Mediocrity Quotes - Page 4

• Excellence implies striving for the highest standards in every phase of life.

  John W. Gardner

  Excellence, Phases, Strive

  Dr. John W. Gardner (2015). “Excellence: Can We Be Equal And Excellent Too?”, p.171, Pickle Partners Publishing

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• A strong accountability system needs to broaden, not narrow, the curriculum. That cannot happen if you only have accountability without adequate school funding. Until Tallahassee understands the need to raise the bar as well as the financial investment, Florida will continue to celebrate mediocrity at the expense of true achievement.

  Dan Gelber

  Strong, School, Florida

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• Certainly that sputterless little candleflame of the mediocre mind known as 'common sense' has never produced anything worth celebrating.

  Tom Robbins

  Common Sense, Mind, Littles

  Tom Robbins (2003). “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues”, p.137, Bantam

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• Renouncement: the heroism of mediocrity.

  Natalie Clifford Barney

  Heroism, Abstinence

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• When something is just bad, it's often because it is too mediocre in its ambition. The artist hasn't attempted to do anything really outlandish.

  Susan Sontag

  Ambition, Artist, Mediocre

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• Mediocrity obtains more with application than superiority without it.

  Baltasar Gracian

  Application, Superiority

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• The world is a republic of mediocrities, and always was.

  Thomas Carlyle

  World, Republic

  Thomas Carlyle, Brendan King (1993). “The Sayings of Thomas Carlyle”, p.57, Lulu.com

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• It is mediocrity which makes laws and sets mantraps and spring-guns in the realm of free song, saying thus far shalt thou go and no further.

  James Russell Lowell

  Song, Spring, Gun

  James Russell Lowell, Edward Everett Hale (1902). “Early prose writings of James Russell Lowell”

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• The business world worships mediocrity. Officially we revere free enterprise, initiative and individuality. Unofficially we fear it.

  George Lois

  Business, Cynical, Individuality

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• We're constantly getting these messages to mind our own business and look the other way if we want to be well liked, to not tell the truth or speak our mind or say anything too intense. Well, I'm telling you here that this approach not only makes you party to other people's crimes against themselves but is a prescription for mediocrity and delusion

  Kelly Cutrone

  Party, People, Mind

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• Malice is only another name for mediocrity.

  Patrick Kavanagh

  Names, Malice

  Patrick Kavanagh (1973). “Collected Pruse”

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• Wealth and speed are what the world admires, what each pursues. Railways, express mails, steamships and every possible facility for communications are the achievement in which the civilized world view and revels, only to languish in mediocrity by that very fact. Indeed, the effect of this diffusion is to spread the culture of the mediocre.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Communication, Views, Achievement

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1963). “Goethe's world view: presented in his reflections and maxims”

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• A man is culpable in the eyes of society when he escapes from the jurisdiction of its mediocrity.

  Edgard Varese

  Eye, Men, Jurisdiction

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• What importance can we attach to the things of this world? Friendship? It disappears when the one who is liked comes to grief, or the one who likes becomes powerful. Love? it is deceived, fleeting, or guilty. Fame? You share it with mediocrity or crime. Fortune? Could that frivolity be counted a blessing? All that remains are those so-called happy days that flow past unnoticed in the obscurity of domestic cares, leaving man with the desire neither to lose his life nor to begin it over.

  François-René de Chateaubriand

  Love, Life, Friendship

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• When I think of normality I think of mediocrity

  Gillian Anderson

  Thinking, Think Of Me, Normality

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• Averageness is a quality we must put up with. Men march toward civilization in column formation, and by the time the van has learned to admire the masters the rear is drawing reluctantly away from the totem pole.

  Frank Moore Colby

  Men, Civilization, Drawing

  Frank Moore Colby (1926). “The pursuit of humor and other essays”

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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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• We gain nothing by being with such as ourselves. We encourage one another in mediocrity. I am always longing to be with men more excellent than myself.

  Charles Lamb

  Men, Association, Gains

  Charles Lamb, Edward Verrall Lucas, Mary Lamb (1971). “The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb: Letters, 1796-1820”

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• To encourage excellence is to go beyond the encouraged mediocrity of our society

  Audre Lorde

  Excellence, Our Society

  Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.54, Crossing Press

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• Working collectively and collaboratively is the difference between mediocrity by yourself or success as a team. You have to share the pain and the responsibility and if you do then you will also share in the rewards.

  Michael Bloomberg

  Pain, Team, Responsibility

  Speech at Tufts University, 2007.

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• Contrary to popular belief, all evolving artists are in a full time battle with mediocrity.

  Robert Genn

  Artist, Battle, Belief

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• It is a proof of philosophical mediocrity, today, to look for a philosophy.

  Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Looks

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• Politicians fascinate because they constitute such a paradox; they are an elite that accomplishes mediocrity for the public good.

  George Will

  Political, Politics, Politician

  "Embracing Your Inner Mediocrity: Making Peace with Reality". Book by Vince Stone, 2009.

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• Beware the mediocrity that threatens middle age, its limitation of thought and interest, its dullness of fancy, its too external life, and mental thinness.

  Margaret Fuller

  Age, Fancy, Middle

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• Mediocrity will never do. You are capable of something better.

  Gordon B. Hinckley

  Perfection, Excellence, Something Better

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