary Kay Ash (2009). “The Mary Kay Way: Timeless Principles from America's Greatest Woman Entrepreneur”, p.67, John Wiley & Sons

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• We must overcome the notion that we must be regular... it robs you of the chance to be extraordinary and leads you to the mediocre.

  Uta Hagen

  Life, Self Esteem, Women

  Uta Hagen (2009). “Respect for Acting”, p.29, John Wiley & Sons

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• Great spirits have always encountered opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Life, Being Yourself

  Albert Einstein (2010). “The Ultimate Quotable Einstein”, p.149, Princeton University Press

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• Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Motivational, Positive

  Albert Einstein (2015). “Bite-Size Einstein: Quotations on Just About Everything from the Greatest Mind of the Twentieth Century”, p.31, St. Martin's Press

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• The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.

  William Arthur Ward

  Motivational, Leadership, Basketball

  William Arthur Ward (1968). “Thoughts of a Christian Optimist: The Words of William Arthur Ward”

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• Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocre minds. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Courage, Honesty

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• Only the mediocre are always at their best.

  Jean Giraudoux

  Inspirational, Motivational, Mediocrity

  Jean Giraudoux (2002). “Choice of the Elect”

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  Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.

  Eleanor Roosevelt

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

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• Mediocre minds usually dismiss anything which reaches beyond their own understanding.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Understanding, Mind, Atheism

  "The Moral Maxims and Reflections". Book by François de La Rochefoucauld. Maxim 375, 1678.

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• Jealousy is the tribute which mediocrity pays to genius.

  Fulton J. Sheen

  Jealousy, Envy, Catholic

  "Walk with God".

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• No, I'm not interested in developing a powerful brain.

  Alan Turing

  Powerful, Brain, Telephones

  Quoted in Andrew Hodges, Alan Turing: The Enigma of Intelligence (1983)

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• The art of putting into play mediocre qualities often begets more reputation than is achieved by true merit.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Art, Play, Quality

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• Some people are born mediocre, some people achieve mediocrity, and some people have mediocrity thrust upon them.

  Joseph Heller

  Success, Humorous, People

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• Let us not underestimate the privileges of the mediocre. As one climbs higher, life becomes ever harder, the coldness increases, responsibility increases.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Responsibility, Privilege, Underestimate

  Friedrich Nietzsche (1977). “The Portable Nietzsche”, p.389, Penguin

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• The quickest way to kill the human spirit is to ask someone to do mediocre work.

  Ayn Rand

  Business, Work, Way

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• Getting ahead in a difficult profession requires avid faith in yourself. That is why some people with mediocre talent, but with great inner drive, go so much further than people with vastly superior talent.

  Sophia Loren

  Inspiring, Graduation, Self Esteem

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• A mediocre mind thinks it writes divinely; a good mind thinks it writes reasonably.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Writing, Thinking, Mind

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• When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental - men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost... All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Thinking, Ideas

  The Baltimore Sun, July 26, 1920.

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• Mediocrity is excellent to the eyes of mediocre people.

  Joseph Joubert

  Eye, People, Mediocrity

  Joseph Joubert (1896). “Pensées of Joubert”

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• 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.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Wisdom, People, Ambitious

  1881 Virginibus Puerisque,'Crabbed Age and Youth'.

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• Time is the friend of the wonderful company, the enemy of the mediocre.

  Warren Buffett

  Life, Time, Money

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• Only a mediocre person is always at his best.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Inspirational, Life, Failure

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• According to one influential wing of modern secular society there are few more disreputable fates than to end up being 'like everyone else' for 'everyone else' is a category that comprises the mediocre and the conformist, the boring and the suburban. The goal of all right-thinking people should be to mark themselves off from the crowd and 'stand out' in whatever way their talents allow.

  Alain de Botton

  Fate, Thinking, Secular Society

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• Mediocre men often have the most acquired knowledge

  Claude Bernard

  Men, Mediocrity

  Claude Bernard (2012). “An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine”, p.70, Courier Corporation

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• It is a terrible thought, to contemplate that an immense number of mediocre thinkers are occupied with really influential matters.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Numbers, Matter, Influential

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